UPDATE 11.09.06:16.34
For those of you lost in the vagueries of my esoteric mood (Mike!), let me offer some explanation here. The chaos of construction is eternal, yet this remains our blueprint...
..in reference to some healing wisdom from Italo Calvino,
Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the metal armatures, the wooden catwalks hanging from ropes or supported by sawhorses, the ladders, the trestles. If you ask, "Why is Thekla's construction taking such a long time?" the inhabitants continue hoisting sacks, lowering leaded strings, moving long brushes up and down, as they answer, "So that its destruction cannot begin." And if asked whether they fear that, once the scaffoldings are removed, the city may begin to crumble and fall to pieces, they add hastily, in a whisper, "Not only the city."
If, dissatisfied with the answers, someone puts his eye to a crack in a fence, he sees cranes pulling up other cranes, scaffoldings that embrace other scaffoldings, beams that prop up other beams. "What meaning does your construction have?" he asks. "What is the aim of a city under construction unless it is a city? Where is the plan you are following, the blueprint?"
"We will show it to you as soon as the working day is over; we cannot interrupt our work now," they answer.
Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars.
"There is the blueprint," they say.
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
UPDATE...
We vote! We stand! We move and change. Values that are important at one moment, are surrendered to the whim of the next. Reprobates uttering vulgarities are rewarded with consensus, while good men are sunk beneath the foundations. The construction continues endlessly, often without any seeming logic, and with no end. Yet, there remains our star-filled sky. The blueprint of our world...
...and our unfinished city.
3 comments:
Sorry...I wasn't first in my class!!! You got me. MM
Ha! If it wasn't you, Mike, it would have been Dueler. I'm afraid I get very stratospheric at times. As my wife would put it, paraphrasing a line from her favorite actor and movie...
No... No.. It will never make any sense as long as he's explaining it! (Cary Grant - Bringing Up Baby!)
See, there I go again!
We vote! We stand! We move and change. Values that are important at one moment, are surrendered to the whim of the next. Reprobates uttering vulgarities are rewarded with consensus, while good men are sunk beneath the foundations. The construction continues endlessly, often without any seeming logic, and with no end.
Yet, there remains our star-filled sky. The blueprint of our world...
Our unfinished city.
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