Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? - Italo Calvino

"I ask you to come down to earth," said the Baron in a calm, rather faint voice, "and to take up the duties of your station!"
"I have no intention of obeying you, my Lord Father," said Cosimo. "I am very sorry."
They were ill at ease, both of them, bored. Each knew what the other would say. "And what about your studies? Your devotions as a Christian?" said the father. "Do you intend to grown up like an American Savage?"
Cosimo was silent. These were thoughts he had not yet put to himself and had no wish to. Then he exclaimed: "Just because I'm a few yards higher up, does it mean that good teaching can't reach me?"
This was an able reply too, though it diminished, in a way, the range of his gesture; a sign of weakness.
His father realized this and became more pressing. "Rebellion cannot be measured by yards," said he. "Even when a journey seems no distance at all, it can have no return."
Now was the moment for my brother to produce some other noble reply, perhaps a Latin maxim, but at that instant none came into his head, though he knew so many by heart. Instead he suddenly got bored with all this solemnity, and shouted: "But from the trees I can piss farther," a phrase without much meaning, but which cut the discussion short.
As though they had heard the phrase, a shout went up from the ragamuffins around Porta Capperi. The Baron of Rondo's horse shied, the Baron pulled the reins and wrapped himself more tightly in his cloak, ready to leave. Then he turned, drew an arm out of his cloak, pointed to the sky, which had suddenly become overcast with black clouds, and exclaimed: "Be careful, son, there's Someone who can piss on us all!"...

The word connects the visible trace with the invisible thing, the absent thing, the thing that is desired or feared, like a frail emergency bridge flung over an abyss.

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand