A slice of American mono no aware amid San Francisco’s building boom.
I don’t mean to be too cryptic: 物の哀れ, or mono no aware, is a Japanese (obviously) term meaning “the feeling of a thing” or “things.” As far back as Tale of Genji the expression has also taken on a role to describe a kind of pathos, a reminder of the transitory nature of all that we know, all that we do, from the tiniest cracking of an egg to the neo-Ozymandian ruins of Chernobyl.