Some books of my father wait to be catalogued and read, a few based on war and spying.

Is a civilisation a sign of its architecture or the other way around?

When we survey the megalopolises that attract people like moths to a flame, how does the data sort out?

The boxes and cubes,
the donuts and folds,
the windows and doors,
the ceilings and floors.

Their general purposes.

Our general intentions.

We tear down buildings that no longer profit us when the footprint is more valuable for deeper/taller skyscraping monoliths.

A few pyramids and burial mounds remain from the thousands that once existed.

We pour prehistoric plants and animals for roads between cities that grow like slime mold, tendrils stretching for miles and miles.

Roads that fade into history as the oases that feed civilisations die out and sprout dies.

Dies and molds,
Forms and shapes,
Injections and cuts,
Diaphanous and cold.

When two or more generations separate us from war, what will our descendants think about civilisations — their competition for primary cultural status in architecture, for instance?