Raise the Hammer

Very nice article Michelle!

Although we are trapped in the temporal physicality of a place –– "our experiences of everyday abstract concepts like time, states, change, causation, and purpose, turn out to be metaphorical ...cross-domain mapping." ~ George Lakoff.

Many writers and poets have explored the City as a metaphor of destinations and mythical journeys.

Here is a brilliant example of one such exploration by Cavafy, one of the greatest of modern Greek poets:

The City

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore, find another city better than this one. Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong and my heart lies buried like something dead. How long can I let my mind moulder in this place? Wherever I turn, wherever I look, I see the black ruins of my life, here, where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore. This city will always pursue you. You’ll walk the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses. You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere: there’s no ship for you, there’s no road. Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner, you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world.

Ithaka

...Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you’re destined for. But don’t hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you’re old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

~ C. P. Cavafy Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard.

Among many others who have explored the City through a similar lens are: Jorge Luis Borges - The Aleph, The Garden of Forking Paths; Italo Calvino - Invisible Cities; and Charles Bukowski - a poem is a city.

Hamilton could open up for us and get very interesting – if looked at through this lens!