Skipping Stones

On page 82 of Invisible Cities, a symbolic lesson of life is portrayed through a bridge. Marco Polo starts to describe a specific bridge stone by stone. Kublai Khan (as well as I) wondered what is so magnificent about this bridge, of each and every rock, which is the grand one? Marco answers: “The bridge is not supported by one stone or another, but by the line of the arch that they form” (82). This clearly leaves Kublai Khan bashful and thoughtful, for the arch is the only thing that matters in his perspective. This is where we are all wrong. In life we tend to focus on the big picture, we discredit those small details that make a true difference in the outcome of anything we know of. In the technological sector of society; Apple, Conoco Phillips, Ford Motors, and other companies stand out as large corporations on a global scale in the worlds market. But who or whom are the people overshadowed by these big names? Are they given any credit for what they have created? In most scenarios the answer is no. Their names are barely mentioned, and yet they are the masterminds behind the millions of dollars the companies produce. This is only one of the many examples where society reacts just like Kublai Khan towards the stones in the bridge. The same idea can be seen later on in the text when the traveler begins to describe the city of Phyllis. He rejoices every window, every kind of pavement embedded in the sidewalks, and the fortress walls. “Happy the man who has Phyllis before his eyes each day and who never ceases seeing the things it contains…” (90), here the traveler is hypnotized by the city itself, so much that he decided to stay. This is when he stops seeing the big picture and notices the rose windows, the statues on corbels, the pantones of sunlight, a bench, a hole that you stumble upon, each on a detailed level.

You start to realize those simple yet meaningful aspects of the city that are what truly make it so peculiar. Acknowledging every route and soon enough every footstep becomes crucial in the understanding of the city. It all comes down to the same message, that “without stones there is no arch.”(82)