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Bookish Quotes
"To every man who struggles with his own soul in mystery, a book that is a book flowers once, and seeds, and is gone."
Invisible Cities (A Harvest/Hbj Book)
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Invisible Cities (A Harvest/Hbj Book)
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3 journalers for this copy...
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Happy the man who has Phyllis before his eyes each day and who never ceases seeing the things it contains," you cry, with regret at having to leave the city when you can barely graze it with your glance.***** "It's really a very pleasant city," said Alec as he strolled down the street, pointing out several of the sights, which didn't seem to be there, and tipping his cap to the passers-by. There were great crowds of people rushing along with their heads down, and they all appeared to know exactly where they were going as they darted down and around the nonexistent streets and in and out of the missing buildings.***** I have already used the Juster quote in a journal entry for Michael Ende's Momo (in a bookring started by MrBones which everyone who sees this should join!). The Phantom Tollbooth was my first introduction to the idea, and I never forgot it. The special becomes commonplace, then everyday, and finally a nuisance. How do we prevent that? Two nights ago I picked up the phone with the usual rushed, "Hello?" I heard my boyfriend's voice on the other end of the line and added a breathless, "Hiiiiii!" all softness and relief and excitement and gratitude. He laughed and simply said, "I love you!" These days, the mere sound of his voice is enough to put me into a state completely different and far more fun than my everyday attitude. But he and I are serious about one another: we now live in different parts of the country, but chances are good that when it becomes convenient, we will become engaged and marry. So there will come a day when he will call my cell phone not for emotional or spiritual sustenance but to remind me to pick up milk on my way home, and I will respond not with an immediate lightening of heart but with annoyance that he could have thought I'd forget. We will lose an instinctive joy in one another, lose it in the commonplace. Won't we? Again, the chances are good. That's the way of the world. And you know what? I am looking forward to that day. I want my life so fused with his. He can never become an annoyance until he is also a given, until he has given himself to me, until I dwell in him as I do in my own house. And so much will be gained from that. Comfort, strength, reliance. Some days the gift of him will still strike me dumb, some days I will still bounce up and down at the thought of seeing him come through the door. Some days I will rather be left alone. Most days ... most days my life will simply be bound to that of another person, and that is worth much. Calvino sees that possibility as Ende and Juster do not. Phyllis is not entirely lost when the city is reduced to "zigzg lines from one street to another, ... patches of sunlight [and] patches of shade." There are memories of beauty which, however distant, still make one arcade seem more joyous than another. The patterns of the routes one follows have even their own fascination. (Calvino's words can make any details mesmerizing.) "Many are the cities like Phyllis, which elude the gaze of all, except the man who catches them by surprise." And some do catch them by surprise. Even some lifelong residents. Some days on one's route past an arcade the sun strikes it in a new way and one is amazed and remembers how one once loved that view. As one remains in Phyllis or other such cities, the city stops one in one's tracks less often. One no longer exclaims over it. It is not defined by beauty. It is defined by being home. |
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And thus, when some people happen to find themselves together, taking shelter from the rain under an arcade, or crowding beneath an awning of the bazaar, or stopping to listen to the band in the square, meetings, seductions, copulations, orgies are consummated among them without a word exchanged, without a finger touching anything, almost without an eye raised.***** Trading Cities 4: Ersilia In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the ciyt's life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency.***** Thin Cities 5: Octavia This is the foundation of the ciyt: a net which serves as passage and support. ... Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia's inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities. They know the net will only last so long.***** I walk through the streets of Cambridge, repeating to myself a conversation with a good friend. It was an important conversation, the frankest in months. We had walked through the campus after dark, our legs unable to keep pace with our thoughts. I had cried near the end. I missed her. I needed her. Yet she could not give me what I needed. So I remembered our words later, repeating them to myself obsessively, trying to fix them in my memory. I tried to be as faithful as possible in my memory: I wanted to be true to her and to myself. I repeated not only the words but the tone of voice, the gestures, the tilt of the head. Yet I also imagined other conversations that could have taken place. I imagined reaching out to her as I had not (preferring still to protect her from me). I imagined her response--as it would have been--or as I would have wished it. The ties that bind me to my friends, my family, my faith, are real, strings that support and give life to the web of possibilities that is my life. I contain within me Chloe, the "carousel of fantasies," the "voluptuous vibration" of could-bes; Ersilia, the "labyrinth of taut strings and poles" grounding the infinite potential; and Octavia, the "spider-web city", where the hopes of Chloe and the records of Ersilia become "the city ... over the void," life just barely contained in the face of death. Is my foundation secure, a net as strong as human experience can make it, or a fantasy, as easily shredded as a dewy spider's web in the spring winds? ***** This copy is intended for WritinReader's Books I Enjoyed Bookbox. |
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