Gravity's Pull

An arch is thrown. Apex reached, it falls again. It can never transcend. Thrown at a building, with apex and wall in mutual support, the buttress is said to fly, though with obvious imperfection. The Romans too threw arch from column, allowing it to fall within a second column, then perhaps a third and more. They piled layers of arches over the first to raise the structure to a level at which a smooth, continuous motion could be maintained from one end of the aquaduct to the other. Long series of stacked interjections still fly over European valleys: failure latticed into glory, irresistibly flawed.