Smell-o-vision in sense-a-round

How many square miles lie in Dorchester? Counting the sidewalks and the houselots, and including the countless miles of intestinal and arterial real estate that make up the Dot, the figure seems incalculable. When physical geography is mixed with the psychological and the anatomical there are more total, Dorchester-specific centimeters than the rest of Massachusetts en masse. By disemboweling the roughly 100,000 Dorchesterites who call this part of Boston home, a theoretical scientist could wrap the earth's equator 510 times to a thickness of twelve feet. Don't get any ideas, but it is food for thought.

Taken as a whole, Dorchester is a kaleidoscope, a broken-toothed hurdy-gurdy that plays unexpected tunefully syncopated, entertaining rags at each crank of its engine. Its oil isn't well distrubuted. It has its lubricated pistons and its dry patches. It is vast, containing a variety of landscapes and seascapes and streetscapes and dreamscapes. Still lives abound in the Dot as much as velocity and futurism push boundaries. Ash can painters call Dorchester home. Dorchester says,"Look ever toward tomorrow while appreciating today." Whatever is easily said is easily done in Dorchester.

So many people living so closely interconnected produce a stage where the limelight falls randomly with full smell-o-vision and sense-a-round effect. Dorchester overwhelms and after too much exposure the sensation can seem like too much. So much stimulation causes nerve fibers to fray and numb. There are some princesses who are still irritated by a pea under their mattress but most people in Dorchester sleep the sleep of the contented as the Red Line rattles their cabinet's dishes and sets an alarm clock's hammer tinging during the trains' last runs.

Dorchester, all of it, taken as a whole, is no different from the rest of Boston. It is part and parcel and fiber and sinew and nerve and muscle and fat and soul and skin, thick and thin. Show me a person who has spent a week living in Dorchester. I will show you a person wonderstruck and dumbstruck, happy in speechless awe.