Frances belatedly to members...
Allow me to drop this post, because it may be worth some
reflection and comment. An architect recently stated to me that
it is wrong to construct buildings that will be occupied or
inhabited higher than the ground floor or over one storey high,
and bad to build them close to one another, mainly for purposes
of safety. This makes sense to me, but it is an ideal that will
likely never exist. In any event, it occurred to me that normal
mature humans often do dangerous things that are clearly risky
for the sheer fun of it. Sailing at night in dense fog on calm
water into unseen space for example is a sublime exhilarating
experience with strong aesthetic overtones. This feeling of
deliberate excitement for its own sake may very well be
applicable to sailing, but also to building and fighting and
racing and so on. The issue of course remains, which is why
buildings indeed are made close and high, when it is clearly not
safe.
