“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Accompanied by cats, I haunt the streets of this medieval hilltown.
By day.
By night.
By day.
And start again.
I’m supposed to be writing. But how can I?
Almost no one lives here. Anymore.
Almost no tourists visit. Never did.
There are no cars. No motorbikes. No mules.
Only feet–mine–and steps curling around and around, up and up, down and down. Escher-ing. Borges-ian. Calvino-ed.
It just is.
Sinking into its history? Unburdened by its present? Asleep or wary or coy, who knows?
It reveals almost nothing.
It just was.
I pass an old woman carrying groceries. An old man smoking a cigarette. Cats. And then nothing.
Windows that are not windows. Doors that might be doors. A pot of flowers. Moss. A cigarette butt.
I have never known such silence. It rattles around my head. It slips through the cracks of my knees. It squeezes my heart.
I get lost in it.
Nostalgia for a Phantom Place 