Yellow

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We have a huge common inheritance. I tend to lurk among the supporting scaffolding.

Little Chapel On The Hill

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In Siena they're building a church -the Cattedrale dell'Assunta. They've worked on it for maybe eight hundred years. It looks at least that long until they'll finish.No, probably it will never be finished in its most ambitious form. Seems that they once hoped it would be the world's largest Christian temple. So they began an attempt to more than double the size of their massive Duomo. However The Plague interrupted in the mid 1300s, killing tens of thousands and leaving Sienna a tiny town in its wake. One no longer able to mount such a massive effort. Eventually they returned to ehnancing the existing cathedral, which is the church that's still under construction today. And I'm certain that understanding it would be the lifetime work of scholars.

Not having that time... I was left with only enough moments to try to bring home a sense of awe.

Sienna #3: Mother & Daughter

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Some bonds are universal, eh?

Sienna #2: Hot

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"Why not select the life that would be most helpful, as long as it is not too false?" - Gary Alan Fine in Everyday Genius.

There are times when we try trial wrappings. You know the daring haircut, the edgy outfit.... even the right pair of sunglasses. We get a chance to select a life for ourselves. Try it on. See if it helps us . Sometimes we see to it that every detail reinforces the look, the feeling, the person we want to try on. And as long as we can unbutton, unzip, re-dye, and kick out of the thing if it doesn't work - hey, it's kind of fun, no?

Sienna #1: Tortura

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Sienna in most of its places is more city-fied than New York, or Rome. What do I mean by that? Look at this image. See the sky? See the trees? The clouds? See nature all around?

Nope, they're not there. Sienna grows 380 degrees around you. Look up and the buildings seem to merge. Look right and left and they seem to melt down upon themselves. Look down and there's no trace of the earth which has forced the city builders to form such difficult stone skins around them. In a way Sienna seems to be a cast of city poured over then worked into the rock and dirt and hills. Of course San Francisco's like that but its boulevards and streets are so wide that there's a view of earth or sea in one direction or another. And there are trees everywhere.

Not here. I took this picture at 1:25 on a sunny afternoon. The shell beneath your feet is itself feet deep. Thousands of years of building over building has created a kind of magnificient hive. I like cities. I live in a city that's about the size of Sienna. But while visiting this place is amazing, living there... that would be hard as the steep streets that bind it to its mountain.