Water in the city

Cities that are married to water seem to be my favorites. It doesn’t matter whether sea or creek, an ocean, a lake or a stream, as long as it is natural water. In some cities water is a bridge, binding the elements together, walking on foot crisscross over water and land, all seems totally integrated. Sometimes a city is split by the stream: the left bank in Antwerp is not the city, and not comparable to the ‘Rive Gauche’ of the fashion houses in Paris. Cities where you hear the sea lions, the sea gulls are kept together by those sounds, when there is a sea eagle landing on a lake that too will bring about a sense of unity. All water seems give a respite, a rest of open, unused, uncluttered space even if it is a cozy bank along a canal or the distance to the next island mirrored in the water. In that sense the desert does the same for me: it asks for a closer look, yet some walks are just to far or too hot. And a flash flood will carry the sand to the sea… So all is one.