Crashbox

Standing on the highest floor of the tallest building in the world, I tried to wrap my brain around the concept of the skyscraper. How can someone, a mere man, look at a single city block, or half a block, and say to himself, "I am going to put a building here that is more than a quarter mile high." We stood a couple of hundred feet ABOVE the cloud cover and watched the sun glint on the twin spires of the John Hancock building, the only other thing tall enough to pierce the gray ceiling. Below, through the gaps and tatters of rainy clouds, the rooftops of Chicago spread beyond the edge of sight. Seized again with an odd sense of wonder at man's struggle for glory among these architectural marvels I asked myself: Is all this truly great? And somehow it seems both so and not.