When
the
Mountains
Disappear
(2)
Just
as
trees
encroach
upon
mountain
views,
buildings
swallow
cityscapes.
In
the
1950's,
through
the
west-‐facing
windows
of
my
wife’s
cousin’s
apartment,
you
could
see
a
fat
slice
of
the
Hudson
River.
Meanwhile,
the
windows
facing
north
framed
a
generous
chunk
-‐-‐perhaps
the
top
third-‐-‐
of
the
Empire
State
Building.
(My
wife
and
her
cousin
did
the
math.)
Since
then,
the
city
has
suffered
wave
upon
wave
of
construction,
or,
you
might
say,
never-‐ending
ripples.
Up
sprang
brick
apartment-‐monsters,
followed
by
glass-‐bodied
giants,
commercial
and
residential.
Put
all
that
together,
and,
abracadabra,
the
river
is
a
sliver,
the
ESB,
a
gleaming
needle.
Essential
to
clichés
about
urban
canyons
are
the
mountains
that
frame
them.
Does
anything
really
change?
More
mountains?
More
canyons?
Real
change
will
arrive
when
some
visionary
fills
in
the
canyons
with
new
buildings,
chock-‐a-‐
block,
by
then
made
of
who-‐knows-‐what.
When
that
day
comes,
cars,
taxis,
buses,
trucks
will
have
to
learn
to
fly,
or
else,
like
moles,
take
to
the
subways,
underground.
“When
the
Mountains
Disappear
(1)
was
published
in
Futures
Trading,
2013.
38