You would do as well never moving from here.вЂќ, The Venetian knew that when Kublai became vexed with him, the emperor wanted to follow more clearly a private train of thought so MarcoвЂ™s answers and objections took their place in a discourse interrupting him, or Marco Polo imagined himself interrupted, with a question such as: вЂњYou advance always with your head turned back?вЂќ or вЂњIs what you see always behind you?вЂќ or rather, вЂњDoes your journey take place only in the past?вЂќ.

Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.

I want to call out to the gods of this city, but even they can't hear me from this corner of the world.From Invisible Cities: In Olinda, if you go out with a magnifying glass and hunt carefully, you may find somewhere a point no bigger than the head of a pin which, if you look at it slightly enlarged, reveals within itself the roofs, the antennas, the skylights, the gardens, the pools, the streamers across the streets, the kiosks in the squeares, the horse-racing track. I want to scream out loud, but I have no voice. I swirl in my whirlpool of depressing thoughts, every one of them gnawing at my insides,В punishingВ myself, causing myself pain. I wish to be a friend to the ones that are lonely, but I myself am not a good enough friend. I wish to be the shoulder to cry on, for those who need it, but alas! my shoulders are burdened with my grievances. I wish to lend a hand to those who suffer, but alas! my hands are tied up with the guilt of my actions and I've nothing to offer. I feel even the last drops of joy from inside of me vaporize, as I'm consumed entirely by this perpetual sadness. I encounter those who live hidden here, ones who have loved and lost, ones who have no friends, people with illnesses and sorrows and either have no one to share them with, or choose not to. I long to be a part of it all, and yet I find myself lost in the narrow, crooked streets of the darker side of this city that is otherwise teeming with energy. I keep on walking, I see people celebrating, people fighting, people singing and dancing. I memorize its appearance and it lays etched in my mind. One of the streets comprised of a typical building which is repeated in different manners along one particular street. I wish there would be some more openness to the city. They are interlinked by criss-crossingВ stairs platforms and balconies.Although the inhabitants are happy and content to live amongst these chaos, I feel somewhat claustrophobic. I look up at them, suddenly feeling very tiny, as they tower around me. I arrive in Zenobia and I'm filled with awe and wonderment at the undecipherable plan with its crazy array of buildings on high pilings and stilts. It makes no sense to divide cities into these two species, but rather into another two: those that through the years and the changes continue to give their form to desires, and those in which desires either erase the city or are erased by it.' This said, it is pointless trying to decide whether Zenobia is to be classified among happy cities or among the unhappy. But what is certain is that if you ask an inhabitant of Zenobia to describe his vision of a happy life, it is always a city like Zenobia that he imagines, with its pilings and its suspended stairways, a Zenobia perhaps quite different, a-flutter with banners and ribbons, but always derived by combining elements of that first model. No one remembers what need or command or desire drove Zenobia's founders to give their city this form, and so there is no telling whether it was satisfied by the city as we see it today, which has perhaps grown through successive superimpositions from the first, now undecipherable plan. 'Now I shall tell of the city of Zenobia, which is wonderful in this fashion: although set on dry terrain it stands on high pilings, and the houses are of bamboo and zinc, with many platforms and balconies placed on stilts at various heights, crossing one another, linked by ladders and hangingВ side-walks surmounted by cone-roofed belvederes, barrels storing water, weather vanes, jutting pulleys, and fish poles, and cranes.

Zenobia italo calvino