For ten years, that Country and its Districts, the urban ones and the rural, have suffered from an uncomfortable lack of cohesion and spacial harmony, but it has only been rather recently that I have become fully aware of this malady and have applied myself to rectify it. In the old times I used to content myself with whatever strange shapes that would proceed from the depths of my consciousness, in whatever order they might proceed, and summarily set these out wherever my fancy happened to be stricken. It was not strange, in my eye, that a patch of snow might mar an otherwise sunny field, or that residential skyscrapers might tower over a solemn, kingly boulevard lined with the mansions of nobles.
This was how that World had been set up, and I wondered why the crisp harmony of Districts that I observed so often in my dreams (as I have written about before) did not seem to materialize in it. For in my dreams I could quite literally see the boundary lines shining, setting off everything, giving it all form and definition and, finally, meaning, which towered above it like a castle. Each District had its own Principles that gave it its unique character. Why was I unable to see the Principles in that World, that I might contemplate them for a longer duration and with a sounder footing than in the ephemeral mist of my dreams? It was because of this malady. It was because I had laid out the land so carelessly before, and had muddled the Principles of each District. My attitude had been one of reverence before the godliness of spontaneity, so I must have looked upon it all as, once set down by my hand, unchangeable even by that same hand, and I hesitated to make any large modifications. But this attitude had to change, and I finally did change it.
First there was the renovation I made in the outskirts of the underground Country. The place in question had been patched together so long ago with land that was transplanted from afar. There was a grassy land, a sandy land, and a forest with hills, and a snowy land. And when one exited the tunnel leading from the city and went down a somewhat precipitous slope, one found oneself in the midst of that snowy country. In fact, even before one went down into it, coming out of the tunnel, it was the first thing one would see: this massive patch of snowy land in the foreground, and the other patches, much closer to one another in character and Principle, looking small in the background. And above the snowy patch hung a most awkward structure, a relic of bygone days. Why had this place not felt like a boundary? Why had the boundary not, like in my dreams, shone with the utmost clarity? This was why. I removed the snow and the floating structure, at it immediately began to shine, and I thought, "This is what a boundary looks like". And the Districts too, that that boundary was meant to set off, also emerged resplendent at that same moment, for it is in the boundaries that the true image of the District can be obtained.
I made another renovation some weeks later, this time in the street that runs east to west in front of the Imperial Palace. Of course, the Palace marks the Imperial Space, setting it apart from the rest of the world. To the south of the front Gate was a spacious Plaza complete with a fountain and the entrance to the subway at the south of the Plaza, but going south from the Plaza through one of two gates led one into the Gardens, arguably a District of its own. The Gardens never seemed to be able to match the grandeur of the stately buildings that lined the Plaza and the august Gate that served as the portal to the Imperial Space. Yes, to the east and west of that Plaza were a number of gigantic buildings, but they were all packed together so tightly, so that the streets that run between them, and between the Palace and the Garden, were thin and claustrophobic. They did not match the grandeur of these buildings either.
So I thought, what if I made the Plaza into street with the width of the Plaza, yet extending from the eastern edge to the western. That would require this great structures to be rearranged, which I did. I opened up the entire space in front of the Palace, so that its imposing and intimidating facade could be opened to the whole world, fully visible from the Garden and all the lands south of it. The administrative buildings were moved either to the north or the south of this new street, and rotated to face into it. The street itself I arranged so that a central paved road went through the very middle, and two other paved roads ran parallel at the edges. The space in between was turned into grass, with the exception of that section of the street that had once been the Plaza, which remain paved as it had been. And in these new green spaces I planted a great deal of trees, and set up a few yurts. Yurts are not tall structures, and at any rate are temporary, which is why they did not make the space claustrophobic like the massive, settled buildings had done before, nor did they obstruct the view of the Palace, which being the most important building there, and the most stately, ought to be visible from all points on the road. Of course it was no longer a mere "road", so I rechristened it at that moment to an Avenue.
There was still the problem of the residential skyscrapers that had long ago been erected next to the water that existed to the west of the Palace. The new Avenue would go straight through them. But then I thought critically, casting a dubious look at the one in the past who had decided on a whim that here is where those four blocks must stand, and decided that this Avenue of kings was no place for there to tower the box-like dwellings of the masses, and I tore them down. Thus the avenue was made to continue all the way to the embankment. There it met up with the old road that led away from the so-called "old city". This road was extremely old (in fact it was the first road to be constructed in this region). It ran from south to north, originally leading far out into the countryside, after passing under the old city walls, but when the Palace was built in 2021, it was cut short by a new Gate leading to one of the new inner courtyards.
This road, after being opened up like this, soon began to shine in my vision. That was because of the impression one gets from following it from the south and into the large open space where it intersects with the Avenue. It leads from the south along the edge of a large cliff rising into a plateau to the west. Raised as it traces that cliff, it overlooks the Garden to the east, but when it reaches the end of the Garden, it goes down a staircase, then proceeds between two of the recently rearranged administrative offices before opening into the Avenue. However, the space between the two offices is itself very wide, meaning that the road is flanked by green patches and not an insignificant amount of trees and shrubbery. Standing in this space, where the old road coming down from the cliff edge suddenly opens up, gives one the impression that, this is the boundary land, this is where you pass over from one space to another, and are greeted by the Principles of the District you have just entered in an ever so subtle prototypical form before being conducted into the midst of the Avenue of kings, where the full nature of this place--as a place where the Settled and the Nomadic intertwine to form the antechamber of holy Power--becomes almost blindingly luminous. It was there, where the staircase comes down from the cliff, that I set up a Boundary Stone, and inscribed it, "marking the Edge of the Old City."