Assignment: 4 Calvino Cities

Cities really are, in essence, the same


When you eventually reach shore on the small town of Fangora you are immediately thrown off by the large percentage of shrubbery which occupies a large proportion of the land. You feel as if thrown into a different world, stranded in wilderness, a border city between two deserts. You will see a crack open and a different city appear as your ferry docks.

You soon realize you’ve actually entered into a time portal vortex. The cars are 10 years old, the fashions at least as old. The people who inhabit the land clearly are not human beings. These beings may appear human. They may speak in your tongue initially and utilize the same body language but once you attempt to communicate with them you soon realize that is where the similarities end.

As you begin to make your departure, the beings begin to show their strange ways. These people, upon beginning the decent downstairs, will wait, holding their newly opened door in kindness for you. Now, this odd behavior will continue even if one hasn’t set one foot on the first stair. When you travel into town, the people continue this awkward polite kindness. You are not seen as an outsider. The people welcome you into their city and ask how your day has been. The smiling lady at the coffee stand will recommend her personal favorite options, and what locals have been enjoying lately. The bakery on the corner has been family owned for 30 years, with freshly baked goods daily.

You begin to frequent the local stores and the people begin to know you. They refer to you by name. Years later you realize that this city, to you, at one point, is really just like any other.




Being Thankful


After three days of traveling you see bright lights on the horizon and you will realize you’ve reached Joveville. I arrived at night, though I had expected a sunrise. The people were awake, in the dead of night. They had congregated in the center of the city, there was a bright globe sitting on a light pole that was twice the side of any I’d previously encountered. The people looked like they were waiting for something. A mother clothed in a flowery summer dressed clutched her infant daughter tightly, both transfixed by the light in front of them. Speechless. A scrawny dog howled, than laid down in front of the crowd.

I tried to talk to an older gentleman with a cane. He ignored me, eyes on the globe. I asked the flowered lady for directions, the infant followed my mouth as I spoke but there was no other inclination that I had been noticed. I walked away from the crowd, afraid.

Although I was certain the street leading up to the light pole was entirely lit at one point, now I was unsure of which it was since all was dark. There was no distinguishing one from another. No buildings were lit and even the sky has disappeared. The world was eerily quiet all around me. I wandered down some road for sometime in the pitch dark. I followed the sound my feet made on the gravel. Suddenly I came to an empty field where an old man was sitting on a bench. I walked up to him, hopeful for directions.

His eyes were glazed over, he sat with his head tilted up, focusing on nothing. I asked to sit down beside him. He obliged, nodding once. I asked for directions to the nearest city. He told me that I would never find my way out. I was appalled by his negativity. I told him I surely could, that I’d wait for the power to come back on or the night to turn to day. He explained that it never would. That it was a bright summer day, the birds were chirping and the trees were swaying in the wind. I looked out into the deep darkness, and thought longingly of the bright globe atop the light pole.



Atheism


Medina can be reached only on foot. The city is surrounded by steep hills, with no clear way in which an automobile can enter. The city is barren, stricken. The city is entirely made up of a harsh reddish brown tone. Nothing can grow. There is no green. The temperature is unbearable, so the people all mill about in the public bathing chambers, staying cool by way of recycled refrigerated water. The people here never smile, they never laugh. They have forgotten how.

Those that remain alive look dead: their skin is wrinkly and wheathered, leather like. Their eyes are blank and lifeless. The remnants of the dead are scattered about the road, both foliage and human remains.

There is no purpose to life. No one moves, no one eats, no one breathes. No one knows if these people no longer require breath, or simply are apathetic to living entirely: there is no god.
Late at night, if you listen hard enough, you can hear the distant sounds of the city alive again, happy. Children playing in the street, jumping over sprinklers, laughing. Men kissing their wives goodbye before they get in their company car and drive to work. Trees, grass, plants, animals. Every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.



Contradiction (Own choice)


You ride horseback for eight nights before you come to Altania. The first thing you’ll notice as you cross the city limits is the ultimate penetrating silence. The sun is shining and warm. The people however are not. If you did see a body I’d only be for a quick second. You wouldn’t even be certain you’d seen anything at all. You’d be hard pressed to find a child within fifty miles of the area.

However, at night, it is a mad house. Individuals everywhere: laughing, merrymaking and enjoying life. The people are loud, rambunctious, and of all colors and social classes. However, they appear to be very excepting of all races. Not a one of them is prejudice or thinks ill of another member of their family. The little fighting that is done is over quickly and is carefully dealt with.

The food is plentiful and individuals relish the hunt. Theirs is a tightly ordered society. The women are given equal rights in their culture. Many hold high positions of power. The individuals are highly religious, in their own way.

The society functions well at night. Clearly, except for the few lone people, the individuals are a nocturnal lot. However, the individuals do not consume food like a normal human, and they cannot procreate easily. They do not create anything, only destroy it. They cannot go out in daylight without suffering intense dermatological pain.



Journal Questions:

The theme that was easiest to use was ‘Atheism’. This is because that theme was very general and I had a lot of ways that I could tie the city into that theme. The more specific themes, I believe, would have been more difficult because that would have meant that I would have had a hard time coming up with a story about a city that was different from what Calvino had already written. It was easiest to write the descriptions with a theme because then I had an idea of what that concept meant to me and where I wanted to go with it. I had a starting point. The most difficult part of the assignment, hands down, was deciding on what I wanted to write about. The actual writing was easy. Calvino’s use language clashed with my own in a lot of situations and the phrases I chose only fit very specific situations unfortunately. I neither tried to avoid sounding like him or really thought about borrowing from his writings. I could imagine him writing a few sentences of what I wrote, however, and I felt like that assured me that I was on the right track. For seems like an invisible city in a lot of ways. It has so much history and so many things going on inside its limits at once that you could take any one topic and go crazy with it. I would probably chose a theme about contrasting cultures were I to write about Rome, because Rome has so many current different cultures as well as so many cultures that influenced its creation and the creation of all of its different monuments.