Nightscape

Towers of light,
each light a cubicle
containing a worried person.

[Notes: Interesting at night to see how many people in sky scrapers are working late. This reminds me of the old TV show, "Naked City," that began each episode with a a cityscape and a narrator saying something about "a millions stories in the Naked City...and this is one of them." A million stories. My dictionary says that the word "stories," when used to mean the floors of a building, probably derives from "story" meaning a tale--which derives from "history," which comes from a Greek word meaning something like to learn by inquiring.

How did a building floor become a story? (I'm learning by inquiring.) My dictionary speculates that floors of buildings long ago (Greeks? Romans?) were typically marked on the outside of buildings by friezes (bands of sculpture) that told a story. Makes sense for buildings a few stories tall. Wouldn't it be interesting if each floor of a 100-story building were surrounded by its own frieze, each floor telling a different story?

"I visited the Empire State Building today. I couldn't tear myself away!"]

Dean Blehert
dean@blehert.com
dblehert@verizon.net
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
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