This is sad.

Wow. You really pulled me into this fantastic place. It really made me question how I would react in a world without walls.

Fantastic piece.

Reads like Dafoe or even Tales of a Black Freighter.

I’m very humbled

It’s very clear that the narrator is out of place, and you manage to address the oppressiveness of freedom without screaming “hey guys, I’m addressing the oppressiveness of freedom!”

The moodis generally forlorn, flavored with mystery, interest, peacefulness and jealousy at various points. The opening is almost like a travelogue, but that fades into a more personal memoir and ending in a way that seems like it should logically lead back into the former were it to continue. Overall, it seems like a brief interlude belonging to a longer work, some sort of journal or memoir or somesuch.

There’s a fantastic punch in the last line, one that I should have seen coming. Beautiful.

Glad people have enjoyed this.

JMV – the loose inspiration behind this was Invisible Cities . I liked the idea of alluding to the wider journey, and the telling of a tale, but leaving the specific context murky.

I’ve heard it said that if one were to grow up in a land without walls, they would be able to walk through them were they ever encountered.

I enjoyed this, but it did also pull up a painful dispute between myself and my boyfriend that we still haven’t worked through…I suppose that’s what makes it a great story though.

This kinda overloaded my brain with thoughts, and I liked it! This was just really well written, and like JMV said, it feels like it belongs in a longer work, which, in most cases, is a good thing!

As others have pointed out, the idea is brilliant. I especially like the idea that this is part of a longer journey.

Some of the lines could be cleaned up a bit:
“From afar, one cannot imagine it is a city for there are no structures to define it.”
“Their homes have chairs, tables and beds, but they do not contain them.”
I know what you’re saying, but it seems like you could get your points across more clearly.

As Big Brother would say, “Freedom is Slavery.”

Also I say that because I just finished 1984 today. =P

Great piece with a nice distant tone. Reads like an excerpt from an interesting novel.

Breathtaking. So simple and yet saying so much.

Great, great, great. I’m sure Kublai Khan was fascinated.

So where’s Marco Polo going next? I have half a mind to sequel this with the next city on the journey, but the other half of my mind had about 3/4 of a bottle of wine and has a long drive in the morning.

Wonderful job of capturing the idea of Invisible Cities but making it your own.

One slight catch for me (though I see the stylistic reason it was written this way): The tense shift from “wept” to “know now” gave me pause. I’d expect, "I wept, for I knew then … " although such a past-tense line doesn’t carry the story to the present as intended, eh?

I lied. I just sequeled despite the wine. Yours is much better than mine, but I wanted to help kickstart a Calvino-homage travelogue.

soapbox moment

take the time to read jesteram’s sequel instead of my boring comment! And check out stories of some of the people listed as my friends – keeps the site fresh if everyone wanders off the beaten path!

cthulhuburger – you have the greatest name so I bow to your critique. The second line you mentioned was intentionally set up the way it is to create an ambiguous ‘them’ at the end. I agree the syntax is slightly unclear at times – it’s partly by design, partly by accident and partly from rewriting to fit in the character limit.

Clarity has never been my strong point.

I’ve never read Invisible Cities, though obviously I should. It was a good extra that you named the city Oulipo—a city with no walls named after a literary movement based on constraint. On a website based on constraint, no less. (Writing within the word limit is hard, but rewarding.)

This was a great story. Although I could have done without the last nine words. Pedantic maybe but I felt that additional observation was implied and when you spelt it out for us it spoilt it.

I absolutely adored your take on Calvino’s novel.

Simple but brilliant.

wow this was brilliant i didnt read the novel that you took the inspiration from but this is awesome it just knocked me down.

wow this was brilliant i didnt read the novel that you took the inspiration from but this is awesome it just knocked me down.

Great take on Calvino…I love Invisible Cities, and I really enjoyed this as an extension of that book. Good job at nailing the tone of the language. Bonus points for “supped.”

I do agree with a couple of the niggles about verb tense and the last line, but those are small things. Bravo!

(If anyone seeing this has never read Invisible Cities, add it to your reading list. It’s fantastic. But anyway…)

I have never read invisible cities [adds to reading list], nor have I anything to say which I feel has not already been touched upon.. But I definitely get this message. Children are told what to do because they can’t tell themselves; and some adults never learn that, so they end up living in a land with little to no limits. And I disagree about the last line: It is my opinion that repetition in a none redundant way (if that makes sense to anyone but me..) is very beneficial to readers living in the word- not thinking about what’s written until after its read.

Finishing this story was like having to wake up from a dream that I want to continue experiencing. Excellent work here!

“The steppes on which Oulipo is settled are so vast the Earth falls away at the extremes of vision, confused with the sky.” This is the line which brought me There.

Wow! I was drawn into this story from the first sentence. You have a way with words that draws the reader in. Very descriptive.

wow. I couldn’t imagine life without walls! Very thoughtful, insightful, creative, and different

Love is hard enough to fathom. It is strangely reassuring to imagine a world where it is even more difficult to conquer than ours.

Wow, that hit hard. Really interesting take on the ideas of intimacy and boundaries.

Crazy and deeply psychological. A bit loose and abstract, but I think that’s why it works.

Very well done.