So Much Pressure

A recurring theme in Invisible Cities is the role that decisions take in our world. We make decisions that cause an impact on our lives and other's lives every second. Sometimes we think some events are insignificant, but even the smallest of our judgements can change a lot in the world. This is what I interpreted that Calvino wanted to say in some parts of the book. 

In one part of the story, Italo Calvino imagines Marco Polo in an event that happened to him on his journey. He was on a city square, looking at someone that was "living a life or an instant that coud be his; he could now be in that man's place"(29). He continues to describe that if Marco Polo had "long ago, at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one, and after long wandering he had come to be in the place of that man in that square". This is the importance of decisions. If even the smallest of Marco Polo's paths in life had gone just a bit different, he could have ended up in the position of that man in space and time, or even in the position of any other person in the world, or another entirely different position. There are stories of people who decided to wake up two minutes late on a work day and if it hadn't been for those two minutes, they would have been in the site of an accident, or people who missed a speeding bus by an inch, an inch they had lost while tying their shoes. These decisions saved these people's lives, and Marco Polo's decisions made him stand where and when he was that day. This is what Italo Calvino is expressing here: the impact of our decisions, no matter how small, can go a very long way.

This theme is also seen in a description of a city, Fedora. Marco Polo describes the globes in a building in the center of Fedora:

Looking into each globe, you see a globe city, the model of a different Fedora. These are the forms the city could have taken if, for one reason or another, it had not become what we see today... every inhabitant visits it... imagining his reflection on the medusa pond that would have collected the waters of the canal (if it had not been dried up),... (32)

 The role of decisions is perfectly portrayed in this book. The globes with the other Fedoras represent roads not taken, paths that could have been but aren't real because of some thing or another. This is exactly what decisions and judgements are. I believe the building with the globes are an excellent metaphor for looking at the decisions we have made. We must stop and ponder at the globes with the realities that could have been if we would have taken another road, but we must live in the present we chose, because it is the one that convinced us most. We can not live in the past, it is another reality than what is occuring around us.