"No one can say how the city was constructed, nor why. We have argued that the city is mere palimpsest, that is, a series of translucent edifices inscribed one over another, an infinite series of cities falling away into an infinite past and stretching forward into an infinite future. John, in his peregrinations through these streets, is caught in a moment that traverses time as well as space, so that behind him, as he walks, buildings vanish and distort, new shapes arise, Gothic, Corinthian, glass skyscrapers, slums filled with broken windows and the carcasses of animals, cathedrals which crumble into primitive huts and ruins whose stones regroup into urban shopping malls. Thus neither John nor we will ever see the same building twice, there are no maps to deliver us to any particular destination, or if such maps exist, they are mere artifacts and must also change, the names of avenues one moment inscribed in Sanskrit and then in some vaguely oriental calligraphy or Cryllic script, written on papyri and then linen or perhaps some mylar sheathing, streets leading to slaughterhouses and theatres which immediately become garages and courthouses. This city, we insist, must not be confused with the pedestrian creations that crowd our globe, cities with which we are quite familiar, we are not discussing here the relative merits of Kuala Lumpur and Kota Belud, Mangalore and Singapore, Nuku Hiva and Api-Api, we will not describe Iquitos where he lived for some time on a bamboo raft tethered to the shore of the great river which bisects that continent, his dreams full of oily water, a black placidity that also coursed during those nights alongside the great city of his dreams. In any case who can remember the names of all those towns and villages? Arusha, Cebu City, Tlacaltalpan, Pulcallpa, Tai-o-hai, they trail behind him like a dragging anchor, Kudat, Mombasa, Tegucigalpa, Leticia—these are weighty places, as he stares into the mirror he can see the marks these places have left in his eyes, the bitter flecks, shadows lurking beneath his brow...."