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May 22, 2003
Words Of Wisdom
I finished reading Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities yesterday. It's a beautiful beautiful book. I didn't quite understand the beauty of the book in the beginning. In fact, I found it sporadic and pointless. I admit, when I first picked it up, I rushed through it.
Then my professor thought me that, some books, like good wine, should be sipped and tasted slowly. Appreciated for every nuance and subtlety, and not gobbled like fast food.
Calvino's Invisible Cities is like fine art to me. A work of masterpiece. Everyone can look at it. But only when you stand in front of it, observing every brush stroke, every etching, every colour tone, do you realise the absolute beauty of it.
I thought of cloudy when I read it. It's of course, about citylife, in a way. Cloudy and I have always had the problem. Being torn between running away and staying in Singapore. Appreciating Singapore and appreciating other cities. Prof taught in class, my entire class of dreamers, came to the conclusion. That life, cities, countries and whatever. Should not be taken ad nauseum. It is not the tourist attractions or the defining works of architecture that makes the difference. It's the little things. Like reading a book in a cafe, watching people go by in a park, taking your little stuffed animal out on a spring day, walking along the streets on your own, taking a train to-and-fro. It's these little beauties, that make the experience of a city beautiful.
We are dwellers, we are romantics.
We are not part of the fast food nation that require instant gratification.
We need to look into the alleys, and look at the presumed ugly, to find the beauty.
Calvino is wonderful. And so is my ITC class. :)
Here's my two favourite bits of the book.
"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little."
You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead out-number the living. And the mind refuses to accept more faces, more expressions: on every new face you encounter, it prints the old forms, for each one it finds the most suitable mask.
Posted by lainey at May 22, 2003 03:07 PM
Comments
i think i know what's next on my reading list. :)
Posted by: duh^knees at May 28, 2003 11:00 PM
do me a fav, and read it slow....and relish. :)
Posted by: lainey at May 29, 2003 01:08 PM