The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning as it appears this night, illuminated at top in gold: Pitt's #victorylights.

I know that building, have seen it in person a zillion times. I tell you, I had never been awestruck by it until I was gathering photographs for a previous post. It is embarrassing to me to write this and I avoided writing it in the previous post, using "shocking," I think, instead, but I will write it now: That building frightens me a little, the way that huge things...Nah, but I don't get frightened of huge things; it gives me butterflies in my stomach, the way that vertigo...But I've never had vertigo. I don't know what it is but I do get butterflies and I feel that if I look at too many pictures of it I will get light-headed. It OVERWHELMS me, I cannot remember when I have felt overwhelmed by anything physical but that is le mot juste, it overwhelms me. It is so fucking HUGE, it dwarfs everything else in the out-of-scale surroundings, it looks, in photographs, as I sincerely wrote in the previous post, surreal. It reminds me of the far-away Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz, it just LOOMS out of the landscape. And you're not in flat ol' Kansas anymore when you're in Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh is a city of hills. So the Cathedral of Learning TOWERS above a city of hills. In New York City, you can lose the Empire State building at times, lose the tallest tree for the forest. But the Cathedral of Learning is built on top of a hill, it is the tallest structure on a hill. Can't miss it, I'll tell you that. It dominates. The Cathedral of Learning is a work of the architect's and landscape architect's art. It is perfectly sited and perfectly sized to inspire awe and wonder. Inspire, awe, wonder: three things to which a university should aspire. That is the Cathedral's message. I can't fucking believe that thing. Blows my mind. There is nothing else on any college campus like that. Amazing, amazing building.

The only purpose to this was to recognize the Pitt football team and by extension the other college teams that were victorious today, and the happiness of their followers. It was not to make myself dizzy. But I have found more purpose in this second iteration of this post, I have found..."meaning;" in an old, familiar skin has been poured new wine and I understand now.