Chad M Eby

Automatic Cities is a spatialized AR soundwalk situated in the ancient city of Cagliari, Sardinia. The piece is produced in collaboration with various machine learning algorithms and is organized by the internal structure of Italo Calvino’s 1972 Invisible Cities.

/////////// Now live!

Welcome to 'Automatic Cities' at GA 2021! 

Find your way along the Piazza Arsenale to Via Ubaldo Badas through the Porta San Pancrazio to begin the soundwalk.

I remember a city that did time instead of space.

A city in love with former residents. A city with unfinished skyscrapers and gas giants, stretching to the horizon; a city with one and a half moons; a city with flowers that re-bloom only after they’ve spent one hundred years in the ground; a city built around skyscrapers that have no more living space than the remains of another.

A city where space is imaginary, and time a construction project, discarded without remorse or guilt.

A City To Remember.

I remember a city playground in which all of the chairs and benches were covered in plastic. Boys played football in the street while little girls hung around pretending to be cats. There was always music playing and three or four kids told us their daily wisecracks all at the same time.

No sense in standing in line to get on the swings.

I remember a city in my home state, where there were only one or two or three people over the age of 50. Sure there were some silver squirrels around, but they still seemed to live in their ivory towers on the golf courses and at the sawmills, reading the real estate section of the newspaper.

But within that same city, there was a small, reliable community of non-retired seniors. At least I thought there were. I never met any of them. And I’m pretty sure they didn’t know each other either. Why would they?

I remember a city square surrounded by gatehouses. They were high-pitched buildings with huge locks on the front. The arches looked abandoned, and the dust lay thick on the cobblestones, but every so often a guard would approach the gatehouse next to mine as if it was too lonely inside to be defended by one solitary guard.

A town thought this plan was perfect when I was inside, it was a good idea for their security when I was outside. 

We are used to looking inside, aren't we? Inside isn't special, it's just something that happens in between other things.

In this city, it is said that the wind is a skillful, mischievous creature and that the law favors revenge over forgiveness. It is said that in this city, few can say no to the mystery of love and the complicated art of forgiveness.

It was the wind that had called to the old innkeeper, calling from the same room where the wind had offered its tale to me many years ago. It was the wind that had led him from the room, calling from the same room where my mother had screamed to see me cry in my bedroom. It was the wind that had led him to the bell of my doorstep, only for the wind to tell him of what he already knew, the scent of her flesh and the mark of her heart-shaped hand upon his cheek.

It is the wind that has led him to my front door, calling to him from the walls of this city, calling him to the place of my bed, whispering into his ear about the fallen woman he had once loved and lost, the woman who had broken his heart and left him empty.
It is the wind that has led him to my door, calling to him from the walls of this city, calling him to my bed, whispering into his ear that the scent of his woman’s skin and her heart-shaped hand would once again fill his thoughts, whispering to him of the love he once held for her and of the love he now held for me.

And it is the wind that has summoned him into my room, whispering into his ear that she is waiting for him in my room, calling to him from the walls of this city, calling him to his love, calling him to his woman, calling him to his dark and sinister love.
It is the wind that has called him to me, calling from the walls of this city, calling to me from the shadows of my room, calling me to my dark and sinister love. It is the wind that has told me that I am meant for him and that I will not return his love, calling me to a past that cannot be recalled, calling me to a future that cannot be measured, calling me to a secret that has been kept from me, calling me to a dark and haunted love that no one else knows.

I will not return his love, I will not return his love, I will not return his love. I will not return his…

In that city at that time, your pursuit of desire would have to begin in the field, not the sanctum. When you had forgotten how to feel, taken all your desires away, you had nothing to recall—not thought, not sentiment, not spontaneity, not even distance. 

But who was lost, in that age?

When it came for you to feel desire, then you could not resist. And when desire came, that same potency that that city lost would fall upon you as well.

Thus, your pathway would not only take you to new landscapes, new horizons, but to new heights. As long as you had thought sufficiently deeply about it—as long as you had carefully taken your needs from existence—that desire, too, would grow stronger within you.

In that city where it meets the sea, faith and lust coexist, crushing the foolish belief of parents and teachers, alike, of common sense and innocent desire. 

Lust has inexplicable confidence in making the hidden inaccessible to observation. Faith reveals only the obvious truth to faith; Faith creates an invisible by making the visible apparent. 

Though the lovers squirm on their bed, searching the hopeless darkness, passion makes them hungry, longing for reality, a reality capable of becoming pleasurable. Only when the lovers overcome lust and beheld their desire laid bare before them, confident of the strength and ability of lust to consume them, destined to die, will their desire begin to become compassionate and therefore sweet.

In that city, there is an embassy of a country that pretends not to exist. It says that since the course of history has been chosen over itself, it can neither sign its own history with its name nor participate in its interpretation. This foreign power deceives itself in the same way as if it existed. However, as its years are shrinking by the second, people do not want to accept their propaganda and adopt a similar process towards history.

Undoubtedly, it has created an old order, the signposts and signs reflect this outdated order. Yet, how will the masses not get lost through all the liquidations, destruction, schemes, and conspiracies?

In that city and port, merchants cater to a varied clientele with the sale of daily necessities such as wine, bread, candies, tobacco, tea, spices, dried fruit and meat, and fruits in season such as lemons, oranges, pears, figs, plums, strawberries, apples, peaches, pomegranates, apricots, figs, sour cherries, currants, hazelnuts, walnuts, and chestnuts.

Most destinations provide opportunities for customers and visitors to participate in many foreign-language signs. These signs are intended to attract tourists and visitors with beautiful drawings. Such decorations would not only provide strong incentives but also influence how tourists interact with the native culture and participate in the art of the native community. It is well known for all to see that the better the material the sign appears to be, the better the visitors to the region would observe it.

There is good agreement in support of the presence of signs indicating relationships and associating the native residents with foreign traders.

In this thin city, population 60,000 and keeping low with rivers swirling around it like steel knives in a steel pan, thin is just right.

Weeds have been sneaking into gardens in recent years. I see them climbing the walls of a famous colonial building across a square surrounded by elegant pink hotels and restaurants. Where I used to buy vegetables, men stand in stalls peeling fruit with back-and-sides of lime as fragrant as peaches in Florida. I hear its aroma now, though, not like any perfume that comes from any fruited state.

Some unseen ghosts linger too. I watch with a trepidation as one widower whispers to the love of his youth as she fumbles with purses as dark as the velvet touch of his hand. Perhaps it was her long silken hair he loved the most, trailing after her in the quiet of nights, when she woke him from his dreams with kisses for words. Perhaps those kisses have fallen to the ground, to be plucked and preserved for all eternity. In that case, I wonder if the memories will finally dry up too.
The language he speaks now reminds me of that other time when the world seemed as precarious as weeds.

I remember a city populated only by men
.
Large and fat, they walked or rode on four legs while I trotted on two.
They walked silently in droves past the hospital’s art studio, their eyes scanning us, on their way to the old buildings that housed restaurants where they would crowd outside to gape at the line of women with dragons painted across their stomachs.

Behind us, men scurried around as if the Roman Coliseum had a food stand for people to wait outside of.

And I didn’t belong.

This happened when I was a child, a young girl, among a multitude of male and female ponies who didn’t even know that they weren’t born with two heads, instead of that they were mislabeled as female in the wrong uteruses.

In that city there are hot springs and hot dishes, crystal clear lakes and clear streams of cool fresh water flowing from the mountains.

Let the wave wash you back and forth on the floating sand and soak up the bright sunshine. Go in this evening and leave before the cold winds come. 

Make a beautiful supper in the candlelight and have some good conversation. Then take a walk to the hills, see the campfire glow and the grand lights twinkle. Spend the night under the moonlight and see the first shooting stars as the clock strikes midnight. Sleep and be filled with the desire for more. Then go back to the city and linger in its streets. The desire is there and the desire is burning, but it must be nourished. 

We love. That is our desire. We demand it, we desire it, we demand it. We must have more of it, more and more. That is what we want.

In that city still stands the dwarf signpost which describes the transaction. For that money will make certain additional changes to your accommodation, and ought to assure that the walls are built of fresh stone.

In those times the places around were not littered with every kind of evidence, and the signs you saw told you not of what was seen by those who had seen it, but of what was now and ought to be.

So the pig stayed in the pigpen which nobody else wanted. Your name in the village was written in runes which no one else could understand, and the contents of your purse and the descriptions of your house were indications of what was being done and what was being hidden.

In those times people may have gone far from their villages to buy provisions and bring them home, without thinking of signs at all. Of course, they paid for things at least and possibly buried their purchases in deep holes, which the signs say cannot be opened.

In this thin city, where whole sidewalks sag below their collapsing eaves, I come to realize that my place is, right this minute, a tiny slice of urban history.

The wind sweeps through it, dragging bags of trash over cracked brick, flapping curtains, rattling windows. But the grit that coats everything here softens the brittle, icy sounds, making it a little more welcoming, a little more welcoming, indeed.

One winter, back when I was more thoughtful, I rented an apartment on the other side of town and walked to my workplace in the evening. Almost all of those brisk afternoons and evenings of frozen walks turned out badly for me, and for this strange little city, too. But that one trip with clear skies and a balmy wind set something off, changing me, blowing the barriers around me open to another way of thinking.

This trader's city has suddenly thrown itself back into commerce and congestion, its streets filling again with merchants from all over the great empire. Most of them are marching into the great harbour, searching for trading barges to carry their wares to the hungry cities across the desert and up to the horizon. I put down the bottles and coins I had been counting to transport to my abode in the marketplace, then step onto the dock to look over the long line of merchant ships waiting to come in. I have already made a decent profit today, but I have no interest in taking risks that might further corrupt my morals. I've finally got a place to call my own here, and I intend to keep it.

Yes, it is all chaotic. The city is growing with every dawn, spreading itself out into the plains and rising from the empty cities of old. Long abandoned temples, scorched cities and paupers' apartments stand stark and lonely as I watch from the top of a hill, watching the trampling streets and sounds of commerce rolling past. The traders are volatile and distracted by their pleasures and struggles, burning away their individuality to fill the void with commerce and commerce alone. I hear a battle on one street, in the darkened alleyways behind a wet market.

Yet this is the city where I will settle, doing whatever I can to fill my heart with the little joys I can find and enjoy. I remember a stray cat prowling the market, rustling through sacks and crates. I couldn't even tell if it was male or female. Perhaps neither, the details are vague and hazy, almost forgotten as I looked over my bounty of coins and bottles. I briefly think of my life in the desert, and the long journey through the deserts to reach the city. Then I remember my friends from home, coming to welcome me. I will never see them again in this city of traders, making only commerce and commerce alone. The cool steps of my home place rest in my heart too, long gone, almost forgotten, but it stays there nonetheless.

In that city, with its streets honking and waving, the cries of local pride surged like gusts across a wide berth of water, raining images on waterfalls.

The sway of soft skirts tossed in the gusts as, with balding, pigeon-chested enthusiasm, thousands of locals embarked on this journey to freedom

This was a group whose natural desire for an honest appraisal of their inner desires, where success was tempered by inner struggle and failure had wings of acceptance, found a receptive audience

In that city, sons transformed into their fathers, grandsons into sons, and young daughters transformed into brave soldiers driven by dreams of chasing dreams even in a ravaged land, an unhinged desire seeped into the deepest recesses of dark caves. A genuine desire found an environment where they could blend together, yielding a rare fluorescence.

In that city’s great aqueduct, their lantern lights floating through the darkened tunnels, the signs pointed the way. They flitted over and all around them as they passed through the lit streets—a white and red kissing sign ahead, a gap to pass before it closed down, and so on and so on. All signs took shape on their faces—fiery eyes flashed behind paper-thin lenses and shadowy shapes stalked between doorways. While passing beneath bridges that crossed roads leading away to less worn paths into more forgotten surroundings, they could not resist flinging their glowing signs along the runways that lay just beneath the walkway. The traffic below moved fast, but still, most of the city’s various lanes looked deserted.

For them, each new sign was a good sign, and signposts fed their hunger.

In this thin city, Each avenue is a place to build eagerness for the city’s fever-like fabric.

There’s no place else to walk so close to the thin city’s bounds spreading out in flat spaces, cloth straightening, seams stitched with thread.
Yet often in the city’s breath, the fabric begins to waver, caught by a wind from thinner places thickening the air.

This feeling is not a fight, not meant to crack or create noise, but this very thinness sets the country apart. To know that the city holds such power to gather in the plain places, to move within; Not simply near, but right in. Thickness, that creates, binds the people to one another with where they are placed, where they stand, where they walk. And where they will end up in this city.

In this mercantile city, people plied their trade. Nor did this discourage visitors. I boarded the merchants' cogwheels at twelve, set the ropes, and worked my way through an endless cluster of commercial enterprises. Each company spoke its own tongue, its merchants and workers had their own professions and their own way of carrying on, of thronging into the centre of the streets. They dealt with each other in the usual manner of traders. Merchants spoke of money as if it were a thing of the flesh; tradesmen smiled and pressed themselves tightly to their employers and demanded more coin for each house they visited. The shopkeepers offered the visitors cloth or glass or ice, leather or currants or lard. Men and women kept their hands warm in firepots. When they met face to face, they lifted up their hats as if shaking hands, and if by chance there was time before they resumed their work, there was a wink, and then a kiss.
 
At sunset the city brightened. The part where the black, smouldering fire pits were still burning lay close to one another, a mob of homes separated by narrow alleys. Street-bridges made for people's feet and strings for their wagon-wheels. People tramped through the streets, which were alive with tradesmen of every sort. The streets were full of people, from little children and old women to young women and rich men. Merchants and workmen hurried along the sides of the street and carried small wagons loaded with every sort of thing, such as salt and oils and wool and tobacco.

Money had given them the ease to live as they liked, to sit wherever they liked and to have whatever they liked; the society had been good to them; so it was possible to think very clearly about money.

In this city they had learned to spot the glow of paint-bead eyes in shadows, to pick up the wispy edges of their pointed intelligence in the glittering eyes of passing strangers. And they also saw the void and the weakness of blindness in the distorted reflections of ghosts whose sudden appearance in the dust or corner of a cabinet or mirror made the faintest noise like a warning. Their eyes watched for the brightness of strange lights as men escaped the limits of darkness; their sight knew when the sheer emptiness of death reached out to them in the light of a roaring fire or powerful torches. And now that they had their sight, and they also saw things beyond sight.

Just as it was like drinking from a sudden fountain of sight after a long dry time, so it was with the first sight of this city. And there was no need for walking; they just set their feet into the flow and moved from one place to another, carrying their voices in their eyes. For the things seen through bright eyes and hollow hearts are like seeing the ghostly shapes of lighthouses between the shapes of shadows, with strange lights burning like bright lanterns in darkness. Sometimes they saw their own father, and sometimes they saw their father's spirit moving in the shadowlands of strange sights. 

And all of them saw the tall faceless buildings, seeming for them like a thick stone wall that surrounded this place, even though they had never seen a real wall like this before. So they carried their voices in their eyes, calling out to each other with voices that died away into faint echoes like faded echoes. In this city they had also seen the silent spirits of those who had disappeared, leaving behind in silence the things they had seen and seen and heard. Sometimes they heard their own father calling to them.

In the sight of this silent city, all these people of sight and hearing became like shadows, dancing back and forth, moving in and out of the darkest shadows, calling to the lost ones and calling out to those who were already dead, who had passed on to the silent streets. In this place, the spirits of the dead could see, and hear, and speak to the living like the shadows of a new moon with the blue-gray night-gutters and the copper-colored bricks of the buildings, though all the ghosts wore white clothes, and none of the people of sight and hearing wore white.

In that city — where they knew no divisions, leaders, rulers, religions, or social classes; indeed, where four classes and eight classes had been abolished — the glorious signs and signposts of the Kingdom were everywhere scattered, erected, and multiplied, as quickly as the walls and gates could be made. Two days, or more, it might take the weary traveler from the distant cities of the Empire to cover the distance to them. As soon as they passed through the city gates and stepped inside, from the streets to the innermost depths of the palace, as quietly as possible, they found themselves at the signpost of the Senate, the signpost of the Chamber of Arts, or sometimes the signpost of the Great City. Then they climbed up a sort of short stone fence on both sides of the street for three blocks; and there had to look at not only distant faces, or signs of their distant fate, but also outer signs, which proved that they were neither a slave nor an angel, but a man.

In this thin city, so emblazoned with its lofty emperors and traditions, what will become of us?
The sun rises into our bedroom, pouring golden light into our sleeping faces. I push off my pillow, stretch out my arms and brush the dust from my sheets.

If I walk outside right now, I can already feel the ground move. The whispers, the whispers tell me the truth. In the courtyard, the birds sing softly, “Fire, fire, it must come.” I can already feel the smoke creep in from the old wood of the buildings, creeping in from the wooden doors and windows. Those calls, those pleas, the whispers…

Fire… Fire… Fire…

I walk barefoot on this dusty ground. Perhaps I am a pilgrim, trying to find some sort of light on the road that stretches out before me, to serve my lord, to serve the one who may ask me this strange question.
In this thin city, so emblazoned with its lofty emperors and traditions, what will become of us? The streets stretch out ahead of me, stretching out for miles…
Where will we go? We were forced to come to this strange place, forced to stretch our legs, exposed on a sandy floor, exposed in a crowded street, exposed in a strangely-shaped arena…
The ball is tossed from one person to another, I stretch my legs, get my balance…

Perhaps I will ask my lord this strange question…
This place, it stretches out before us in emptiness, many roads, so many roads stretching out, disappearing into the tangled woods on one side, stretching out until we can hardly tell where one road ends and another begins…

Many roads… far away… trees, the wind… me… stretched out in this thin place.

In this mercantile city, during the years leading up to the storm, the commerce and commerce-mongers spread out along the rooftops. A calliope would perform an air-pipe symphony over the rooftops to entertain shoppers and even farmers looking for goods in the town centre. The beauty of the calliope was that it could sustain itself and its music. Customers could clap, shout or sing along as they moved between their parcels and such outside shops as said goods were in exchange for meals. The calliope created a perfect accompaniment to the streets. Even in the winter, crowds would gather to hear the music of the calliope.

Stories of the great storm and of the calliope play are still preserved in the City Records. The citizens of that time had never imagined the city could come to such a tragic end. The geography of the old city appeared elegant and serene with the buildings like rings around a mermaid's caress.

Do not forget, when you read stories of the storm that its physical manifestations are but one aspect of the enormity and terror of such a calamity. The treachery of man was too much for the climate. In such a setting, each one's heart is a seething storm with nightmares of the past exploding in their mind.

In this city of sight, she saw people everywhere, from the midday market to the winding streets of the elegant district. Children dressed in linen and velvet stood on dusty stone rooftops and watched the farmers trudging out from the fields in their empty wagon carts. Men wearing leather helmets stood on the tops of watchtowers in the square and threw darts at the ground or at the bright orange shadow of pigeons sitting on a nearby pillar. The old men on their porches in the stooping wooden buildings, the solitary women sipping tea or chatting on benches in the square, and the young lovers holding each other and kissing each other in front of the open door of the building before sweeping off into the evening darkness, like invisible ghosts. 

But here and there on the busy streets, she caught a glimpse of one of them. Sometimes, she stared for as long as she could at the beggars, trying to see their eyes. Some stared back at her. In this city of sight, seeing one another’s eyes was something completely forbidden and only done for an instant when someone had caught sight of another’s eyes and had looked a little more closely than he should have. Looking at someone else’s eyes, seeing their bright, insistent expression, their transparent skin and their pale eyeballs not wholly white in the glass of the streetlamp, was an act of the very worst sort, a thing you might do only when you didn’t care what the other person thought or felt.

She saw more than that. She saw what they did when they looked at each other. She saw what they pretended not to do, what they saw when they pretended not to see.

In this city, names are plentiful. Some deal with rocks and plants and more; others contain numbers, and they all had names when they were still alive. They will also have names when they are left behind, and we will want to remember them.

Whether we would want to leave names for places we hadn't visited is a different story. Some are utterly foreign to us, and others are our neighborhoods now, so you can see how names go out of mind, and out of the city. This might not be a bad thing, though, since there will come a time when we won't need names anymore. But city dwellers have a habit of filling cities with place names, places whose existence is left unexplained by the purpose of buildings or purposes of streets. There are names to warn off animals, names to shame some pimp, names to scare off unwary residents, names to christen graveyards. City planners call this place-making, and people agree that the process is necessary and that it is good to name things because it makes them real. One might argue that it's too late to do away with names since cities will keep them for themselves.

In this thin city, all the years not spent in excessive grief make visible the negative space of existence. Even the shadow of the sun has its place. Through streets, squares, and bus journeys one finds shades of gloom, secrets concealed and truncated glances of those who glimpse the least dim chance of disappearing into anonymity. It is a city of estranged witnesses. Surrounded by the attenuated atmosphere of a thousand ghosts passing unnoticed, we observe things differently than before. We also understand something of life. We understand that time reveals more than we will see and passes away even faster. Life is the parable of fading shadows. We do not think in terms of this city. We do not, indeed, think of the city at all. There is no one who recognizes its existence and knows how to live there. All we see is the distorted flash, the man who keeps pointing to the shape of a certain tower as he turns in circles on a roundabout. And we do not understand his words. There is no need to interpret them. Only by living with the city, one can live with time. We can pause in this city and examine it from the point of view of individuals who have become invisible. Perhaps this is not the city we dreamed of or what we hoped it would be. Perhaps it is a confused piece of memory. A living space. And what else could we wish for in this thin city?

This city has a special relationship to trade. With trade comes raw materials for decorative purposes and local fare; these often interact with local environmental factors, and the presence of natural material like juniper can affect the colors of the cityscape; copper ores and red ochre stones are also scattered through the city in unexpected ways. These influences can form a pleasing juxtaposition, like a Metaline collage of the cityscape painted red with copper ochre. A mixture of copper with calcium from groundwater to make pigments can produce yellows and sometimes reds; juniper berries are often grown in city gardens for the brilliant red color; and jadeite stones can be found sprinkled on the beds of lakes and in streams and riverbeds. These natural materials are combined in charming ways on the facades of the city and in the ornamental patterns of roofs and cornices. Additionally, the local terra cotta roofing tiles are sometimes stamped with certain designs; to achieve a similar effect, the sunlight streaming in over stone walls or through leafy trees would create a fanciful mosaic of colors and swirls in the sky over the roofs. In the city, the rivers bend to create grooves and scallops of different colors in both banks; these rocks are laid into the riverbeds for people to walk on when crossing the river in order to protect their feet from rocks and debris. Despite their neglect, the city streets and buildings remain intact and interesting to this day. These stones were often shaped and carved by the local inhabitants as a means of decoration and to beautify their homes and workspaces.

In this city, eyes were everywhere, watching at every chance. Some of these eyes belonged to the inhabitants who observed the small movements of the others for what they could see and report.

In this city, it is said that there are 3 people that have 3 eyes. Those people have two eyes for the living, but only one for the dead. That's also known as the Bone Eyes. The Bone Eyes always find people's secret, and they make sure that the secret remains a secret.

In this city, the people slowly separated themselves from one another. One of the traces of their separation was that the city became a place to hide in. This is one of the places, the small places in city spaces, the places where the city knows it is safe. The empty spaces, such as vacant plots, empty places where there are no stands or houses, empty places in front of the city. Those were the places where the city knew it could be safe. In empty places, the darkness knows its limits, for it knows the city will be able to see it there.

Chapter 05:Cities and Eyes 03 (The Pivot)

In this city, names carry power. Names can communicate to a person exactly where a person is supposed to go. Names of the street or the city have a deep impact on a person. But not all names in this city are good. They can be bad in fact. Some names should never be spoken in this city. 
Get yourself into the city and get out again. Sit under a tree, beside a fountain, think about which names in this city could never be spoken.

If some city isn’t real, then can this city be too? Just because the city is not here today, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be tomorrow. And it doesn’t mean that it will also not be by the end of the year. The days have no precise markers. In this city, one day seems to be years. And a week feels to be centuries. All the best stories could be told in this city. This city is too perfect to be real.

The poor were given only a shovel with which to dig their own graves, where their bodies were often stuffed, after a quick acid bath, with stones.

In that city, the dead only sing in their sleep and hear nothing. In that city, even the dead don't have nightmares. The dead can neither dream nor remember. It is in that city that the dead cry out as they are suddenly alone. It is in that city that the dead are ignored. The dead are not allowed to exist. And yet the dead still do exist.
In that city the dead are more alive than they are anywhere else. They are stronger than they are in life.

They do not know it but they are alive. And still, in that city, they are ignored. Again the dead cannot exist. It is in that city that the dead sing their songs in their sleep. And yet they are only afraid. And still, in that city, they are ignored.

In this trade city lies a wretched place—the filthy, polluted Mercantile District. It is crammed with goods and goods only, and it glitters like gold in its own dark way.

It is a curious spectacle of modern life that every man in the city has to trade with another man. Everyone has a place and at least a bit of money to make such trades, and the work is for the most part a grudging one. Trade is the city's real world, and the street businessmen are its priests. They provide inspiration and wisdom and pure credit to almost every man that walks along.

Of course, it is partly a ruse—the mere hoodlums of the night, whose currency consists in drinks, fashion, dangerous words, and revelations of vice—but it is necessary work. And the traders themselves are priests—they recite, reprove, accept and conceal, and save for themselves the reasons for doing or not doing things. They form the religious orders and crackdown on the deviants, although they themselves are far from saints. All of these modern religions are reflections of the sadistic power of money.

In this city, eyes linger everywhere. In the dark or during the golden light, it appears that the walls of the houses are composed solely of eye peepers. Eyes follow the gaze of those who gaze back.

City people wait for a glimpse of the city. What exactly is a city? Is it a place where people grow and live happily? Is a city a place where beautiful flowers bloom, where they grow the brightest flowers?

Can an archer really see a bird from afar? Are the birds in the heavens really there, or are we being deceived into believing that all things in the universe are connected? If a tree grows, then how do its roots get planted? Does a man not need to cut a plant to survive, or does he need to wait for it to die in order to feed himself? If the stars are not really in the sky, how do we speak of them? These thoughts led me to a place which is called the city. I was curious about the dreams of others. 

The city is made up of many places. Each place possesses one soul. There is the flower garden where the flowers are eyes and those eyes were all different colours. In the heart of this city, where we were trying to sight the birds, I glimpsed the mind of another man.

It was not a powerful mind, but the man’s mind fascinated me. His mind was dark and mysterious, but I liked it and that is why I was there. Perhaps I should not have been there. Maybe I should not have stared back at the people in the city. If I had not been, would my eyes never have gazed in the direction of the mind of another? Would I not have lost sight of the eye? Would I not have believed that this world is the place where there are things, where we can see the birds, and where the eyes of the flowers look at those things? 

Cities are used to hide people from others.

In this city, names don’t count. How could they? This city is gone. Just a ghost of what it used to be, a glitter of other names. No, names don’t matter.

Don’t ask where you can go. Just ask if you can come. If you ask and ask again, it will become a place where you can be. Where you will have a place to call home because you will find a place that belongs to you.

In that city, the dead lay inside coffins.

It seems unlikely, but everything there is dead, except the full moon.
There is an endless silence. The dead don't get restless. They can't hear you. All you can hear is the sound of the black wind, the whisper of the leaves and the mewling of the dead, which I hear more clearly than ever. Even the quick fall of water will be drowned out by their silent wailing.

But the black wind can come near. You can hear it, but it's not heard. It roars, but it can't find you. It speaks, but you can't hear it. It rages, but it has no target.

The bodies lay as if caught in a silvery net. These children were not people. They had only the beginnings of life, quiescent. But they were dressed in clothes worn by living, and they lay in the shape of human beings. But they were all dead. They lay in rows of twenty - five or thirty, and they lay with their arms around one another. The bodies sway as if in a breeze.

In this city, the sky sets the boundaries, the horizon, the sense of place.

It’s a strange place, but this whole city is. Don’t let it frighten you. It’s one of the first places to welcome you with warm air and open skies. 

Sometimes it’s a place to stretch your legs, and other times you have the chance to go out and admire the stars with your mind full of thoughts about distant places and distant lives. Even the past. It’s an otherworldly city where you can go if you like to feel the foreign, unfamiliar. If you’re not afraid. 

A place where the sky, clouds, and the city, are all one place.

In this city, eyes are so fast. We're constantly grabbing glances. Which eye caught this one? Ah, that one! Eyes belong on a terrace, they belong here, they're glued to your screen. Eyes are windows to your places. Eyes are windows to places in your hometown, they're yours. When you look at the map of your city, you gaze at other people's eyes. Those who stare down at you from that screen are looking at the eye of another person. When you look at a place that you really love or whose attention you want to capture, those eyes stare right back at you from the picture. They keep staring, they don't get bored, they gaze upon you. Those places are a reflection of your heart. Eyes can be very dangerous for you and for others as well. Eyes betray and stare down upon those who look into them. Those eyes allow people to see how your heart desires, what gives you pleasure and what gives you pain.

Eyes also determine where you look. Eyes go out of focus while you view your city through a lens. Eyes are fixed to a certain place while others keep passing by with the notion of seeing and looking in a different way than the one that you view. The goal is to avoid making eye contact.

But look at the sky, the open space around you. Look out of those open spaces, look at the winding streets of your town. Eyes are going around and gazing into the eye of every passer-by. There are more windows in your town than the number of eyes.

Each one is staring at you, too.

In this city, names were the first of a city’s crimes. The devil was as big as his city. The city’s thieves was more than their own sins. In this city, new names were wasted like new mercies. They were from a new story.

In this city, you couldn’t remember your own name.

Would a new name change the story? A new story meant new writing. One more story of names. How to write so that the names are not the first in a city full of stories? How to tell a new story? How to have a new city?

The questions burned.

This city was bad. In a bad city, a family’s name was its city. A father’s father. A father’s father. In a city of fear, a name was a place for death.

In that city, the dead are called to vote. They give testimony to all the hardships and injustices of the past year. And in each case, the dead man or woman is selected by lottery to return to life to speak for the dead and give advice.

There is a simpler explanation.

According to the current practice, all the records are kept by the City's "wet nurse" which is literally a person who brings newborn babies to be breastfed by women of a certain social class. In that role, they also receive bodies that are so damaged they need to be left at the city gates to be made whole.

In one version of this legend, the wet nurse receives the bodies that have just died in childbirth, and also ones that have just been beheaded for various perceived offenses.
In either case, they make a deal with the head of the family whose member's body they're receiving.

If the family member's body has been beheaded, the mother brings the head in a jar to the wet nurse. If the body is a stillborn, the head is a white hen with an empty shell in its beak.

Of course, according to the legend, if the head of the family does not come to the wet nurse, the family member's spirit won't be able to enter the next life. If the head of the family is able to go to the wet nurse, the spirit will be able to enter the next life.

Of course, that's not the only version of this story.

In this city, the sky is still covered with clouds that are still resting on the places where the city used to be. Even those who believe that the beauty of the sky belongs only to the cities of the stars are attracted to cities that leave their beautiful spots of sky untouched. They cling to the skies that are not disturbed by the loud voices of streets of humans and the gaze of their eyes.

In this city, even the scattered clouds don't distinguish whether a person belongs to them or not. They are free from questioning what they think, they only exist as one of the reasons for these cities. As a matter of fact, no one is surprised about the existence of such clouds in this city, when the sky has left the places of their destruction. The present sky is a reminder that the old cities have been uprooted from the skies that used to be crowded with clouds during the existence of those cities. The old cities will never return. Perhaps, this also implies that the ancient cities have also collapsed from the skies, but those very old cities will never return unless this city will be replaced by a new one.

In this continuous city, there are places we can never quite reach. It may be an abandoned house at the edge of the city or a mountain stream or river that winds through the city. But those places we can never quite reach are still there, waiting for us. We just have to have the patience to wait for them to reveal themselves.

In this continuous city, they’re easy to miss, but you can always tell when a place you’ve never been to before suddenly shows up. People have an instinct for the places that exist only in our minds, never in the city itself. We can tell when the city begins to reveal its hidden places. Buildings begin to wear a distinctive patina. Streetlamps begin to go out. Towns change.

The city itself changes in subtle ways. Sometimes, it surprises us with how quickly it can vanish. But the difference isn’t in how quickly a town fades, but how quickly a new town will appear and reshape the original. 
In this continuous city, the land resets. Towns can end, cities can be abandoned, places can become deserted.

Then the city will build anew, and we’ll make new discoveries.

In this city, names had seemed less significant than the horizon and the trees that beckoned in the distance, both of which had somehow already disappeared, without warning or explanation. What was their significance now? He could not help himself. It was a need, to pull the names out of his mouth and scream them aloud.

The name itself seemed familiar, but the image of it only became so once he saw the block and the neighborhood that his view brought with it. Once, he would have been struck with awe at this sight. Now, the name seemed more distant than ever. Only a semblance of recognition seemed to hold it in place.

He became excited for an instant when he recognized the alleyway, but his excitement was too small, too limited. It had not been a city. The skyline and the trees that still stood here did not make it a city.

In that city, the dead men sat on chairs against the wall. They wore wedding clothes, and each of the five men had a sheet of paper. They pointed to one of the chairs and one of the men sat down. He gave each of the others a few sheets of paper and they, too, sat down. The rest of the souls did not know what to do.

There was nothing they could do. They stood there, helpless, in a hopeless situation.

In this city, the sky goes blue sometimes and the air is clear. Blue is natural, blue is synonymous with peace. Sometimes, the sky goes yellow and the air is dense with dust. A city, a place for women and young girls that is sacred in the minds of the people of the desert. A place of winter but not summer. Just cold, wet slush and sunlight. Sky blue, just blue, clear blue.

The white stumps of sand are crumbling into shadow but the sky holds blue, clear blue, pure blue. Gazing at the sky, at the cold, clear sky, and the city that is waning in the far distance. How are things so slow? In the city, life becomes more complicated. Things, perhaps, become in a place like this. One for one, one for one. One for oneself, one for one, one for one, one for one. One for the sky, one for the city. Still one for one, but maybe not always so easy. Maybe not ever.

One for one.

In this city, where buildings overflow the horizon in dense thickets, you are struck with the strangeness that you do not remember the shape of the house you used to live in.

The house has become a foreign city and you can only recall the low structure with a dormer where it used to sit, or the contour of the outside yard, or an alley at the back which seemed just barely big enough for a small bicycle.

It may have been on the outskirts of the city, or it may have been within the concrete and glass walls of a fashionable building with marbled floors and a balcony overlooking a garden of green grass and blooming flowers.

These words are closer to your memory than the facts, and the memories themselves seem distant, foreign places of a past you have not lived in.

This city was hidden from those who were alive, like an overgrown graveyard in a desert valley; and the spirits of the dead came out of the buried places of the living, moving in and out between the empty buildings, seeing and hearing and speaking in the hearts of the living like unseen words in tongues and broken sounds and cracked smiles. In this new city, they walked among the gray buildings, past the empty places where lights burned and where the silent houses were hidden in the dark behind the stone wall.

The faces of those moving ghosts were cold and hard, like the walls of a tomb, with nothing to see or hear or cry. Some had long muzzles that spoke of fear or of harsh sorrow; others looked in sight like a child or a silly bird, with floating bright eyes that saw and heard as well as the humans could.

They did not run or make any noise; they walked along the streets in a slow manner, straight and silent. They seemed bent on seeing and hearing the new city, but they did not see many things.

In that city, the dead of both sexes are propped against a bush of bright red roses. There is a rose bush planted in the middle of a green lawn with small white daisies scattered around it. A pair of topiary dogs wearing red bowties bark at passers-by and, in an inspired touch, cry out in a posh English accent, "Welcome to The Dark Masquerade!" 

An attendant carries a crystal ball covered in pewter held in place by ropes and plays music of demonic origin on a steel gong that spins round and round. The music sets the ghouls to dancing in a strange pattern that seems to change randomly. 

There's a wide variety of strange and unique Dark Masquerade offerings: cheap trinkets, authentic Italian clothing, hot dogs wrapped in cardboard, and food carts run by the angry ghosts of long-dead businessmen. 

The skeletons of dead children ride in on giant birds that fly around and bite the heads off of the living. They are blood-red with the traditional jack - o - lantern pattern carved into them and serve as birthday cakes for the living. 

In the topiary dogs' heads is a witch's hat and a tiny witch's broom. The mounted carriages have the bodies of ghouls hanging from the back, and in each one is a skull with a wand in its hand, lit by a chandelier made from human skulls. People walk around the grounds in glass slippers and corsets. The line at the auction house snakes around the block, and some ghoulish shopkeepers sell boiled and pickled rats as snacks. 

The undead know they can keep the undead.

In this city, the sky was a city, and the sky was a place, and the sky contained clouds that did not merely grant shelter from a radiant wind but kept the earth in a luminous immensity with their vagrant shifting clouds, their shifting suffusions of cosmic secrets. In this city, while the sky carried wonders from far away, the sky was more than all the wonders that surrounded it. It was a whole cosmos, stretching upward to meet the realm of the sky as the heavens met the earth. It was a constant experience of awe, mystification, and solemn reverence, mingling with everyday reality and maintaining a great similarity with the ancient world. While the history of earth and sky might tend to be one of loss, of revelation by condemnation or disappointment, of disasters by mistake, the history of the sky is the continual revelation of the astonishing truth of earthly reality in an immensity beyond the measure of existence. There is simply no comparison.

In this city, the sky stretched down across the curving streets in all directions; a haze of day-old clouds hung over the broad avenues. Sky spread overhead, thin slits dividing them into distant planes, drifting, darting, and gradually dividing them from one another, toward the distant fortress. Then there was nothing but a narrow maw of darkness. Then a shaft, showing the vaulted roof of a large plain building in the highest corner of the city. Then a row of vaulted arches and vaulted arches. Then the rooftops. A blue stone wall edged with steep spires rose from the city center into the heavens. Here, in the midst of all this brightness and noise, the faintest traces of blue skylight pierced the gloom and illumined the steep roofs. Then the cavernous black of the empty street. Then the sky again, bringing with it a night-day contrast that blew every shade into the hollows, especially along the distant, twisting passageways and over the stone wall. The thick whiteness of the river and the stone bridges and gates. The green green of the dappled edges of the rush green growth of trees crowded together to escape the wind. The pale blue tower tops and temples, high above the city. The sky paled in comparison to the somberness of the city.

In this continuous city, past and present coexist at once. 

The modernity of continual growth does not disrupt the balance. In fact, it augments it. The city just grows up around the outer ring, outward from its inner core.
To obtain sunlight, the people of this new city close up and make their homes in the city’s center. They live in one of a few great palaces. Many live in less grand dwellings. And once a person is in the city, there is no place to go, as everything is there. If you do leave, you have to go back.

The people are self-conscious. They have grown used to living a more formal, simplified life. They dress more formally, but they also wear accessories. Most are wealthy, and while none may ever rule, they are leaders. Their city is one of grace, and beauty, and tradition.
Several decades have passed since the people left their old lives behind, and the city continues to grow and prosper. Some of the people marry and marry and marry. Many of the beautiful people settle into long-term relationships.

Despite the turmoil and uncertainty of their lives, all are determined to make their futures sound. They hope the future will bring more success. And that gives them a sense of importance. All want to be important in some way.

In this city, past the park and away from the horizon, the sapper’s own grandiose town overlooks it. Look at it closely, and a difference you wouldn’t expect at first glance starts to reveal itself: everywhere is empty, empty as a wasteland. If you are thirsty for a sip of the dream city, it will leave you disappointed. But keep looking, and the shadows are already taking their course: monuments fall, the buildings fall, entire streets are paved over and paved over…

Still, this is just a city… We need it for shelter, for work and for purposes that are not yet clear. Where is the dream city?

The following morning, the city will vanish as suddenly as it appeared.

In this continuous city, there is a profound and fascinating space of its own; it is not a neighborhood or an alley, but a small single-storey building that only has one entrance, and leads to a small square where the theater is located. A gate and a gatehouse appear at this place; like magnets, they drew the visitors on this place from all around the city; if they had tried to avoid the gates, they would never reach the entrance, nor would the gatehouse make any difference to the view of the city. It is clear that the residents of the place thought of this gatehouse as one of the significant figures of the place, and so they made it accordingly. 

The gatehouse is a place to observe from. The building stands in the middle of the square, which is the central, natural, and featureless place that is ever-expanding and growing all over the place. The gatehouse appears as an element on the landscape; all of the sculptures that are scattered all around the city are such elements. Each and every building is so different from its surroundings, and the gates are like the magnifying glass that spreads the brightness in its surroundings as if they were creatures that were taking off the sadness and colors of the surroundings. A place filled with joy and colors, a pleasure to take in at first sight, and then an exciting confrontation with reality. For a moment, when a person gets close enough, one can get away with illusion and idealism.

In this city, it is said that all troubles disappear when you ask for a knife. Doubts disappear, hopes get renewed. The weak parts are fixed, strengthened, revived. Do you understand? 

This city is home, and it will be until the end of the world. In that time, those of us who go inside it will live out the end of the world inside it. Our bodies will break down, grow old, and become dust, but our spirits will live forever in the endless cycle of life. Because it's never truly over. This city will always be alive. Even after this life ends, we'll always be living a part of it inside ourselves.

That is why I have come to find what is not alive inside the city. It is impossible to search for a living thing in a dead city, so this search is impossible. I do not seek what is not alive, I seek what is. I search for death inside the city and within the city. I'm searching for it to strike me.

The city is built on all the bones of all those who have ever lived and died here. Each floor holds those bones, turned into skeletons covered by skin. If I walk up those bones, it will be as if I walk up a long column of skin covered bones, covered by a thick layer of skin covered bones. It is impossible to count them. If I walk up all the bones, I'll go right to the center of the city and they will be piled so high that I won't have to look up to see the top.

I've stood here for a few minutes now. I'm tired, and I feel like the bones have moved under my feet a little bit, but it doesn't matter. I have no time to stand and look around, I have to keep going, to walk, to search, and find what is not alive.

I walk towards the bones, I walk towards the strange statues on the outside of the city, and then I walk to the very end. Each step I take brings me closer to death, closer to me, to death in me. It's never close, it's never close, but I keep walking. I will find it in my final steps. I will find death inside the city, and it will be the most important thing in my life. It will change my life, forever.

I get closer, and the bones start to shift.

I heard of a city where people walk around with wires in their ears, putting their minds to what they hear through their eardrums. Their ears, attached to strings, take it in and put it into their minds. This way they can constantly do a mind-reading on the neighbors. Their ears are active, but they don't hear anything, because they are too busy listening.

They all have ethereal bodies, the same as the humans, but all different-made from who knows what materials. Some sound one way and some others sound another. They make the sounds of the city and the electrical sounds all around. Their kind try to be the way humans want, when they walk around or the music on a day. I don't know, but I heard that they even got electricity in their ears, sending electricity through to their ethereal bodies, the bodies unlike the bodies of the physical people.
I even came across a man who was going around saying, "I heard what everybody heard." His face was covered by wires, but in his ears, with earphones stuck on them, there were a thousand electronic tunes from Europe, even America.

Nobody was bothered by it. No one knew he had a problem, nor did he know that he had a problem. He just kept saying, "People can tell everything with their ears."

I know it sounds weird to humans. Of course, there are no electric wires, the metallic stuff we have in this city wouldn't do anything. That's just that they're not doing it to be a human or anything like that. This city, much like many cities, doesn't necessarily want humans being there. The people in this city, they don't always walk around smiling, but they're not like the human-lookers that we see in the city, where they look one way, but there's actually something behind them that you can't see. People in this city seem to look all over-just like the people that I've seen, the people that I've been with, the people I've seen as ghosts or whatever. They don't walk around smiling like the humans do. The humans seem to walk or stand together and smile a lot like they're laughing and smiling together.

I am still dreaming about the events of today, when the alarm screams, waking me up. Another work of art. A long line and once again it is just me and those fluorescent bulbs that hide behind the paint, like some wrathful torturer. Strangely, I am very lucky. Even when I want to close my eyes I can stay invisible for several days. Finally, I can stand on the wall and climb toward my goal, the flickering white belly of the devil; I can almost feel the gap at the nose. And then it is over, to finish the work with the intensity and reverence of a god.

In this city, it is said that in the worst months of winter, it is possible to walk on the ice — thin and flexible — between houses. Many of us have walked there, never noticing the houses there, our minds entirely engrossed in wandering the city, relishing the experience of walking without shoes on, or the delight of finding an out-of-the-way place to sit and read, from a book we haven’t heard of, read by a writer we haven’t met.

But I knew it wasn’t true; it was a legend, a fairy tale, a dream; I had never walked there myself, no matter how cold it was, in the worst months of winter.

In this city, it is said that some folks believe that soon a swarm of vampires will emerge from beneath the beds of every child who sleeps. They say the vampires will fill the cribs with tears, and that we will need them to revive our mortal souls once they have devoured all our blood. My father believes this. I believe this. Only my mother believes in the ceiling fans, the neighborhood cats, and the snapping of bird bones.

Well, most of us do. But as we lie here this evening in bed, our hearts filled with false hope, I wonder. What if our hope is hollow? What if the truth is a much darker thing?

Wouldn't it make sense if vampires were everywhere? Surely, every closet, every room, and the entire boy's room of our neighbors are filled with the bite of something less than human.

In the dingy streets of the more respectable eastern suburbs, cats lived in relative comfort. Grass grew behind expensive houses in shabby gardens. A lot of the cats looked too thin. Their faces and tails were worn out by curiosity.

Automatic Cities

74 ECHOES

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The Echoes

Prelude

CHAPTER I

Chapter 01: Cities and Memory 01

Chapter 01: Cities and Memory 02

Chapter 01: Cities and Memory 03

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