Cities and Eyes. 2.

It is the mood of the beholder that gives the city of Zemrude its form. If you pass by whistling, your nose gliding along in the air, you’ll come to know it from beneath: the windowsills, the fluttering curtains, the arcing golden fountains. If you walk with your chin on your chest, your nails balled into your fists, your gaze will get snagged on the ground: the gutter trickle, the sewer grate, the fishbones, the torn newsprint scraps. You cannot say that one angle on the city is truer than the other, though you hear of Zemrude-Looking-Up mainly from those recalling it as they sink into Zemrude-Looking-Down, retracing the same stretches of roadway on their daily rounds, and, on a fine morning, finding the previous day’s spleen encrusted at the foot of its walls. Sooner or later we all face that day, when our gaze sinks along the drainpipes and we can no longer pull it free of the cobblestones. Don’t overlook the inverse, though it is rarer: for so we still roam the streets of Zemrude with our eyes now digging under the cellars, the foundations, the wells.