Paul-Newell Reaves’
ATLAS
for both my and our mother
Volume II.
“It’s a long story, but I won’t tell you everything. Some details won’t be of great interest to you, while others…”
—Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
“‘From now on I shall describe the cities and you will tell me if they exist and are as I have conceived them. I shall begin by asking you about a city of stairs, exposed to the sirocco, on a half-moon bay. Now I shall list some of the wonders it contains: a glass tank high as a cathedral so people can follow the swimming and flying of the swallow fish and draw auguries from them; a palm tree which plays the harp with its fronds in the wind; a square with a horseshoe marble table around it, a marble tablecloth, set with foods and beverages also of marble.’
‘Sire, your mind has been wandering. This is precisely the city I was telling you about when you interrupted me.’”
— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Volume I.
“Let Joy be unconfined;
let there be dancing in the streets,
drinking in the saloons,
and necking in the parlor.”
— Groucho Marx, Night at the Opera
“I speak of the buildings of stone and marble, of cement, glass and steel, of the people in
the lobbies and doorways, of the elevators that rise and fall like the mercury in
thermometers,
of the banks and their boards of directors, of factories and their managers, of the workers
and their incestuous machines,
I speak of the timeless parade of prostitution through streets long as desire and boredom,
of the coming and going of cars, mirrors of our anxieties, businesses, passions (why?
toward what? for what?)
of the hospitals that are always full, and where we always die alone…
I speak of the paralytic slum, the cracked wall, the dry fountain, the graffitied statue,
I speak of garbage heaps the size of mountains, and of melancholy sunlight filtered by
smog,
of broken glass and the desert of scrap iron, of last night’s crime, and of the banquet of
the immortal Trimalchio,
of the moon in the television antennas, and a butterfly on a filthy jar.”
— Octavio Paz, I Speak of the City
Volume III.
“Large masses of people, greater in number and hopes than ever before, want to eat better and more frequently; large numbers also want to move, talk, sing, dress. If the old systems cannot respond to those demands, the gigantic media-hastened images that provoke administered violence and rabid xenophobia will not serve either.”
— Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism
“Another empty bottle, and another empty bed…
but I know what I’m gonna do.
I’m gonna ride on.”
—AC/DC, Ride On
by 
by
Our sphere