The pickup and the prius and the ped

We are walking to the Chinese garden.

My head is full of thoughts of Jan Gehl.

Human Scale. Human Scale. Human Scale.

I approach the stench from the I-405 trench.

A bridge over the highway.

Not the Hawthorne or the Broadway over the Willamette- which also carry cars and are picturesque.

There are more than two dozen such bridges.

From the Pearl to the PSU campus.

Cutting the city.

Spewing polluted air.

A high-school sits next to this.

And a yoga studio.

And little houses too.

Oh! The two-faced cars.

How I love you and I hate you.

I love your ease and comfort.

But, I do not like this trench built for you.

A pickup and a prius are all the same for a ped.

I enter the LanSu Chinese garden.
It is the twenty-first century. I revel in taking a panorama with my cell-phone.
Why can't we have beauty like this everywhere?
So I do not snap photos to preserve the memory?
So I can have a thousand photos at each step in the city.

I ponder over the concepts I heard at the Japanese Garden.

Do they apply to this Chinese garden?

Concepts of Hide and Reveal.

You do not want the viewer to see the whole garden at once.

Frames. Doorways. Trees. Turns.

Not a straight freeway at 60 mph.

And bonsai on the human-scale.

For us to touch and appreciate things at the human eye-level.

Did you miss seeing the street-lamp lighting the highway?

Taller than the tallest giraffe.

I remembered the lamp on the way to the garden.

Built the timeless way.

Not just to cast light.

But a thing of beauty- even when not lit.