The Breathing Mountain

I live in a city with approximately 650,000 people. I am networked into a grid of roads and can use my bike to get from almost any point A to almost any point B. Green spaces are strategically scattered throughout the grid, while most of it is predominated by buildings, ranging from a single story to over fifty. Most of the tall buildings are clustered in the heart of the city.

The skyscrapers are a latticework of iron, many encased in glass. By themselves, they are dead as stone. It's only when they merge with mankind that they come to life. It's only when people enter them, network within them, create ideas and organize information within them that breath and function. They become the electric fire of neurons, the blood engorged strain of muscle, the life sustaining digestion of the intestine, the waste release of sweat, urine, and feces. They are the iron skeletons of organisms whose flesh dissolves every evening and reintegrates each morning.

But this perspective focuses solely on the individual building. Step back, and a broader organism can be seen. It's circulation runs red with brake lights. Oxygen rich, idea rich, work ready humans are transported in cars from one important sector to another. Vital materials are also transported, allowing the urban organism to mine resources from from away and then circulate them within its own system. Steel, lumber, and cement are brought in from outside to develop the physical infrastructure, the skeleton of the city. Foodstuffs are distributed to feed the biological element. The city grows, a rising mountain made of steel. A mountain alive with movement, with circulation and breath. It is a breathing mountain. We are a breathing mountain.