Cosmicomics- Calvino

     A few dozen words into the first chapter, I became rather conflicted. The story that I was reading (which is wonderfully written by the way) is about a town of people who, when the moon draws near, hoist up a ladder and collect milk and cheese from the moon's surface. While I wasn't being distracted by the descriptive and eloquent phrases that I was reading, the left side of my brain was going haywire. What about Roche's Limit? The Tidal Effect? Potential collision? Gravity? Moondust? Light? Atmosphere? Temperature?....But, mostly, I was worried about Roche's Limit... 

     The short story defied all that I had respected in our solar system! In the scientific laws! Calvino's lack of the latter left me wounded and surprisingly hurt... But, I must admit, Calvino won me over. While discussing the book with my Pa, he pointed out that Comicomics was not a piece of science-fiction but that rather, it was a work of fantasy.

     For those of you who have not read my post on Invisible Cities (another work by Calvino), Calvino is the master of managing to describe a fictional world with such precision that it seems real in way. The mental image of the moon radiating a drained white light and casting thick shades onto and off of quite homes made the whole of my brain feel peaceful and somewhat serene. Beauty overtook my obsession with science and created a blissful sort of harmony- an exact mixture that's hard for humans to express and affectively create.

     In my opinion, beauty is born out of science (as all things are) but thinking about that flipped around creates an uncomfortable mental glitch... Calvino discarded science in order to create his story but he did not do so out of disrespect but in order to create a perspective that science does not necessarily allow.