On Towers

I am reading "The Eiffel Tower" by Barthes, and it makes me remember when I saw the Eiffel Tower for the first time. Our train sped out of a tunnel and then there it was before me, and I have never before been so awestruck by a sight. It was like something I had been imagining my whole life had just been constructed right before my eyes. Which I guess, in a way, it had been.
~the tower is there; incorporated into daily life until you can no longer grant it any specific attribute, determined merely to persist, like a rock or a river~