Perhaps the builders and architects forgot these small woods- a place where maple trees still show green beneath their bark, and you can retreat from car horns and footsteps. Here, the trees meet the calm of lock-in dam number one. Their barked trunks backbend over the water to awe in their own reflections. The arched trees create a bridge leading to the water's glass dance floor-this is where the otters live. They rest, lying on their backs to see Minneapolis. To see the form followed function towers of Louis Sullivan. To see office lights turn off one at time-men and women returning their children.

Just past the waterfall rush of the dam, they can see the sign. This sign is the ever constant amongst the never constant. A molding city of generations grows, birthing new generations, and yet the sign is always there: This sign, composed of many red lights. Some of them are burnt out, others flicker, but there are always enough lights lit to read the sign. One word lights up at time- GOLD, then MEDAL, then FLOUR. The sign goes dark for five seconds before its cycle begins again, its rhythm never broken.

This, this dam, these buildings, this sign, this city, is what the painters and lovers and writers and workers need to see. Hidden amongst stacked building blueprints of hustle and footstep after fast paced footstep are the urban otters. They remind us that an assembly line city is able to stop and cherish a moment to breathe, before it rushes to the next item on its palm-piloted schedule.