Every thought of an individual, every act of its resident whether founder or visitor or a later settler in past present or even the future unseen tells us the story of what a city is today. It is beyond the just the built mass and the voids that these masses create. It is the soul which prevails in these things. Every street in a city, every square or junction, every balconies of houses along, every café in the marketplace and even every pavestone has its own story to tell about what city has been to its existence and how it would have been had he not gone through all these sufferings or joy. It would have been an image of itself but which is something else prevailing in this present. Even the desires of certain individual can change the destined course of a city.
A city’s character is also defined by its surroundings and natural settings. In reality city is not an object. It’s a real illusion, an image which repeats itself not in person or words but signs. Some find this image moving, sometimes upwards or downwards, sometimes inside, sometimes outside and sometimes nowhere, just stable in itself.
Marco Polo’s describes cities minutely rather than on an urban level most of the times. Even the colours of the wall, beggars in the streets and dreams of people constitute an important aspect of defining a city.
Some places he has stated the city as a trading company which trades in dreams , memory, etc., everything that is untradeable. In cities description words fail and absurd objects and gestures start getting more informative in this course of narrative as there is no LANGUAGE WITHOUT DECIET.
What I got from the depth I reached in the first reading was that the city leads unhappiness to happiness and vice versa and gives us choices to make to tackle the infernos of our lifes, either accept it as it is or find joys in those infernos and allow those joys to dominate and the city and its residents always live happily forever whatever be the reason.
