Not a World of Water, But of Fears

Calvino has a new theory for creation. It is not of Adam and Eve or of Evolution, but of the combination of time and space.

The four elements (fire, water, earth and air) along with the creation of duality, has manufactured Khan's atlas: an inferno.

Throughout section eight, Calvino expresses how Irene, (Cities & Names 5) is an insignificant system, a network. He defined the mechanics of the world, and most specifically the atlas described throughout Invisible Cities a falsehood. A domino effect with no real effect.

"Those who pass without entering..." speaks of the souls who never stop recognizing the falsehood of things. That soul who is still able to depict the objects that supposedly represent value are nothing but "rubbish." However, those who decide to live upon Inferno's stories, are those who are not able to fight against these strong forces.

Argia, (Cities & the Dead 4) is a place that didn't only decide to adapt to inferno's laws, but became unaware of their decision to. "What makes Argia different from other cities is that it has earth instead of air." (pg. 126)

Nevertheless, it can be said that the mysteries of the universe can be solved by observing the city of Thekla. It is a city that never ends in construction. The people fear it will start to deteriorate if they stop building. However, the blue print at times gets lost and the workers simply continue building without recognition that they are doing so without a plan. The blue print represents the divine soul of every individual worker. It is the scaffolding and the continuous construction that impedes the city to be built by design. Furthermore, it is the constant need to be doing something that stupefies the inhabitants, making them feel their is nothing else to do with their lives. "Do not do, be" comes back to the previous explanation. Human beings have obligated themselves to be constantly busy and innovating in order to live. The small detail they forgot was that they were already alive.

Olinda can also represent the falsehood in all its glory. It is the idea of an idea inside of an idea. One will never know which is the original Olinda, or if it even exists. No matter which Olinda you go to, it might have the same characteristics as the previous one. The only thing that remains identical, unlike the city are your eyes.

During the last pages of the book, Calvino finally came to a conclusion. It cannot be explained thoroughly or elaborated. Its truth lies unexplained. It cannot be too much of an influence in our lives, for it might dig us down into hole. It is the truth. It is seen in Macbeth, Candide, Slaughter-House Five, Elektra and Night.

Life is insignificant.

Calvino and I: Homeless

Means of transportation are like the flow of blood through veins. They might take different routes, become clogged or increase in speed. However, the blood will always arrive at the heart.

Clavino describes many of the cities he visited in section six, as places characterized by their infrastructure. The city of Esmeralda (Trading Cities–5), Phyillis (Cities and Eyes–4), and Pyrrha (Cities and Names–3) design's are based on slopes, bridges, canals, allies, and spider webs. Calvino says Esmeralda's inhabitants "are spared the boredom of following the same streets every day." (ph.88) Calvino is simply stating that spontaneous and unconventional events might make life less monotonous. After all it is the risks of taking other pathways that create experiences. Furthermore, after getting lost by exploring different routes, the sentiment of arrival at the destination is much more satisfactory.

The city of Phyllis is not as attractive as other cities. It is messy but artistically unique. "...each different from others: cambered, covered, on pillars, on barges, suspended...variety of windows ...mullioned, Moorish, lancet, pointed....Happy the man who has Phyllis before his eyes each day and who never ceases seeing things it contains,' you cry, with regret at having to leave the city when you can barely graze it with your glance.'" (Pg.90)

Calvino is dying. He is leaving this world. He is leaving his cities: his body, his mind and his legacy. However, he only discovers that his time hasn't run up, yet. All that he once overlooked, or unappreciated once is now holy in his memory.

"Phyllis is a space in which routes are drawn between points suspended in the void: the shortest way to reach the curtain merchant's tent, avoiding that certain creditor's window...Many are the cities like Phyllis, which elude the gaze of all, except the man who catches them by surprise." (pg.91)

Is the man who catches the gazing and eluded man G-d? Along many chapters of Invisible Cities, it has come to my attention that G-d plays a fairly vital role in Calvino's life. He refers to him as a witty judger, who is the cause of all of cities. (G-d has brought Calvino to create his city–his personal empire. Alike the Great Khan, an emperor who is not only the observer of Calvino's spiritual journey literally, but is the representation of us. Khan is a reflection of Calvino's life. And within this reflection their is an individual story–metaliterature. This can be proven by Khans analysis of Calvino's untold cities, by describing mirrored cities, with grand bodies of water which invoke a reflection of the whole city–identical but upside-down.)

Suddenly, Calvino discovers his own death at the mid of section six. Through Cities and Names 3, Cities and the Dead 2, Cities and the Sky 1, Calvino enters in a state of crisis and shock. He understands, that although he managed to oversee all the cities and understand their value, heaven was not as he expected.

Calvino's ideas of heaven are basically about:
1. Heaven–sign of a sign that represents something else.
2. The Khan might also be dead–our personal state of death.
(How do we know were not dead right now? Or dreaming–same thing?)
3. Fisherman in Heaven is G-d.
4. Disappointed with his life progress on morality because he is not responding well to his death.
5. Everything happens for a reason–death is the certain obligation for all. (spider webs, networks)

"So then, yours is truly a journey through memory." (pg. 98)
Are his experiences and stories insignificant? He does not know if the world in which he lives in is real. However it is what he's always known, so what is truly Calvino's reality? What is ours?

How Big is Your Sword?

           The world is full of horrors, violence and darkness. “If you want to know how much darkness their is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.” (pg.59) 

          “While, at a sign from you, sire, the unique and the final city raises its stainless walls, I am collecting the ashes of the other possible cities that vanish to make room for it, cities that can never be rebuilt or remembered. When you know at last the residue of unhappiness for which no precious stone can compensate, toward which that final diamond must strive. Otherwise, your calculations will be mistaken since the start.”

          The diamond’s carats signifies the understanding of the human to realize the potential of his divinity. However, the purity of the diamond sinks within hardly reachable regions of the soul if the darkness outside becomes too powerful. The world will always remain abundant with hatred, violence and disgrace. However, its effects towards us are greater than what we expect. For it becomes our outer reality and dissembles our recognition of our inner beauty: our diamond. Our potential to reencounter our fading lights, depends on our strength. 

         The diamond is the hardest material known to man. It is our weapon, our sword to fight crime. However, our sword must be sharp, well incised, and designed to protect. Even if we see our diamond has diminished in size, it has not, we just have stopped maintaining it. 

         If we mistaken our calculations since the start, we would live in falsehood. Calvino states: “Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.” If we do not live up to our diamonds brilliant shine,   we live under a darkness that unlike the diamond, is not part of us. Throughout Thin Cities–4, Trading Cities–3, Cities and Eyes–2, and finally Cities and Names–1, Calvino introduces the concepts of perspective, and value. Change can be seen in what we give value to or in our points of view. However, he reminds us that the diamond will never loose its value. 

Let it be

           "Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else." 

           Signund Freud, explains this theory quite well. He introduces the ideologies of the subconscious and how dreams are made up of all the ideas that lie in this region of the brain. However, what differs Freud from Calvino is the capability of dreams altering reality. 

You are not the creator of the cities–the cities have created you.

           Throughout the chapter "Cities and Desires–5," Calvino describes the city of Zobeide. It is a city made up of a dream. Those who live there have had the same dream, thus they constructed this site my memory. 

          "They saw a woman running at night through an unknown city; she was seen from behind, with long hair, and she was naked. They dreamed of pursuing her. As they twisted and turned, each of them lost her. After the dream they set out in search of that city; they never found it, but they found one another....None of them, asleep or awake, ever saw the woman again. The cities streets were streets where they went to work every day, with no link any more to the dream chase. Which, for the matter, had long been forgotten." (Pg. 45) 

           Although the inhabitants of Zobeide designed the city so perfectly to be able to find the naked woman, their design was too accurate that the result was perfect. In the dream, the city had certain streets, buildings, and characters. However, the plot of the dream involved the chase of a naked woman who always escaped. The people who shared this dream, never had the chance to retrieve this woman. Once they built the city and gave it life, just like the dream, the woman never appeared. This could only signify that their planifications and designs tessellated perfectly to the dream. The woman was never to be found. After years of waiting for the naked woman to appear, the citizens simply forgot. 

           Dreams and fears are elements of who we are and of our future. Calvino explains through his expedition that life is about experiences, not about the destination. No matter how much we want our future to change, the universe will assure lessons will be learned and experiences will be experienced. No matter how much we want the past to change, and even if we had the possibility to take another path, in some way destiny will accomplish its purpose.

"The first to arrive could not understand what drew these people to Zobeide, this ugly city, this trap." (pg. 46) 

Is Zobeide a trap for women or for the citizens, meaning us. Has such intensive planning to change the outcome of the dream, made us slaves of this desire? If your past defined you then you have fallen in the trap. 

       The desire for change is the ego pursuing a future that is impossible. Throughout chapter three, Calvino intends to portray how forced change is manipulating G-ds plans of your life. For instance, in Cities & Signs –4, Calvino expresses how every human wished another world, a justice world. By establishing the metaphor of languages and objects "Of all the changes of languages a travler in distant lands must face, none equals that which awaits him in the city of Hypatia, because the change regards not words, but things. He elaborates this desire from practically the whole human race by stating that G-d is blamed for the "lack of change in things." 

        In addition, in Thin Cities– 3, Calvino describes a city whose buildings had inner structures, but are never built. This reminds me of my mother's explanation for the many divorces of today. She says that relationships are begun mostly without a "base." In other words, couples aren't friends before they become couples. Establishing a serious relationship (mainly sexual) before having constructed the bases first, apparently leads to break-ups. This connects to the topic of this chapter: Change, for no change is beneficial if the actions taken are inmoral. Just like couples who proceed to different stages of the relationship whilst skipping steps, changes that have no goals or responsible planifications lead to destruction. Nevertheless,Calvino also explains during Trading Cities–2, that risks  and never taking action leads to regret and unaccomplished dreams, and no fears triumphed over. 

Change can be part of the expedition. Change undone is regretful. Change with irresponsibility is consequential. 

Curls, Coils and Curves: Spirals

            I was once confortable analyzing symbolism. However, I didn't know Italo Calvino. Only having begun the first section from the book Invisible Cities, I have not only felt stupefied by the overwhelming metaphors and analogies, but completely confused on what Calvino is truly intending to say. I focused on extracting key terms from each chapter and began to find the "hidden meaning" within these. I didn't only discover their was a pattern, but that every object and it's symbol can be connected to other symbols throughout the book. For instance, spirals, metals, musical instruments playing (violin), clocks, cocks, women (dancing-music), old men and astrolabes are constantly mentioned throughout every chapter. As well as the conjunctions and use of time (past, present, and future). 

             Spirals can represent a spiritual journey: an evolutionary process of learning and growing spiritually. This can be a clue to finding the significance of Invisible cities. Marco Polo is narrating his spiritual encounters. Then again, a spiral may signify: redundancy. In others words, repetition, but every time seen with different perspectives. In addition, spirals are what conforms the DNA structure of the helix. (This structure can be explained in Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene) Nevertheless, spirals, time (past, present, future, clocks, redundancy, etc...) and the constant appearance of old men have led me to one theory. Marco Polo's journey to the cities are not necessarily visits, but life chapters. This explorer might be narrating his life experiences when witnessing them in distinct ages of his life. This might explain the old men and the young men observing the cities in benches. This might also explain the clocks. 


"The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between measurements of its space and the events of its past..." (Cities & Memory-3) 


"Zora's secret lies in the way your gaze runs over patterns following one another as in a musical score where a note can be altered or displaced." 


"...he remembers the order by which the copper clock..." (Cities and Memories-4) 

            Perspectives: another aspect found in spirals. While reading "Cities & Desire –3" the idea of two paths, two perspectives, but one destination really caught my attention. 

"Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts." (Cities & Desire–3)


          Although the ship and the camel were both going to Despina, both had contrasting view points. The camel could only see skyscrapers and a raging metropolis, unalike the ship who only saw the "oases of fresh water in the palm trees' jagged shade...." (pg.18) 


"Zora's secret lies in the way your gaze runs over patterns following one another as in a musical score where a note can be altered or displaced."


          Zora and its patterns denote the conception of history, the past and what will be the future has happened before. The famous aphorism: "Those who ignore history are bound to repeat it." (George Santayana) reminds me of the spiral as well. Clocks, patterns, and signs are elements that define a spiral. They are repetitive, redundant, and synchronized, just like life. 


"The city is redundant: it repeats itself so that something will stick in the mind." (Zirma–Cities & Signs 2) 


         Calvino might be trying to say that "life will hand you lemons until you finally learn to make lemonade." In other words, the situations will be brought up until managed or dealt with correctly.




SPIRALS: they are the structure of life. From our birth, life turns, and death, the cycle repeats. From history, which might present itself within different perspectives, moments and people, but results are the same. Spirals are in our DNA. We are doomed to take its twists and turns. We are obligated to become the spirals. To live by their law. (Cities & Desires–2) 

Society Killed the Teenager

            "Has the god meme, say, become associated with any other particular memes, and does this association assist the survival of each of of the participating memes? Perhaps we could regard an organized church,  with it architecture, rituals, laws, music, art, and written tradition, as a co-adapted stable set of mutually -assisting memes."  (pg. 197)

              G-d hasn't necessarily made the human corrupt, but religion has. Has religion shaped our society, our values and our culture, even though we don't practice it anymore? Faith has been with humanity since the beginning, and our mentality has proceeded to G-ds "word" even if we don't acknowledge it. Today good deeds, especially unselfish deeds are known to be an individuals obligation in a community. This idea reminds me of the movie "Pass it Forward," and how principles are not only passed on by teaching, but are "contagious" if practiced at a close distance. Religious memes don't only alter our personality, but our life style as well.

            Since we were toddlers, we were convinced that the only way to feel accomplished is to follow the life cycle that humanity had drawn out for us. It hasen't occurred to us that we might not need to conform part of the conventional family unit, capitalist economy or customs. Nevertheless, we have been doomed to live up to these standards with the fear of going hungry, dying alone or becoming no one.

            Education is another meme that although, may be interpreted differently among distinct minds, the result is in fact identical. People are born with common sense, well that can be considered an attribute of selfishness. However, under curriculum standards, society has defined intelligence with mathematical skills, memory capacity and so on. "The differences in the ways that people represent the theory are then, by definition, not part of a meme." Is intelligence a meme if there is a global definition for it? Isn't success a meme as well? One, as an individual might live upon one's definitions, however when living in a world of 7 billion people, there is only one definition and one opinion.

           Happiness: a state of mind where one is content of oneself. In other words, this happiness can only be achieved if memes do no longer exist. To live up to society's rules, impedes oneself of becoming oneself. It means becoming partially selfish and respect society's laws, but live pass them. This also reminds me of the great saying of today: SOCIETY KILLED THE TEENAGER. For teenagers are people who have resisted to memes, but humanity rises, defeats and clones.


Key Terms:

1.) Cultural mutations: To reposition cultural characteristics. 

2.) Psychological appeal: Interest of the brain. 

3.) Imitation: The process in which memes replicate. 

4.) Idea-meme: "An entity that is capable of being transmitted from one brain to another."

5.) Meme: The "cloner" of the human culture. 

Women: The Source of Human Empowerment

                                                 "What's in for the workers?" (pg. 173)

                Richard Dawkins recalls the Darwinian theory of Superior Gender Roles. Alike ants, humans are not only divided into two different sexes, but into two main classes: the bearers and the carers. "The bearers are the reproductive males and females. The carers are the workers–infertile males and females in the termites, infertile females in all other social insects. Both types do their job more efficiently because they do not have to cope with the other. But from whose point of view is it efficient?"

(This video portrays how in some cultures, women are viewed as bearers taking advantage of the carers) 

                Although gender roles aren't as rigorously defined today, women are still considered the bearers and men the carers. As women give birth, clean, cook and take care of the children, men are off to work, maintaining the household financially. This is where the chauvinism of society comes in. Most men believe a woman's chore is effortless and meaningless. When men have to deal with more complicated affairs, such as making business deals. The typical American housewife in the 50's and 60's was trained since she was a little girl to greet her husband with food and a warm smile. Some people "feel that the queen is having it all her own way, manipulating the workers by chemical means to her own selfish ends, making them care for her own team brood....The opposite idea is that the worker's 'farm' the reproductives, manipulating them to increase their productivity in propagating replicas of the workers genes." Who is taking advantage of who?


             In some cultures women are treated as royals. They are overly pampered, whiny and haughty. Nonetheless, in Eastern cultures, women bow down in their husbands presence. They are to never speek up or make requests. Women are seen as minorities. This mentality was considered to be a global state of mind up until 1970's.   If it weren't for women civilizations wouldn't have developed. Women are the educators of the world. It is for this race, that the human is what is it today. This statement may seem like a compliment, but it may also be a burden.


            Dawkins reveals that the workers (men) "may be actually more closely related to the brood than the queen herself." (pg.174) He supports his hypothesis with the theory of the "sex ratio," and how the differences in quantities of gender offsprings change the mother's relationship to her offspring..."A gene that finds itself in a queen's body can propagate itself best if that body invests equally in reproductive sons and daughters. But the same gene finding itself in a workers body by making the mother of that body

                The women's rights speech has been cliched, and declaring that women have obligations as a breeder is insurgent. Even though women today believe that raising an offspring is for the old fashioned, it is the only way for the human species to survive. However, the question that will always come up when thinking about this topic is: is chauvinism in our genes? Are some cultures more sexists for survival reasons? The environment and physical characteristics of a race might stimulate a fast process for extinction. Is chauvinism in our genetics?

Key Terms: 

1.) Selfish Herd: a group of selfish singles. 

2.) Reciprocal altruism: Helping others for personal benefit. 

3.) Cave Theory: Warning one's specie of danger for self protection.

4.) Never Break Ranks Theory: Helping others to become part of a group.
5.) Sucker: Helping others and gaining nothing in return. 
6.) Symbiosis: Mutual advantages from two individuals working together. 

7.) Cheat: Having no repercussions from "winning." 

8.) Evolutionary Stable Strategy: A strategy used to defeat others and survive. 

9.) Grudger: Interest in helping others who will help you in the future.