Invisible Cities thoughts

Ch 1
Interlude (p. 5, 6)

Do we always have to be the winner, to defeat others? It brings us pride; yet,

it comes with the loneliness as Kublai Khan (忽必烈汗), the emperor of Tartars (韃靼人), who could only escape from the melancholy through the stories, Invisible Cities that Marco Polo told him. It is kind of sad.

Calvino must have read The Travels of Marco Polo.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Travels_of_Marco_Polo


http://archive.org/stream/bookofsermarcopo01polo#page/n7/mode/2up

http://archive.org/stream/bookofsermarcopo02polo#page/n5/mode/2up

http://archive.org/stream/bookofsermarcopo001polo#page/n9/mode/2up

http://archive.org/stream/bookofsermarcopo002polo#page/n9/mode/2up

They are great translators, Henry Yule and William Weaver.You don't want to read a poor translation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Yule
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Weaver

Marco Polo

http://www.biography.com/people/marco-polo-9443861#awesm=~oATkvf9gp5tyGn

Calvino expanded his imagination and came up with Invisible Cities.
The book was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1976.
http://monoskop.org/images/0/0e/Calvino_Italo_Invisible_Cities.pdf

There are 9 chapters talking about 55 cities accordingly in 11 groups in Calvino's Invisible Cities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Cities
Take a closer look at the chart. It looks like the skyline of a city, doesn't it?

Urban Oases: Getting Lost in 'Invisible Cities'

by ERIC WEINER

http://www.npr.org/2013/01/21/161712231/urban-oases-getting-lost-in-invisible-cities

Cities & Memory 1 (p.7)

http://www.bibhasde.com/diomira.html

The idea of the city, Diomira, is that we envy others for the happiness they have; yet, mourn at the same time for we once had the same feeling. How come we never appreciated when we had it?

Cities & Memory 2 (p. 8)

http://ruchikanambiar.com/Projects/invisible-cities.html

The city, Isidora, tells us go for our dreams when we are young. Don’t wait until we’re old and feeble when all the desires, which we have no strength to reach, became dreamy memories.

Cities & Desire 1 (p. 9)

http://www.haigharchitects.com/projectpages/invisiblecities.html

There are many roads to lead us to Dorothea, the city where we can find the answers of anything we want to know. But, somehow, we always take the most difficult route and find later on that there are easier passages to get there.

Cities & Memory 3 (p. 10, 11)

http://prattc.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/zaira-invisible-cities/

When we meet people, the façade is who you think they are; but, the truth is their appearances don’t tell you about their past which is what makes them whole. We learn from the city of Zaira that don’t look at things only on their surface because the surface doesn't show us their depth.

Cities & Desire 2 (p. 12)

http://maio207.blogspot.com/2010/09/tos-4-invisible-cities.html

Sometimes we believe we are enjoying our lives as if in the treacherous city, Anastasia, but actually we are only slaves to our lives. We cheat ourselves that what we have is everything we desire; therefore, we tolerate the other dissatisfied surroundings. Should we look at our lives’ true essence using a new pair of eyes or should we keep forcing ourselves to inhabit this malignant and benign life?

Cities & Signs 1 (p. 13, 14)

http://aishwaryabk.blogspot.com/2010/09/invisible-cities-made-visible.html

In the city of Tamara, everything is identified by signs or the position and shape of the buildings. The signs indicate their functions and their value. Through the imageries, the city controls your every movement. The city has the signals that warn you what is forbidden or allowed. You leave Tamara thinking that you know the city well from different perspectives, but not really knowing the heart and soul of it. Just like sometimes we think we know someone or something well but actually we’ve never discovered them.

Cities & Memory 4 (p. 15, 16)

http://amriramblings.blogspot.com/2010/09/invisible-cities-sketches.html

When we are too conservative and inflexible in our own perception that we refuse new knowledge, we will be like the city, Zora, which has languished and disintegrated. Zora once possessed a special beauty and rarity that whoever had memorized Zora would be the world’s most learned man. However, because its stillness and lack of motivation, it has disappeared and forgotten.

Cities & Desire 3 (p. 17, 18)

http://elodiefreymann.wordpress.com/the-book/

We all have two faces. One with an unstable heart in preparation for sail, whereas the other tries to settle, as Despina, a border city between two deserts.

Cities & Signs 2 (p. 19)

http://salvajespalabras.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/la-memoria-es-redundantepor-italo-calvino/

We all have our burden which is our memories. The trouble in our mind that keep us repeating the same old stories so people will remember us as we wish even though the memories have become an uncertainty; just as all the crazy activities that happened in Zirma.

Thin Cities 1 (p. 20)

http://www.cittainvisibili.com/incisioni/Isaura-en.htm

The subterranean lake decides Isaura’s border. Isaura, city of the thousand wells, can only expend upwards but no farther. We always set an invisible limit to ourselves that prevent us from discovering the unknown. We will be like Isaura, a thin city eventually only if we dare to take risks.

Interlude (p. 21-23)

We obsess to possess something, but what does possess mean? Can we possess something forever? Kublai Khan asked Marco Polo that will he be able to possess his empire at last when he knows all the emblems. Marco Polo answered, “Sire, do not believe it. On that day you will be an emblem among emblems.” Even an emperor can’t possess his empire let alone us.

Less is more.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
What was Calvino’s era? I have to check. Did the Chinese misappropriate Calvino’s ideas? Oh, well, it’s hard to be original anyway. Calvino’s idea was from Marco Polo, wasn't it?

錯誤    鄭愁予 1954

我打江南走過

那等在季節里的容顏如蓮花的開落

東風不來，三月的柳絮不飛

你的心如小小的寂寞的城

恰若青石的街道向晚

跫音不響，三月的春帷不揭

你的心是小小的窗扉緊掩

我達達的馬蹄是美麗的錯誤

我不是歸人，是個過客……

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-TW&u=http://www.zwbk.org/MyLemmaShow.aspx%3Fzh%3Dzh-tw%26lid%3D91140&prev=/search%3Fq%3D%25E9%2584%25AD%25E6%2584%2581%25E4%25BA%2588%25E8%258B%25B1%25E6%2596%2587%25E7%25B0%25A1%25E4%25BB%258B%26espv%3D2%26es_sm%3D93

Mistake

By Chouyu Zheng

I walk past the south of the Yangtze River;

The facial appearance waiting in the season like lotus blooms and fades.

East wind comes not, willow catkin of March flies not.

Your heart is like little lonely city,

Exactly like streets of blue stone towards the evening.

No footsteps sounding, spring curtain of March doesn't put up.

Your heart is like little window tightly shut.

The clip-clop of my horse's hoofs is beautiful mistake.

I am not one returned, but a passing traveler.

http://www.24en.com/column/wanglei/2011-06-15/134133.html

無怨的青春     席慕容

在年輕的時候，如果你愛上一個人，

請你，請你一定要溫柔的對待他。

不管你們相愛的時間有多長或多短，

若你們能始終溫柔的對待，那麼，

所有的時刻都將是一種無瑕的美麗。

若不得不分離，也要好好的說聲再見，

也要在心裡存著感謝，

感謝他給了你一份記憶。

長大了以後，你才會知道，

在驀然回首的剎那，

沒有怨恨的青春才會無遺憾，

如山岡上那輪靜靜的滿月。

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Murong

Regretless Youth

By Xi Murong

If you fall in love when you are young

Please -- be kind to him

No matter how long or short you share your hearts

If your feelings may continue, then

Every moment will be peerless perfection

If you must leave, still bid her fond farewell

And be thankful in your heart

For the memories he left you

When you are older, you will realize

At the instant when you suddenly recall those moments

That youth without resentment is without any regret

Just like the aged moon gracing the hills with quiet clarity http://www.china.org.cn/learning_english/2011-10/21/content_23688625.htm

一棵開花的樹   席慕蓉  1981

如何讓你遇見我

在我最美麗的時刻

為這

我已在佛前求了五百年

求佛讓我們結一段塵緣

佛於是把我化做一棵樹

長在你必經的路旁

陽光下

慎重地開滿了花

朵朵都是我前世的盼望

當你走近

請你細聽

那顫抖的葉

是我等待的熱情

而當你終於無視地走過

在你身後落了一地的

朋友啊

那不是花瓣

那是我凋零的心

A TREE IN BLOOM 

How do I let you meet me, 
At my most beautiful moment.
For this, 
I beseeched the Buddha for five hundred years; 
I beseeched him to let us meet in earthly life. 

Buddha let me become a tree, 
Growing on the roadside that you pass by every day. 
Under the sunlight, 
It carefully bloomed with flowers all over, 
Every bloom is my longing from a previous life. 

When you come near, 
Please listen carefully, 
Those shivering leaves,
Are the passion of my waiting. 

And when you finally passed by unawares 
Those that fell off and covered the ground, 
Friends, 
Those are not flower petals, 
Those are my withering heart.

http://wenwen.sogou.com/z/q176588746.htm

____________________________________________________________________________________________

A short story, The Adventure of a Traveler, by Italo Calvino

          This story disappointed me because of the word “adventure” in the topic. I was hoping something exciting would happen while I was reading whereas there are no fancy adventures at all. It’s a journey of anticipation.

          The story is talking about a man (Federico) living in north Italy who traveled at night by train to Rome to meet his girlfriend (Cinzia). Calvino is good at describing details which includes what happened during the journey and how Federico reacts and feels.

          What impressed me the most is that Federico’s mind was occupied by Cinzia and his love towards Cinzia was so strong that it had overcome all negative things and turned them into positive ways as if the railroads had been built specially to bear him to his girlfriend.

          I was touched by his love half way through the reading, but I felt kind of lost at the end because I found myself not knowing men at all. For me, Federico’s emotions occurred in the journey are so feminine.

          BTW, the token in his pocket which he would use to call his girlfriend when he arrived Rome makes me think about the movie, “Somewhere in Time.” 

Ch 2

Interlude (p. 27-29)

When we advance on our life journeys, our past changes according to the route we choose. Many times we find ourselves in a situation with which is so familiar that we are not sure if we once had the experience or it was in our dreams. Are we repeating the same stories that reflect from a mirror which are imprinted when we were born?

Cities & Memory 5 (p. 30, 31)

http://approdosicuro.blogspot.com/2013/11/maurilia-invisibili11.html

When we see the old postcards of the city where we live now or the old pictures of when we were young, are they the same place or the same person?

Have the cities lost their grace? Have we lost our dreams? Can time stop and everything remain unchanged?

We must go on our journeys to make the unknown future our past willingly or unwillingly instead of looking back with nostalgia. Just as in the city, Maurilia, it is pointless to ask whether the new city is better or worse than the old one. Nothing will stop for us. We have to keep going until we become history.

City & Desire 4 (p. 32, 33)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stedef/7030044189/

We are like the grey stone metropolis, Fedora. There are a lot of crystal globes in every cell in our hearts. Just as the metal building with a crystal globe in every room in the center of Fedora. Looking into each globe, we’ll see a different figure of ourselves. They are the forms that we could have become but had not become what we are today for whatever reason. We imagine ways of making ourselves the ideal us, but while we were constructing our figures, we were no longer the same as before. Those figures became concepts in our hearts.

Maybe we are only assumptions, not real. Otherwise, within so many of us in us, we wonder which one is real; we wonder which one we desire. Are we still the same tomorrow?

Cities & Signs 3 (p. 34)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/14271839@N04/4397794382/

There are no signs at all in the city of Zoe. It confuses you. You get lost. You are not able to distinguish the features of the city. It makes me think about the cyber space where I am writing nonsense. Does it exist?

Thin Cities (p. 35)

http://fleck-tesseract.tumblr.com/post/839992575/zenobia-a-city-above-a-dry-plain-based-on-one-of

It makes no sense to ask anyone who lives in the city Zenobia, which sets on dry terrain and stands on high pilings, whether the city is a happy city or unhappy since the answer will be derived by combining elements of how the city looks. It’s meaningless. Over the years as we grow older, we have developed all kinds of desires. Instead of asking people: “Are you a happy person or an unhappy person,” it might be more specific if we put it into another category, “Are your desires erased by you or are you erased by your desires.”

Trading Cities 1 (p. 36, 37)

https://landlab.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/euphemia-exchange-city.jpg

People arrived Euphemia, the city where memory is traded after proceeding eighty miles into the northwest wind. We trade memories with each other because we know that we will digest them later on in the long journey ahead of us even though we might alter or modify the episode to suit our needs.

Interlude (p. 38, 39)

Is language important? The communication between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo was less happy than in the past after Marco learned to speak the emperor’s language. The pleasure came back when Marco relied on gestures again because by Marco’s body languages, Kublai could imagine and wander the space through thoughts without words. It is true that words are useful in describing material things but not everything because vocabulary has its limit. Sometimes a gesture, an eye contact, a grimace, a glance, a smile, a touch, a hug, a kiss, or even silence will do a better job than words.

Ch 3

Interlude (p. 43, 44)

Have you ever said what Kublai Khan declared, “I have neither desires nor fears,” and what makes you is composed by your mind and opportunities only? I don’t believe you because most decisions we make in life conceal a desire; or, its reverse, a fear. Neither the work of our mind or opportunities in life can hold up a complete us. Only if we admit our desires and face the fears that exist, then we can have our mind function properly and seize the opportunity when it comes.

Cities & Desire 5 (p. 45, 46)

http://zobeide.debacle.us/

Zobeide is like a big white trap when it is exposed to the moon. It was built by men who had the same dream in which they were pursuing a long haired, naked woman, who was seen from behind, running at night. Those men built Zobeide’s streets according to their dreams, but they made it different at the spot where they had lost her so she would be unable to escape if she ever appeared again. More and more men have arrived Zobeide for the same reason and they redesigned the streets to suit the scene in their dreams. Zobeide has become an ugly city.

We are all trapped in our own fantasies without realizing it.

Cities & Signs 4 (p. 47, 48)

http://www.cittainvisibili.com/incisioni/Ipazia-en.htm

I love Hypatia a lot. I am going to use it on my research paper which is due on May 13. I need more time to think.

Is there a time in your life you felt like “the stranger”? Like an outsider?

The movement and waiting…

The settings…

Hypatia is an answer to a question of mine…

What is it? I feel lost…

Thin Cities 3 (P. 49, 50)

It’s still a myth what makes up our brains. There are some drugs that don’t exist in nature but only in our brains which comprise around 100 billion neurons. Is it some kind of enchantment or a whim as the water pipes in the city, Armilla, where “the streams of water channeled in the pipes of Armilla have remained in the possession of nymphs and naiads?”

Is it why human discovered the functions of our hearts, eyes, ears, bones… so we are able to mimic the organs, but not our brains?  We never know when our thinking will lead us into an unknown adventure.

Trading Cities 2 (p. 51, 52)

Our endless fantasies stop when we decide to live our ephemeral dreams with someone; as what will happen in the city, Chloe, where “every phantom would become a person with whom to begin a story of pursuits, pretences, misunderstandings, clashes, oppressions…”

A voluptuous vibration constantly stirs Chloe, the chastest of cities.

End of Ch 5 Interlude (p. 82)

Marco Polo answered Kublai Khan: “Without stones there is no arch.” Can I say without 4 tragedies there is no Shakespeare, or should I say without Shakespeare there are no 4 tragedies?

I am confused because either way makes sense to me.

Ch. 6 Interlude (p.85-87)

Marco said to Kublai Khan, “What else do you believe I have been talking to you about? … Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”  

“Everywhere is Venice” is the theme I got throughout the book which indicates Marco’s heart is in Venice. There is no place to hide when homesickness attacks. In Marco’s case, he transferred his yearn for hometown with tales of imaginary cities. I think this is my biggest problem that caused the teacher to turn back my thesis statement of the research paper four times. I am too obsessed with the “heart.” I should focus on other ideas to introduce my hometown without thinking the heart but using the fact and quotes from the book, because no one will be interested in visiting your hometown based on your heart. Gee~ I don’t know whether I’ll survive or not.

Marco knew that time can change everything after all those years traveling away from home, so he said, “Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little” (87). I don’t agree with what he said, but I understand that kind of mixed feeling when you’re at a loss as to what to do.

Trading Cities 5 (p.88, 89)

http://myeyesanjali.wordpress.com/2012/10/05/esmeralda-invisible-cities-italo-calvino/

Esmeralda, city of water, is like a maze for there are so many different routes to reach the same places. Calvino suggests to us that if one day, we are in a difficult situation, we should learn from the swallows who spiral upward high so we can dominate from every point as an outsider.

This video is breathtaking!

Cities & Eyes 4 (p. 90, 91)

http://proteus.brown.edu/cityfestival/1626

“You cry, with regret at having to leave the city, Phyllis, when you can barely graze it with your glance;” on the contrary, “the city fades before your eyes” if you must stay and spend the rest of your life there. We are all like this. We don’t appreciate what we have but fancy those we can’t have.

Cities & Names 3 (p.92, 93)

http://themagicpearl.wordpress.com/category/global-literature/

We conjured up things or people through their names if we have never seen them. However, those imagined figures are usually entirely different from what we think. Just as the city, Pyrrha, as soon as Marco set foot there, everything he had imagined was forgotten. We think we have always known something we don't know, but the reality can be opposed and disappointed.

Cities & The Dead 2 (p.94, 95)

http://dramdesign.wix.com/portfolio-site#!__books

Have you ever met someone who you think you know but you don’t? Have you ever been stared at by someone as if she or he recognized you but they don’t? Adelma is the city where this kind of feeling appears all the time. You might not want to go but I know I'll be there sooner or later. It’s a city where you meet people who are already dead, where you arrive dying.

This thinking is so Buddhist like.

Cities & The Sky 1 (p. 96, 97)

http://www.thecentreofattention.org/exhibitions/cath.html

Can we really discover a city through a map? Everyone looks at the maps from different angles. To be able to observe the true form of a city, you have to go visit it yourself. It might disappoint you as the city, Eudoxia, where the symmetrical on the map turned out to be the screams in the darkness. On the other hand, how can we know if we have never tried?

Interlude (p. 98, 99)

Is that true as Khan accused Marco that the reason he travels was “to slough off a burden of nostalgia” and “you return from your voyages with a cargo of regrets?”

I hope I smuggle the happiness instead of regrets in my life journey.

Ch 7 Interlude (p. 103, 104)

Polo said to Kublai, “At the moment when I concentrate and reflect, I find myself again, always, in this garden, at this hour of the evening, in your august presence.”

It doesn’t matter you are where you are or where you imagine. What matters is if there is someone who can share with you.

Cities & Eyes 5 (p. 105)

http://www.cambridgeschoolofart.com/2012/illustration-2012/thomas-baxter/

Don’t envy others dazzling appearance. You never know the other side which is hidden as the city of Moriana where we find “ropes good only for hanging oneself from a rotten beam” while the other side is glorious in the sunlight.

The city is “like a sheet of paper, with a figure on either side…”

Cities & Names 4 (p. 106-108)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/57001763@N00/sets/72057594067353478/

Sometimes if we arrange things in a different order even though nothing was lost, the result can be splendid or cause sighs. Be aware of changes in life, you don’t want to end up like the city, Clarice, where “has always been only a confusion of chipped gimcracks” (108).

Cities & The Dead 3 (p. 109, 110)

http://perancanganarsitekturinterior5.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/invisible-cities-eusapia-city-and-the-dead/

It’s ironic the way Calvino describes the city, Eusapia, where “No city is more inclined than Eusapia to enjoy life and flee care.” What I see is people there are afraid of death to an extent that they created an underground city for the dead.

Instead of worrying about the unknown, why don’t we try to improve our lives that exist?

Cities & The Sky 2 (p.111-113)

http://redwood.colorado.edu/kypl7977/capstone/invisiblecities.html

We learned that the belief is handed down in the city of Beersheba was completely opposed: What is right is wrong, and what is wrong is right.

We are always seeking how to free ourselves, but never bother to let go. We can never be free if we don’t know how to release our burdens.

Continuous Cities 1 (p. 114-116)

http://rohanpatankar.blogspot.com/2010/09/city-impressions_07.html

The city of Leonia uses newly found products as soon as they are available; just as today’s society thrives on having the latest and greatest. The problem in Leonia is as the new products arrive, the old ones are discarded. This creates large deposits of garbage and trash which is building up around the city and eventually destroy it. Leonia will disappear under its discarded trash.

Interlude (p. 117-118)

What’s the definition of existence?

Kublai said: “We have proved that if we were here, we would not be.”

Polo answered: “And here, in fact, we are.”

What does that mean?

I got a headache.

Ch 8 Interlude (p. 121-123)

“The Great Khan tried to concentrate on the game: but now it was the game’s purpose that eluded him. Each game ends in a gain or a loss: but of what?... It was reduced to a square of planed wood: nothingness…” (123)

How should we live? Is life nothing but a game in which you’re either a winner or loser? It should be more than that, isn’t it?

Cities & Names 5 (p. 124-125)

http://www.cittainvisibili.com/incisioni/Irene-en.htm

It happens many times in our lives that once we get to know someone about whom we want to know or we get something that we craved for a long time, we are disappointed because we found they're not what we expected just as the city of Irene, “if you approach, it changes.”

Cities & The Dead 4 (p. 126)

http://darkhumordescention.deviantart.com/art/Invisible-Cities-Argia-315201086

You'll be like a blind person when you arrive the city of Argia for you see nothing but darkness. The only sound you might hear is if you put your ear to the ground. “You can sometimes hear a door slam.”

Have you ever been in this kind of situation when you find nothing but hopelessness?

Run! The best way is to run away from it, the further the better.

Cities & The sky 3 (p.127)

http://ideashappen.tumblr.com/

People who live in Thekla are always busy building the city without resting, without purpose and a blueprint, because they are afraid that not only the city but everything they have “may begin to crumble and fall to pieces.”

Are we all like this, like bees, who are busy all the time without really thinking about our future?

Hidden Cities 1 (p.129-130)

http://windmills-ofyourmind.blogspot.com/2012/03/blog-post_4403.html

As we grow older, very often, we still keep our pure, childish thinking deep in our hearts even though we gain some new perspective, but the hidden city, Olinda, growing big without keeping anything original. This is a city where I don't want to go visit because it has no soul.

Interlude (p. 131-132)

It not only overwhelmed Kublai what Polo answered, but it surprised me.

How can Polo discover such a large quantity of things in a little piece of smooth and empty wood? For Polo, a piece of dead wood symbolized another adventure.  

                                                                                                               

                                                                                Hypatia is everywhere

           I was confused and bored when I first read Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. I was confused because I knew there must be some kind of message about the distant cities in the book but I couldn't figure it out. I was bored because I was confounded by the simple but abstruse words. I am still confused, but luckily not bored, reading it again. Besides the feeling of confusion, I found the poetic writing is like a magnet. It draws me into the imaginary cities. Calvino (1923-1985) was born on Oct. 23, 1923 at Havana, Cuba. Both of his parents Mario Calvino and Eva Mameli-Calvino are botanists who spent several years studying tropical plants in Central America. They missed Italy so much; therefore, they named their first son Italo. Calvino expanded his imagination and came up with Invisible Cities. The book was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1976. There are 9 chapters talking about 55 cities accordingly in 11 groups in Calvino's Invisible Cities. If we take a closer look at how Calvino played with numbers, the design of displaying the cities in the chapters looks like the skyline of a city. The way Calvino used mathematical structure to describe Invisible Cities, we see how OULIPO, which is a workshop devoted to applying math in literature, had inspired him. The book makes me think more about the places that I have lived. If I have to describe Pleasanton where I live using one adjective, I’ll say, “quaint.” It’s a pleasant little town where my heart doesn’t belong for I always feel like a foreigner. On the other hand, every time when I went back to Taiwan where I came from and where I think I belong, I feel like an outsider. Calvino says, “the more one was lost in unfamiliar quarters of distant cities, the more one understood the other cities he had crossed to arrive there...the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places…” (28).We all has two faces. One with an unstable heart in preparation for sail, whereas the other tries to settle, as Despina, a border city between two deserts (18). I always have the same feeling that my heart is like a little boat which is constantly seeking a harbor to berth. I have traveled more than fifty countries so far in my life. Looking back, I realized that there is no place better than a city where your heart is located, as in the story The Adventure of a Traveler, by Italo Calvino. What impressed me the most is that Federico’s mind was occupied by Cinzia and his love towards Cinzia was so strong that it had overcome all negative things and turned them into positive ways as if the railroads had been built specially to bear him to his girlfriend who lives in Rome. We’ve been looking for a city where our hearts belong to. I wouldn’t have found it if I hadn't read Invisible Cities. Hypatia, the city where you never want to leave is my answer. Just as Marco Polo told Kublai Khan, “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice” (86) I found Hypatia is everywhere.

Ch 9 Interlude (135-139)

I disagree what Kublai Khan said to Marco, “I think you recognize cities better on the atlas than when you visit them in person” because the atlas doesn’t show the spirit of the city. For example, it is stereotype to think that “Paris, where millions of men come home everyday grasping a wand of bread” (136). It doesn’t matter how much New York looks like Amsterdam (139) from the atlas, they are different.

The only way you can really know a city is you visit them in person, as Marco said, “it is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear;” we can say, it is not the shape on the atlas that tells the city: it is your eyes.

Cities & The Dead 5 (140-143)

http://www.cittainvisibili.com/olii/Laudomia-en.htm

People who live in Laudomia believe in reincarnation which I’ve always resisted to believe but hard to avoid all my life because it is deeply rooted in Chinese culture for thousands of years.

Marco said, “One man is concerned with leaving behind him an illustrious reputation, another wants his shame to be forgotten; all would like to follow the thread of their own actions’ consequences; but the more they sharpen their eyes, the less they can discern a continuous line” (141-142)

I prefer to think that I live only once, in this life, instead of thinking that I owe you this life, but I’ll give it back to you in my next life. For me, reincarnation is an excuse for Chinese to surrender under difficult situations and blame it on fate.

Cities & The Sky 4 (144-145)

http://syemur0.wix.com/perinthia1#!artworks

The stars in the sky have their own track, but once in a while, there will be some kind of explosion that changes the galaxy with or without the astronomers observation. The society has its own rules, but can not guarantee there will not be any riots or law breaking.

The city of Perinthia was established by astronomers calculations according to the position of the stars and was guaranteed to reflect the harmony of the firmament. Yet, human plotting can not defeat nature. The city is a failure.

Continuous Cities 3 (146-147)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/claudionimuc/5167005381/

I can not imagine the scene which was described in the city of Procopia where Marco stops by every year and takes lodgings in the same room. He viewed a nice landscape looking out from the window the first time. As years go by, that place has become packed with people who look alike, seem polite but because there is not enough space for so many people, they stood on one another’s shoulders that even the sky has disappeared. Moreover, there are 26 people lodged in his room which made it difficult for him to move. Is this what will happen in our future?

Hidden Cities 2 (148-149)

http://www.danfergusdesign.com/watercolor/pages/raissa1.php

Life is not happy in Raissa. On the other hand, “at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs.” Life is like this, at every moment, the unhappy contains a happy thread that is awaiting for us to discover. We should always look for the bright side of any situation. It’s our choice.

Interlude (164-165)

As a human, even though there are so many things that we can’t control, we can’t stop pursuing happiness. The cities are imperfect. To escape the suffering we must accept the inferno, become a part of it and ignore all its faults.