Torino Lighting Design, on Hwy 139, north side, between Concord and Baldwin. Best viewed from the median, through the heat mirages, traffic.

latitude 40.732902, longitude -74.053764

On Highway 139, which connects the morass of roads by the Holland Tunnel to the aneurysm of roads by the Pulaski Skyway. Halfway along this bleak catwalk of transmission repair places, eroding concrete, garbage sifted into the roadside weeds, Torino Lighting Design shimmers into view, a lead crystal fever-dream behind a plate-glass window. The essential question of Torino Lighting Design is the question of life itself: Why?

There is no parking; foot traffic is mostly the afternoon exodus from Dickinson High; drivers rocketing up from the white-tiled dimness of the Holland Tunnel will register it only faintly, a flash as they pass, like a ripple of chimes. Is there even a door? Or is it only a hallucination, dazzling and hermetic, an allegory of human folly, tipping the balance of the universe towards beauty, greed, unreachable light?

To listen to while viewing:

music provided by Dacus