The Earth is Our City

In Invisible Cities we have understood that Marco Polo (who is really the writer Italo Calvino) is speaking to Kublai Khan who represents us as readers. In earlier blogs we had come to the conclusion that all the cities he spoke about were fragments of his memories and experiences, everything that made up his life. However, maybe the cities go even farther and are actually descriptions of Earth’s memories and experiences seen through the eyes of Marco Polo the explorer (therefore, meaning through the eyes of Italo Calvino the writer). These cities many times deal with problems that are reminiscent of our own. “Isaura, a city that moves entirely upward.” (p.20) In this city a subterranean lake stunts lateral growth because the city can only extend to the edges of the lake. This symbolizes the way we as a population are restricted from development. Social, racial and monetary constraints are real issues that chain people to rooted spots. They have amounted overtime and have become as permanent as the lake in Isaura. Although there might be exceptions, overall the modern-day limits that encase our society have stopped true evolvement. Instead, we are forced to grow upward in the sense that we can only sprout in the already established ways. Propagating from the same spot in a predictable and permanent manner.

“Every Morning the people [of Lenonia] wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing…[it’s] the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity…A fortress of indestructible leftovers surrounds Leonia, dominating it on every side, like a chain of mountains.” (p. 114) Our mentality is very similar to the inhabitants of Lenonia. Of course Calvino’s description is exaggerated, but either way we might as well be discarding utensils after one use. The speed in which we pour waste into landfills is alarming. The public has morphed into a consumption machine that is constantly searching for the newest and greatest gadgets. This of course means forgetting of the old and washing it away with the new. These “old” items are left in landfills that are quickly forming indestructible waste mountains. The rate at which we're discarding our waste isn’t sustainable. “The greater its height grows, the more the danger of a landslide looms: a tin can, an old tire, an unraveled wine flask, if it rolls toward Leonia, is enough to bring with it an avalanche of unmated shoes [and] calendars of by gone years.” (p.116) This vicious cycle of dumping previously owned items in exchange of receiving the most recent ones, will be the end of us. The avalanche that Marco Polo speaks about is the same looming environmental catastrophe that we have created and that could easily wipe out humans.

In the excerpts of conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo we see the unraveling of a truth. Polo explains how the exchanges between him and Kublai, “exists only in the shadow of our lowered eyelids.” (p.103) Literally the reading of this book has taken place inside our heads. “Each time we half-close our eyes, in the midst of the din and the throng, we are allowed to withdraw here, dressed in silk kimonos, to ponder what we are seeing and living, to draw conclusions, to contemplate from the distance.”(p.103) This signifies that the reading of this book in our heads is where we can retreat to think and reflect. Our job is to consider all the realities Calvino describes to us in the pages of this book and reflect about our problematic world.