the buildings and stuff

and then there's puts! it translates as plaster but it's so much more than that. it twinkles in the sun and it's velvet in the shade. puts facades are either blank and flat and a bit fuzzy, or great warty things, seas of a billion pustules. they're beautiful. puts facades look like they're at the critical stage when something simple and elegant is about to be prettified, made symbolic, made to signify a certain, heavy quantity of money.

puts is colorful too, but in shades that don't insist on a certain mood, a certain weather. it has the understatement of a white canvas, of a thing built to receive and not project. it looks a lot like florida stucco except that it doesn't look like a wet cat when it rains. it's all things to all skies.

but not everything is puts. there is a lot of objectively ugly architecture in stockholm, stuff with aluminum siding, with drab geometry, with the clunkiest of balconies. but they aren't because of the windows. it's like everyone living in stockholm is out to convince you that everyday is christmas morning here. no one has not spent eight years finding that shade of orange that just glows in the morning light. everyone has these large, ridiculously well polished windows and absolutely no one is using their curtains. they're like hearths, like lanterns of domesticity; they bespeak rocking chairs and eating a little too much. they make big ugly structures into something lived in and respected and handsome. (recently though, it was explained to me that people have a special relationship to their windows because of the darkness and depression of the winters here. but this is about more than light, it's about warmth and home.)


realizing that ugly buildings aren't ugly because they're endowed with the pride of their occupants made me wonder about the occupants themselves. swedes are famously attractive people, but perhaps they're just flush with their citizenry in a relatively just country. "maybe she's born with it, maybe it's social democracy."  

you can actually see the social democracy in stockholm, like in how the streetlights hang from metal cables bolted to neighboring buildings. maybe you've got to be an american to imagine someone complaining that that cable is on my property, but i can. the massive infrastructure to keep the lights on is lashed to every private building, and maybe you've got to be an american to see a symbol of collectivity in that, too. the cables also look terrific, as nimble and sharp as a bird through air. they're an invitation to tarzan swinging or spiderman swooping.

and the scaffoldings here are the sturdiest things i have ever seen. there's probably a direct correlation between how much a country cares about its working class and how rickety its construction sites are, like a literalized social safety net.