Architecture of Cities: Tales of Cities

We dance: I imagine a pitter-patter: The wolf or a pack come running: Their nails clickety-clickety atop the wooden floors of an empty corridor:

We dance: The bear winds its way down the corridor: it stops to lick your face: The meal soon to be entertained:

We dance: The bright lava orange eyes near: The Uhu (Eurasian Eagle Owl) lands: Quietly the corridor echos the talon’s concerto of clickety-clickety: The prancing and pitter-patter disappears into the skies:

Memories begin when the eyes  dream: Cities, countries and continents pass through time: True tales begin:

Heaney, Seamus: “Viking Dublin: Trial Pieces”

…“Come fly with me,

come sniff the wind

with the expertise

of the Vikings–“

I imagine: My eyes encapsulate the details with the loudest conversations.

I imagine I illustrate the dreams that come from words:

I imagine: I am never in a city lonely not alone:

I have many times landed in cities before today as if a friend awaited: An author who I might have known share his/her sights and unimaginable sounds: I began to explore the physical worlds of the written word:

Most sources of fables and tales that have never been true or were they: What depends is what my camera thinks it sees: Truth is: The world you were meant to see:

I have realized I must walk in the footsteps of the language masterful: The language of others is not a mere adventure but a journey with the eyes of billions:

The pace and ideas authors share are about nurturing your personal lenses: Once you learn to see what the intended story may be, you have arrived: So I follow.

I imagine: Yukio Mishima’s demise happened in Shinjuku: If he might have taken my hand on the walk to Ichigaya Barracks: If there was an if: I walked with him as if I was his companion: What picture might the photographer Eikoh Hosoe ( who recently passed) have captured: Soldiers gathered: The streets exploded in turmoil: I remember Yukio Mishima felt he was Japan: I was there.

I imagined I was in St Petersburg: Cold and afraid: I stood aside the Neva River:  I narrowed my eyes: Dostoevsky’s dark, dampened home beckoned: The greatest of the Brothers Kalamazov was inside me: I suffered from his sufferings: My camera captured the lament:

I imagined the two ears of Toni Morrison: She listened to Harlem in a rhythm that was part jazz part Jacob Lawrence: James Baldwin held her hand: Jazz history was having a Harlem moment:

My camera saw its past and present: The jazz was Morrison’s: Jacob Lawrence perched above her like Cicero in Roman times: Pastels ablaze, colors unimaginable: The four of us walked: I listened with my eyes: They had a bit of pitter-patter:

I imagined Joan Didion discovering the inculpatory evidence that Manson’s mayhem may have been more than we could see: We both felt our eyes absorb the quiet streets the narrow paths the screams embedded on the stones of 10050 Cielo  Drive in Benedict Canyon, Los Angeles:

The north of us is where we nightmarishly imagined Mansion: A Jack Nicholson like cackle roared : The words from another felt like in an overdrive: My camera captured what it dreamed: Sharon Tate so beautiful, Charles Manson maniacal: My imagination captured the moment.

I Imagined: The shape shifting Cixin Liu’s Three Body Problem:  Surreal Science Fiction filled the pages: His admiration for Tolstoy made my eyes see as I have always: We don’t live in a three dimensional world: We walk in one: Cixin Liu’s future world live in his present married to his past: Married to our past: Schulman, Liu and Tolstoy: We weave our steps together: My camera dreams with them: It captures the live Surrealism: How else can the camera explore a city without a mingling of fables past and a fables future to offer insight into worlds the camera must capture:

I envied Colm Tobin’s walk with Thomas Mann: I wanted to meet the Magician: I would have loved to  reinvent a semi autobiographical story that resonated with my lens: I wanted to mingle with Mann in Los Angeles: I wanted to walked with his Germans in the coastal Palisades as he did in this Berlin: If I could hold their hands and walk what might I see of their past and present Hitler: The camera wanted a capture:

How does one not morph into A Tale of Two Cities: Was I: Could I: I wanted to be a participant as I wanted to be be a part of every sited English street in Dickens literature: There are only so many opportunities to meld with the times: There are actually no opportunities unless you bring your book straight to the eyes and read about where my camera should tag along with the eyes of geniuses:

I imagine: Federico Garcia Lorca stood intellectually naked when he arrived in New York City: He was a poet dislodged  from his known reality: Can you gleam into his eyes what he saw: When he saw: He looked up at Metropolis mannered skyscrapers for the first time: Looking up has always been some sort of symbolism for my own eyesight: To imagine a moment of two people dreaming together: Dreaming to touch a fantasy: The fantasy was to be the future of our cities of architecture: Fables of cities to become realities:

I imagine dying with a dream in hand: Stefan Zweig’s Royal Game was a part of how I see my visual landscape: The game of chess applies to so many dialogues and philosophies: I felt my camera should have been in Brazil’s Petrópolis: I could not have saved the man and his wife: His words from past stories obliged me to consider the what ifs: Enough of his life I have stepped into among the Viennese and more: The camera has felt emboldened walking and espying the language of a master: All journeys should be as welcoming.