Comfort / Space / Steadfastness

I keep returning to this place. I first came to it in person a little less than two years ago, to explore it with a 6x6 manual TLR camera as a metric proxy for my eyes, which were overwhelmed.



As much as half of my constructive output over the last two years has made use of this site. I have finally concluded that the reason is comfort. I was explaining to a friend recently that there are some things which, though they are simple, overlooked, or odd, are comforting and beautiful to us because they are steadfast. They remain. In the context of that conversation I somewhat facetiously referred to peanut butter as one such thing. Though everything fall apart, I will still enjoy peanut butter. This is reassuring.

These towers, though both hyperrational and ethereal, are comforting like peanut butter. Every night since I first moved to Philadelphia at age 8, to this day, I have been able to see their pulsating red lights from the window next to my bed. Thus, to me they represent steadfastness and transcendence in a way that can never be expressed in words, because the subjects themselves stand silent. Their idiom is the glow, the hum, the breeze, grass, metal, and radiation: a quiet spring of enormous power, a bridge between earth and sky. (Given my sentiments about media and information, it would be entirely appropriate and expected if I hated and feared them. Quite the opposite.) Ironically, though they are implements of broadcast, in my mind they do not impose or interject. They watch. Their vigil is not invasive, judgmental, or in any way reminiscent of Big Brother; rather it is patient, reliable, and benevolent --- as friends ought to be. As such, the towers stand as a tangible, monumental, omnivisible reminder of the unseen power which guides my steps and Remains, though everything else be ruined. Perhaps this is naive.