We started the class by talking about the different themes of the book, Invisible Cities. They are:

• Nature
• Symmetry
• Reflection
• Architecture
• People (The way they behaved)
• Change
• Realism
• Fantasy
• Perspective
• Symbolism
• Vivid Imagery
• Journey
• Transcendence
• Form
• Relation

We also concluded that Calvino never described his journey in the book, he made us experience his journey.

We had a discussion on how we can write about a city, how Calvino used different ways in the book to write about these cities. By using these words in cities, Calvino made us experience his journey.

• Emotion: attachments, incidents, likes/dislikes
• Imagination: fantasy, longing to have something we don’t have, not realistic, nightmare
• Brief: value system, faith, superstitions, institutions
• Reason: purpose, comfort
• Language: communication(age, signage), metaphors, body language, understanding
• Intuition: choices, object relations, feeling, planning
• Memory: places, childhood
• Sensory Perception: auditory, taste, smell, touch, vision

After indulging more into this topic, Ma’am gave us an exercise to write down about 6 different cities on our own and told us to complete 1 city in class and show it to her. The cities we have to write down about can either be like the different themes Calvino has used in his book or an inspiration from the words written above. I chose to write about a city based on the themes Calvino used in his book , I used duality and deceiving as my main theme for my city.