Anorexia? Not Quite.

Thin Cities. What in the world does thin cities have to do with all of the other cities? Out of the two times I have read about them, I have not been able to comprehend what the hidden meaning is.  Many times fashion and society has popped into my head, but that just doesn't make sense.  On pages 49-50, I thought that the thin cities had to do with anorexia.  Anorexia is a disease of the mind and it ends up destroying you.  On these pages, there are words like abandoned, catastrophe, young women, and mirrors.  It all relates to fashion and the disease.  To make it more obvious, the title of the city is THIN cities.

"...or many young women, slender, not tall of stature, luxuriating in the bathtubs or arching their backs under the showers suspended in the void, washing or drying or perfuming themselves, or combing their long hair at a mirror." (page 49)

That passage supported even more my idea of thin cities representing anorexia.  The women were obsessed with themselves. Isn't that the main reason why anorexia exists? I was so excited that I had understood this type of city until BAM! The rest of the page completely threw me off.

"In the sun, the threads of water fanning from the showers glisten, the jets of the taps, the spurts, the splashes, the sponges' suds." (page 49)

"I have come to this explanation: the streams of water channeled in the pipes of Armilla have remained in possession of nymphs and naiads." (page 50)

"In any case, now they seem content, these maidens: in the morning you hear them singing." (page 50)

These passages all explain joyful memories.  Anorexia isn't joyful. It usually makes the person depressed because they know they are fighting for their own life.  Unless the person is on something, anorexia does not bring happiness to a person.  Additionally, the mythological creatures are not known for being depressed and ugly, but instead happy and gorgeous.  A nymph is a beautiful female that is always joyful and is usually heard singing.  They are divine spirits that animate nature.  Naiads are a type of nymph that are found mostly in water.  My idea of what thin cities is about was wrong.  What other explanation could there be? Is it a mental or physical explanation? Perhaps both? What does thin cities have to do with the rest of the cities? For now it is unclear in my mind, but hopefully not for long.

Invisible Cities Really Loves Other Stories

I have actually come to enjoy this novel, unlike most novels assigned for english.  I don't know if it's because I have an obsession with analyzing things or because it strangely has a connection with many different stories.  Like I mentioned in my previous blog, the first chapter is very similar to do with the movie Inception.  I kept reading and the second chapter also has a lot to do with Inception. The way people see things due to their memories and desires has always been a favorite topic of mine.  I guess that is why Inception has been one of my favorite movies.  The author uses such creativity throughout the film to relate each mentality.  Invisible cities can be used to explain each mentality and why they are so similar.  Italo Calvino does it in an entertaining way so that the reader doesn't get bored.  Not once throughout these two chapters have I thought to myself:

"Wow. Why is Mr. Tangen telling us to read this? It doesn't really catch my attention."

Another story this book is very similar to is Dante's Inferno.  For starters, there are two main characters throughout the whole book just like Inferno.  One character is basically the host of the whole book, Virgil and Polo, while the other character is the one discovering new things about himself, Dante and Khan.  Thinking about it more carefully, the book also relates to ourselves.  Dante explains the consequences of our behaviors in the long run.  By showing each different circle of hell, we realize that each action has a consequence more severe then the next.  This book encourages us to behave and live by society's rules.  Calvino explains how the human mind works.  He mentions desires and memories, amongst other things, and how they affect the choices we make in life.  This is some what similar to the Selfish Gene, but Calvino is not as biased as Dawkins.  Additionally, he explains who we really are in an interesting way instead of like a biology textbook. Mr. Tangen also pointed out an interesting fact today in class while analyzing the first italics in chapter 2.  One of Dante's circles of hell are mentioned in the book, but in a very subtle way.  

"At this point Kublai Khan interrupted him or imagined interrupting him, or Marco Polo imagined himself being interrupted, with a question such as: "You advance always with your head turned back?" or "Is what you see always behind you?" or rather, "Does your journey take place only in the past?"(page 28)

Thinking back on Inferno, there is a circle where future tellers are punished.  Their heads are turned backwards so that they cannot see what is infront of them, only what is behind them.  

Both authors realized that the past is important.  The past and future are one since they always affect one another.  One cannot exist without the other and therefore they are like a circle.  The past causes us to see the future in new ways. I guess that is why God punished the future tellers and why Marco Polo always thinks of his past while on his journeys.  

Memories, Desires, and Knowledge

Invisible Cities.  Just by looking at these two words the idea of what the book may be about comes to mind.  The title is ironic because there cannot be an invisible city and it's an allusion to "Emperor's New Clothes".  This makes me wonder whether the story will be entertaining with dark humor or if it is a book that teaches us an important lesson.  Looking at the table of contents, I realized the answer immediately.  All of the cities listed have names like Cities and Memory, Cities and Desires, Cities and Signs, etc. It is clear that the book has a life lesson. Maybe it will help us discover who we really are, just like The Selfish Gene.  The name of each city in the Table of Contents helps us realize the true meaning of the title.  The cities are invisible because they are in our mind.  There is no other explanation. 

While reading the book and analyzing every single word, I realized that the cities are listed in order of importance.  City of Memories is the first city listed in the book.  This page expreses the fact that we take everything around us for granted.  We see everything that surrounds us all the time, so we don't pinpoint the objects in our memory.  "...he feels envy toward those who now believe they have once before lived an evening identical to this and who think they were happy, at that time." (page 7) With this last sentence on the page, it seems like Marco Polo is insulting us.  It's as if he is saying that we are too blind to realize the beauty and unique city of our memories. Reflecting back on the past, none of the objects around us stand out. I think Diomira is the first city listed in the book because it is the birthplace of all the cities.  "...September evening, when the days are growing shorter and the multicolored lamps are lighted all at once at the doors of the food stalls and from a terrace a woman's voice cries ooh!,.."(page 7) September represents the starting of a new year and the woman could be giving birth.

"When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city." (page 8) Desire is the key word in this sentence to understand that memories are the birthplace of the next city. "Desires are already memories." From that sentence, Polo beings to talk about the first city of Desires. There are two forms in describing desires.  The first is that we would like what we do not have. That is why, in this city, the people trade with each other and marry the women from the other sections.  Another idea of desire is picking the path that you want to follow in life.  After following the chosen path for a certain amount of time, we start to want the other path.  We believe that the opportunities may have been better and that the path we chose was a waste of time.

The past is a very important detail in Invisible Cities.  The past affects how we see the future and the present.  It affects our desires, memories, and the different signs we see in life.  Depending on what our past has been like, we create our own world.  The world that was never given to us and therefore desire.  It is made up of positive memories and things that we wish had happened.  In section four of Cities and Memory, I interpreted that memories are altered, contain secrets, and unusual things happen in our memories.  This reminded me immediately of the movie Inception.  The main character creates his own world of his desires.  Unusual things happen like the moving of buildings, moving of the city, dead people being alive, etc.  It explains the relationship between memories and desires perfectly.

In the end of the chapter, Khan has an interesting conversation with Marco Polo.
"...shall I be able to possess my empire, at last?"
and the venetian answered: "Sire, do not believe it. On that day you will be an emblem among emblems."

After reading this dialogue between the characters a couple of times, I realized the true meaning behind the conversation.  Many times we ask ourselves:
"When will we understand everything and know that we are wise and contain a lot of knowledge?"
I have asked myself many times in difficult subjects in school like math.  The truth is, we will never realize the knowledge we have conquered and possess.  We live by it so it has become a part of us.  We create our experiences, and we learn from them.  We are already full of knowledge, we just have not realized it yet.