My City

My city is a city of districts. Each unique, each alone, yet together they form a whole that is transformed. Like fighting tribes, unstoppable when they band together, a force to be reckoned with. I walk them most afternoons, and some mornings and evenings, too, because the path of the sun in the sky can change them so. Some are lighter in the day, some sleepy; some whisper through the dark and some only snore; but the choicest time is dusk. The daytime workers are at the height of activity, preparing to leave for the day, while their night partners are waking, traveling their first few steps, and the entire city breathes at once.

There are many districts, each owned by an occupation or a social circle, each ruled by a guild or a council, by a lawmaker or a scoundrel. Different moods create different favourites. When I am lonesome I love the market best. Mr. Duncan resides over it, resplendent in a tailored black vest, wearing a coat in the style of the South, a different exotic, perfumed flower gracing his lapel every day. He always has a word to spare, a sale subtly embedded in the innocuous words (and how was your dinner today, my dear? Mrs. Duncan graced me with a stew, same old recipe, but she added a pinch of cumin. Have you heard of cumin? All the rage this week, have a sniff, I have some in my shop’). The stalls are busy in the afternoon, the prices low, tired merchants with handy smiles hoping to offload one last sale, one less thing to pack up and take home. Round Mrs. Double with the gold spectacles never minds if you run your hand across a piece of silk, and thing Mr. Pointier with the moustache half-grown in always has a compliment, even if it compliments his own wares while he gives it (‘what lovely eyes you have, my love, they would match this gorgeous bracelet, don’t you think?).

When my limbs shiver and shake and I need to move, I visit the Alley of Foals, with its great long corrals and constant stamping and whinnying. When the day is bright Felix will let me guide a horse through the motions for a hesitant customer, and he will call me his magician’s apprentice; and when Senor Alberanso walks the streets the ladies scuttle behind him, all atwitter, and his oiled hair gleams so bright it frightens the skittish foals.

There are quiet streets where stone houses rise proud above tended lawns; and black alleys where mysterious strangers with smiles like bones beckon from gaslit chambers. I have walked over cobblestones that smell of cinnamon, and through dirt that packs the mighty wallop of shit. I eat my lunches in little shops with a view of the river, or on wide grassy parks where children scream and chase each other through tended shrubs.

But when I am heartsore or empty, when I need my faith in the greater scheme of the world restored, then I go to the Street of Silk. It is an incredible neighbourhood. I can see it from my window, a patchwork quilt nestled beneath the bosom of St.Leclaire’s, sandwiched between Baker’s Oven and the greenery of Flower Hills. It is unexpectedly shaped, with three main roads that never quite meet, and tiny alleys between every single building and factory, so that from above it looks like set of irregular tiles, or a beautiful mosaic. There are two mistresses in the Street of Silk; one presides over the making of fabric, while the other creates the finished dresses and suits that costume the city. They are constantly at war in the most gentile of ways, with deputies and lieutenants trading salvos over pins and lace. Madelle Patrice has a workshop in the north-eastern edge of the city, a huge gleaming building with carved white crenellations that mimic the spill of crinoline out of the edge of a silk dress. She wears the latest fashions with careless abandon, and throws parties to which an invitation is worth its weight in gold. She has been known to pass out samples to the working poor, claiming that she cannot bear the sight of bad needlework, and swearing there is not a charitable bone in her business-minded body. Lady Yasmin owns a factory on the district’s western edge, the scent of fresh bread oddly complimenting the constant weave and shuttle of the looms. An imposing woman with steel in her hair and in her back, she gives compliments like precious jewels, and a smile from her can be treasured for a year, with no more in sight.

The Street of Silk follows you around the city. You see it in the lapels of a tailored suit, in the handkerchiefs tucked into the seaman’s back pockets, in the twirling dresses of the dancing girls. Come war or peace the seamstresses work, and when their needles still you can take out the profits of their work and hold it to your cheek. When you breathe you taste only yourself, and when you listen you hear women’s voices raised in laughter, in frustration, in gossip and cheer.

It is the district that I hold in my heart. It is art meets necessity, a brightened version of daily toil, a splash of realistic hope. I do not feel the pinch of the needle between my fingers, do not ruin my eyes with the delicacy of the work in dim light, true. I see much of my city from above, true, points of light and dark on the map spread out beneath me. And when I walk them I walk the streets as a thing apart, true, for I am no ferrier, no fisher, no baker or maker. I do not grow in the soil or build to the sky. But it is my city. I know it, and I love it. It is mine.

 
Image by April Milne.