Architecture of Cities: Mapping Beauty XVI

Truthful Fiction: Memorials and Monuments

If you could see what my eyes hear: You might hear the irrepressible whispers by Robert Frost.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep,

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

And miles to go before I sleep.”

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening lends itself to every sound to be seen in mine and J.M Barrie’s never lands: The  imaginary focus that speaks to every living organism that is no longer but has a voice: The stories below the surface: Stories for everyone to hear if only they allow themselves to see.

We see what we imagine to hear: A million bats escape from Bracken Texan Preserve: The sound like a wall of cacophony: Scurrying and fleeing remain; the bats leave a trail- -The mystery of light in shards. I have stood before the toll of memorials that stand as monuments:

Tom Waits rasps near: He tells stories of Cherokees and Kiowa scurrying and nurturing land: Their storied souls from Mississippian ranges to the Great Lakes and Kiowa’s British Columbia merge: Separate voices, the wealth of one unite: A giant wave hovers; something bigger is near.

Another monumental memorial appears: Anonymous ghosts are seen dancing naked atop a planet of oceans: I realize there is more to see more to be heard: There is everything visual everything visceral- -Quiet is heard. A mass of memorials circle the planet as stars and passions: More memories realized: We travel as one across the moon:

Every body every turn in time: passion is revealed in various guises: Yusef Lateef’s love theme for Spartacus begins- -The eyes in mist, Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons imagine: The topography before the Roman engagement: Love in the ruins: Ghosts abound: More stories within: Heartbreaks, love and excited enticement remembered: I stood alone.

Alive I yell to anyone who might listen- -alone I surround the monuments that are memorials: A lilt of step a lilt of voice: The plaintive me imagines the plants before there were flowers: I realize the dearth and equally the abundance of storytelling to be seen and possibly heard: Every capture need not make sense of the day-today- and tomorrow’s day to be: Yesterday’s unfathomable everything whispers and again I see more.

Two men and their steeds: (With every static structure in view, I imagine worlds to remember). Count Rostov in awe of Napoleon’s Arabian Stallion: The Night of the Hunter’s (Robert Mitchum) Rev. Harry Powell (imagined in horror by the little boy John) in silhouette atop a tendon aged mule: One story  portends the heroic another the horror: We see what we imagine to hear.

Imagine the presence of histories told: An incredible elixir to marshal into the future with: The past speaks we march again: A space revels with narratives: Across the globe in languages both familiar and foreign we are witness to memories.

“In the meantime, I am alive, I move about.”

Charles Lamb