Pillar of the Spires

Cities grow around these pillars the way towns grow around rivers. Nobody plans it. Put a light in the middle of nowhere and in two hundred years there are spires.

They think the city is theirs. The spires are, I’ll grant them that. Every stone of every tower was carried up by somebody with better things to do. But the pillar was here first, and the pillar is a pipe, and everything that city has ever dreamed has gone up it.

It’s a beautiful city. I’ve watched it be beautiful nine times. The tenth is scheduled.