What I do at the beach.
I don't know what you do at the beach. But what I do when I go to the beach is build cities. The shores of St Andrews are littered with the invisible ruins of dozens of great cities, each glorious metropolis lost to the waves.
Maybe you build castles. Ha ha ha, I laugh at your pitiful sense of scale. Castle-builders fill their time fantasizing about some feudal stronghold. Well done, castle builders, you've constructed a lonely and isolated fortress with absolutely no sources of revenue or support. Where is your source of income, what will draw traders to your gates, how will this place possibly ever develop? Your knights, if any assigned to such a barren and lonely post could truly be considered worthy of the title, will go stark raving mad with the loneliness of your well built, but strategically pointless redoubt.
No, fast forward 300 years. The land - of which your pitiful castle was clearly an isolated border outpost - united, the burgeoning middle class rose to power and the ancestors of your silly fort are now kept as genetically frail figureheads while wiser men, educated men, men who appreciate craft and artistry have risen to prominence. Under their benevolent guidance, a majestic city has grown, each expansion a careful exercise of architectural grandeur with a discreet sense of an overarching plan and style. It is this city that I build at the beach.
To have walked the wide boulevards and marveled at the ingenious water gardens was to have known tranquility. To have watched the river twinkle in the late afternoon sun as it wound its way past the magnificent Imperial Palace, curved around the ever-popular Chariot Arena and finally flowed past the docks district to the sea... who would not want to be a citizen of this cosmopolitan wonderland? To live, high on the slopes in small, tasteful houses that faced east to the rising sun each morning or dwell in the grand walled manors of the western city, such would be your pleasant dilemmas. Their temples were places of reason and debate, passion tempered by civility. Their great halls were places of light and music and a harmonious incorporation of nature into their constructed paradise.
But, just as the city grew to its monumental beauty, so must it decline. And in that respect, all the cities I ever made were the same. The were imbued with a sense of fleeting glory, a sadness - neither cynical, nor truly fatalistic - that all this must pass. But when the horrors of the cities destruction became evident; when these proud, cultured, imaginary Atlanteans watched the relentless advance of the crushing waters they must have thought "Was it worth it? Was it really worth all that effort and artistry and planning, to watch it all washed to the ocean's floor?".
I'd have to say, yes, imaginary Atlanteans, it was worth it. All we ever get is a passage of time that we can make miserable or mundane or wonderful: and you chose to make it great. Not just this time, but every single time you ever created a city. You were, in a way, doomed to build something fabulous, elevated and civilised and watch it torn apart by the impassive violence of brute nature.
After a while, the constant moaning of the imaginary Atlanteans got me down and I started populating my city, this time built on a French beach while on holiday, with crabs. At first, the crabs were brought in as entertainment at the Circus Maximus, forced to fight for the decadent enjoyment of their Atlantean masters. In inviting violence into their city, the Atlanteans had gone too far. They had left the guiding light of beauty and art and sunk to a bestial low behind their mask of cultured civility. Then they began to rely on the crabs more and more. As beasts of burden, as giant servants and builders, as mounts to travel their city more rapidly. Once, the Atlanteans had been proudly self-sufficient, unafraid of hard-work and effort. Now they relied on the crabs to do all the work. The Atlanteans spoke freely in front of their crab servants and the crabs listened. The crabs learned the ancient secrets of city construction, from well digging and moat building to the way to sculpt ramps and walls. From their haughty owners they learned all they needed to know about the ways of city building and maintenance and when the time was right and their numbers sufficient, they rose up and in an a completely imaginary bloodbath, they drove the Atlanteans from the city or slew them where they stood. Thus the epoch of the Crab began.
Every bit as clever as the imaginary Atlanteans, the crabs build cities of similar aesthetic consideration and quality, but they had to make them much larger. Boulevards were widened and buildings enlarged to titanic scale to accommodate their carapaced denizens. Thoroughfares became wide curving loops, rather than then grids of the Atlanteans, better to accommodate the gait of the decapods. Theirs was a pious race, not given to the arrogance of the Atlanteans and they ruled wisely. When the catastrophe came - as it must always come - they faced it without fear, for what was the sea to them? Comforting home. Nurturing mother. The crabs appreciated that their stewardship of the great city was only ever a passing phase and it gave their society a solemn, thankful bent.
Even the wise cannot predict all calamities, however, and the great city of the crabs was destroyed, not by the welcome embrace of the tide, but by ravenous French children. Upon release from their asymmetrical and awkward school schedule, the children descended on my beautiful Crab Metropolis and with squeals of delight, began carrying off my citizens for their family's stock pot. You'd think the lazy little buggers had never seen such tremendous bounty before, but the crabs natural habitat was only 5 feet from the bloody shore.
These predatory raids caused consternation amongst the crabs. Had they fallen to the same hubris as the imaginary Atlanteans, sure that their future was plotted and taken aback by this unexpected brutality? Were they to watch helplessly from their towers as their culture collapsed around them? No, they decided, that would not be the fate of the crab city. Though many crabs were taken, to perish elsewhere, the crabs decided that their city must be sacrificed to prevent their people's destruction. In that, they did what the imaginary Atlanteans could not and the broke the fundament of the beautiful city. Carving a deep and pragmatically direct channel from their living quarters, through the wide curving streets, the grandiose chambers and immense gardens, finally to the waiting surf; the crabs formed one great chain of skittering legs and returned to the sea, leaving the city in ruin and the horrible little french kids disappointed. Those barbarians wanted nothing of the city, seeking only crab flesh to eat and so it lay there in ruin until tide and time destroyed it utterly.
I like to think though, that the crabs remember that golden city still. That beneath the crashing surf, they tell each successive generation of the time that they lived in a great and wondrous sandy citadel, full of marvels and splendour. And I like to think they learned enough to build another city, when the time is right.
Maybe you build castles. Ha ha ha, I laugh at your pitiful sense of scale. Castle-builders fill their time fantasizing about some feudal stronghold. Well done, castle builders, you've constructed a lonely and isolated fortress with absolutely no sources of revenue or support. Where is your source of income, what will draw traders to your gates, how will this place possibly ever develop? Your knights, if any assigned to such a barren and lonely post could truly be considered worthy of the title, will go stark raving mad with the loneliness of your well built, but strategically pointless redoubt.
No, fast forward 300 years. The land - of which your pitiful castle was clearly an isolated border outpost - united, the burgeoning middle class rose to power and the ancestors of your silly fort are now kept as genetically frail figureheads while wiser men, educated men, men who appreciate craft and artistry have risen to prominence. Under their benevolent guidance, a majestic city has grown, each expansion a careful exercise of architectural grandeur with a discreet sense of an overarching plan and style. It is this city that I build at the beach.
To have walked the wide boulevards and marveled at the ingenious water gardens was to have known tranquility. To have watched the river twinkle in the late afternoon sun as it wound its way past the magnificent Imperial Palace, curved around the ever-popular Chariot Arena and finally flowed past the docks district to the sea... who would not want to be a citizen of this cosmopolitan wonderland? To live, high on the slopes in small, tasteful houses that faced east to the rising sun each morning or dwell in the grand walled manors of the western city, such would be your pleasant dilemmas. Their temples were places of reason and debate, passion tempered by civility. Their great halls were places of light and music and a harmonious incorporation of nature into their constructed paradise.
But, just as the city grew to its monumental beauty, so must it decline. And in that respect, all the cities I ever made were the same. The were imbued with a sense of fleeting glory, a sadness - neither cynical, nor truly fatalistic - that all this must pass. But when the horrors of the cities destruction became evident; when these proud, cultured, imaginary Atlanteans watched the relentless advance of the crushing waters they must have thought "Was it worth it? Was it really worth all that effort and artistry and planning, to watch it all washed to the ocean's floor?".
I'd have to say, yes, imaginary Atlanteans, it was worth it. All we ever get is a passage of time that we can make miserable or mundane or wonderful: and you chose to make it great. Not just this time, but every single time you ever created a city. You were, in a way, doomed to build something fabulous, elevated and civilised and watch it torn apart by the impassive violence of brute nature.
After a while, the constant moaning of the imaginary Atlanteans got me down and I started populating my city, this time built on a French beach while on holiday, with crabs. At first, the crabs were brought in as entertainment at the Circus Maximus, forced to fight for the decadent enjoyment of their Atlantean masters. In inviting violence into their city, the Atlanteans had gone too far. They had left the guiding light of beauty and art and sunk to a bestial low behind their mask of cultured civility. Then they began to rely on the crabs more and more. As beasts of burden, as giant servants and builders, as mounts to travel their city more rapidly. Once, the Atlanteans had been proudly self-sufficient, unafraid of hard-work and effort. Now they relied on the crabs to do all the work. The Atlanteans spoke freely in front of their crab servants and the crabs listened. The crabs learned the ancient secrets of city construction, from well digging and moat building to the way to sculpt ramps and walls. From their haughty owners they learned all they needed to know about the ways of city building and maintenance and when the time was right and their numbers sufficient, they rose up and in an a completely imaginary bloodbath, they drove the Atlanteans from the city or slew them where they stood. Thus the epoch of the Crab began.
Every bit as clever as the imaginary Atlanteans, the crabs build cities of similar aesthetic consideration and quality, but they had to make them much larger. Boulevards were widened and buildings enlarged to titanic scale to accommodate their carapaced denizens. Thoroughfares became wide curving loops, rather than then grids of the Atlanteans, better to accommodate the gait of the decapods. Theirs was a pious race, not given to the arrogance of the Atlanteans and they ruled wisely. When the catastrophe came - as it must always come - they faced it without fear, for what was the sea to them? Comforting home. Nurturing mother. The crabs appreciated that their stewardship of the great city was only ever a passing phase and it gave their society a solemn, thankful bent.
Even the wise cannot predict all calamities, however, and the great city of the crabs was destroyed, not by the welcome embrace of the tide, but by ravenous French children. Upon release from their asymmetrical and awkward school schedule, the children descended on my beautiful Crab Metropolis and with squeals of delight, began carrying off my citizens for their family's stock pot. You'd think the lazy little buggers had never seen such tremendous bounty before, but the crabs natural habitat was only 5 feet from the bloody shore.
These predatory raids caused consternation amongst the crabs. Had they fallen to the same hubris as the imaginary Atlanteans, sure that their future was plotted and taken aback by this unexpected brutality? Were they to watch helplessly from their towers as their culture collapsed around them? No, they decided, that would not be the fate of the crab city. Though many crabs were taken, to perish elsewhere, the crabs decided that their city must be sacrificed to prevent their people's destruction. In that, they did what the imaginary Atlanteans could not and the broke the fundament of the beautiful city. Carving a deep and pragmatically direct channel from their living quarters, through the wide curving streets, the grandiose chambers and immense gardens, finally to the waiting surf; the crabs formed one great chain of skittering legs and returned to the sea, leaving the city in ruin and the horrible little french kids disappointed. Those barbarians wanted nothing of the city, seeking only crab flesh to eat and so it lay there in ruin until tide and time destroyed it utterly.
I like to think though, that the crabs remember that golden city still. That beneath the crashing surf, they tell each successive generation of the time that they lived in a great and wondrous sandy citadel, full of marvels and splendour. And I like to think they learned enough to build another city, when the time is right.