Invisible Cities by Calvino

     It's silly, the way folks like to look at cities. Tourists, citizens, people scrolling through lists of hotels, all view a group of buildings and a mass of people as one, large blob. Not as small, small components of a fairly debatable environment. This book depicts what a city really is; a place broken down into several different moods, seasons and social cycles. Marco Polo describes what seems to be many cities (but, really, all of this cities are describing one place) to Kublai Khan, a Tartar emperor who's empire is falling. Marco, using either objects or the emperor's native language, illustrates beautiful and tragic places. Cities in the sky, cities hidden, cities that repeatedly fall to ruin and manage to build themselves back up, tediously, monotonically, only to be stripped of their beauty and culture once more. Place with names like Eudoxia, Zobeide, Despina and Olinda. Each city feels either extremely abstract or overly familiar. Calvino managed to break down entire structures and section them off, making what's either overlooked or misunderstood special, unique and different from the blur that we call a city.
     Calvino shows use how relations with others (represented as strings, or a mimic city), can grow either tiresome or completely overwhelming. When they become too much, the inhabitants leave, starting anew. Being able to abandon something, but not leave it unresolved! The dream of so many... Calvino does this frequently, intertwining reality with what humans want, showing how the things that we create for ourselves build up and suffocate us. In one city, The citizens wake up to find everything new. They have the 'latest refrigerator model', brand new clothes, shining floors. The garbage men haul away the filth of yesterday, things contaminated with a humans' touch and experiences. The dumps are forced to become more and more compact as these cities grow. The piles of faucets, books, shoes begin to stretch for the skies, on the verge of falling down and burying the perfect, pristine cities below.
     Most of the cities remind us of our dreams or desires. A city that is cloaked in the expectations and utopias of those that do not live in it. It makes me think of all of the hopes and horrible predicaments that humans create for themselves. As an entire species, we are dreamers. Longing what we know is impossible, craving what can be found beside us. We craft miniature fantasies, ideal worlds, ideal cities. We create horrible places, miniature hells into which we toss our troubles. While, really, all of the places that we fathom are the place in which we reside. I am constantly daydreaming, creating more pleasing lives for myself and for others. Making people that will never be born, houses that will never be built. But, I cannot help be aware of where I truly stand in our world. 14, middle school, computer screens, reading responses. The concept of dreams and reality intertwining aren't limited to metaphorical terms. Beautiful places are built on dirt and dead creatures compressed in stones. Streets shaped by the steps of heavy pedestrians have stories to them; places where extinct animals once strode, where the wooden wheel of a wheelbarrow broke, spilling to bodies of dead war victims onto the charred streets below.
     Calvino reminds us that places and that life are comprised of many things, small sections that unite to create a finished product. And, no matter how much these parts may seem to contradict each other, a polished creation is always born.