When I was a boy, I built a city next to my bed. It was about thirty-six square feet in area and took up the majority of my bedroom, had a population of roughly a hundred-and-fifty, and was made entirely of Legos. I had wired it up with Christmas tree lights, both in the streets and in many of the buildings, and at nights, with my room lit only by the hundreds of tiny bulbs, I would lie on my bed and stare at the city. For hours. Sometimes, I'd go down to the city, to tow a car that had been left by the side of the road, to close the restaurant for the evening, to send a police car on its patrol. The drive-in theatre would empty out after the last show. The mayor would take the long way home, tired but satisfied after a long day's work, making his rounds, checking things out. The lights would go out, the city would sleep, and then I would sleep as well. As tired and satisfied as the mayor.
Once, I got tired of the city, tore it all down, and built a galatic colony instead, with spaceports, lunar mining camps, landing pads, astronauts and aliens, everything your fledgling interstellar outpost needs. The same Christmas lights though.
I don't know why I'm thinking of all this now. But I'm happy and warm in the memory of the thoughts and ideas that would race through my head, lying there with my head on my folded arms, staring at the world below my bed.
What an eerie coincidence...there's an E. nesbit book all about how to build your own "magic cities", called Wings & the Child. There's 2 copies on-line for sale, each for over $1,500. Until today, when someone put one up for auction on eBay for $20. Boo-yah!
I'm going to bid on it for a bazillion dollars.
Reminds me of Robert Louis Stevenson's- The Land of Counterpane. A counterpane is what long, long ago a bedspread was called.
The Land of Counterpane
WHEN I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.
my mom's a poet at heart. I love my mom.
I can't go by a Lego display today without thinking of that city. We spent many happy hours with those little blocks.