Feet Firmly Placed Upon the Ground

Invisible Cities: A Vagabond Voices Writing (and Living) Prompt.

Sand and Dust, Imagination and Life

The description of the city will be insufficient and dismissive at best. The rendition I offer will be vague, like a half-remembered dream among the fog of time. At times will be just that, a dream. Others a fantasy it will be.

For the one whose sight can see far enough, nothing matters at all. Because, in the end, everything is sand and dust, and the components of that.

Its compounding principles: imagination and life.

The city extends above the cloud of madness. The one through which the ones afraid to deviate from the marked path walk. It flourishes among the desperation that fear produces when it awakens the dreamer in the middle of the night to reveal the warm bed, the cherished lover, the parent consoling the panting heart.

The city is small and large, and it expands through the dimensions of time. Its inhabitants can only sprout their words towards the future. The self can only hear what in the past was. Its conjunction is the present.

The Source of Fear

The citadel is safe from fear. So tall its inexistent walls are. Their citizens have opened their eyes, sometimes they dream, but they only do so to act.

Its dwellers come from near and far, but for the most part near, because they are.

The mundane problems of this world: They are not afraid of them. Oh, the money! Oh, the resources! Imagination; Imagination!

I met a man, the Liar, and I asked him, “Tell me about this we all worry so much.”

“You know this better than me; this is an illusion and a charade.”

“Then why do I believe?” I asked.

“You want what the Tempter taught you to desire. With its seductions and chants, the songs it wants you to hear, it sings. You have become accustomed to the melody of its music. Forgetting about the sound made even by the beating of your heart.”

“The Tempter told you your needs so you can satisfy its unquenchable thirst; this is what it wants.”

“It led you astray from the path that directs you to the pond that is an ocean where the thirst people have is quenched by swimming and not drinking,” this is what the Liar said.

“But you want me to show you now the city, with its lights and splendors, its unpassable walls, its corridors dressed with mirrors, its cobblestones made out of gold! Isn’t that true?” The Liar roared.

He laughed a hysterical laugh.

It lasted an eternity or so.

In the midst of that eternity, rivers roared, racing down mountains inflated by copious rains downpouring down a forest, swelling the once mild creek into a roaring force, taking it all through its path. It roared. Ran. Fell. It mocked me.

“Oh, your infatuation with gold!” His roaring was thunder, the lightning out of a mouth of gold.

“You don’t even want it for yourself, but to say that you have it. So you have more than the one next to you, who is your mirror. Who is another eye of the monster with a thousand eyes, seeing itself through those eyes.”

“You: creature of comfort!” He spat those words to me.

“I just wanted to see the city,” I said timidly. “The one they promised to my forefathers.”

“You stop it with the honey and milk,” He mumbled between its teeth.

In the Eternity of Time

The city was build of the intersection of dreams and nightmares. We were unable to avoid the horror. The fear of whom feels lost, the need to confront silence to find the way.

The city was quiet in the eternity of time. The city stood still while the universe spun. Expanding. Expanding. If you could quiet your mind, you could appreciate its silence in the movement of worlds. And words.

The Witch, whom I had been looking for for many years, came to me dressed in velvet and purple and pink and gold. Her lips were the nectar where my heart found hope: I did not taste them. Her words had a sweetness, a soothing, a comforting.

The city had no walls, but it was a fortress. Its streets were many, each one a dream.

She talked to me while I dreamed. She comforted me as I woke in the middle of the night, her breast milky as a galaxy. Her milk was sweet as honey.

“You cannot allow yourself to get distracted from the dream if you don’t want to have a nightmare,” this was the very first thing she said.

“You need to have the stamina for dreaming,” this was the second thing she said.

“You must have the courage to live your dreaming,” her lips touched me as she departed.

Highways

The city erects as a spherical world. Highways in the sky unite its neighborhoods. Why does my head insist on calling this world one city?

I seek the tune that makes my soul vibrate, but I cannot find it unless I traverse the avenues that I transit through the sky. The place in which I am a wanderer.

(Up in the sky, winged machines, think at a different speed, Their present expands farther than our now, They see farther than us, They are quick to forget about the past)

The city is like an aspen tree. A single organism united by a root sprouting its shots up. United, by imagination and air.

I seek the tune through which my soul vibrates, but I cannot find it unless I walk the paths made of clay and dirt. The forests and deserts through which I wander.

The place where I dwell is in between the city streets. On the side of roads made out of clouds. In between a forest made out of thought. My limbs are learning how to dance. With my feet placed firmly upon the ground.

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Italo Calvino’s The Invisible Cities: On Becoming Not-Inferno

Italo Calvino’s The Invisible Cities remains one of the most beautiful books I ever read. The book itself is a work of art. Of course, silly of me to say this.

In the book, Marco Polo describes to the Great Khan the cities of its kingdom. The Great Khan, the ruler, does not know its empire. It only knows it through the eyes of Marco.

Maybe we are the eyes of a distant king to whom we describe its realm, the world this ruler has made, we tell about it through our art and science?

The Great Khan has a map of the world through which he can see beyond time. He envisions New Amsterdam. The enormity of cities we have created extending beyond the scale of what is human. Like an aspen tree expanding through ideas and air.

The Great Khan asks Marco how to avoid this Infernal City we create at the intersection of our humanity, and I may add our fears.

Marco replies, “By knowing who and what are not Inferno.”

My small contribution to the creation of Non-Inferno is to hope to dare to dream and hope not to fear.

©Pablo Pereyra 2021. Thank you for reading.

Thank you, Trisha Traughber, for your prompt. I was trying to honor Calvino, the Spirit of your publication, and all that exists in between those spaces.

Of late, I got into this habit of recording and uploading recordings of my poems on YouTube. I’m not exactly sure of what it is that I’m trying to accomplish. Maybe, I’m hoping someone more talented than me will make poetry mainstream. Our words connect.