Big Buildings and Fog

I love being on an island. There's such an intense fog that's rolled in off the river. I work in a 17th floor office a stone's throw from the Empire State Building, and when I looked out the window this morning the Empire State Building had completely disappeared. I come from seafaring (well, lakefaring) people, so something about this just gets me right there.

And there's something about being downtown that gets me in the same way. Whether it's New York or Cleveland, there's something in the way all those big buildings, built so purposefully, make you feel important, like you have a place in the history and future of civilization:

I learned the reason why man must work and how to dream big dreams
To conquer time and space and fight the rivers and the seas
I stand here filled with my emptiness now and look at city and land
And I know why farms and cities are built by hot, warm, nervous hands
~Woody Guthrie, by way of Wilco

God, in a way it pains me to quote anything from the Wilco canon, but when I look out on the Manhattan skyline, or the Cleveland skyline (draped in fog or not), I just have to wonder of those people who built Atlanta and Phoenix and Jacksonville and most of central New Jersey and all those sprawling concrete wastelands: what kept them from dreaming big dreams?