Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $9.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Audible Cities
    Audible Cities
    Audible Cities
    Ebook98 pages1 hour

    Audible Cities

    By Puran Lucas Perez

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    The great Sufi teacher, Ibn Arabi, encouraged us to inhabit the 'imaginal realm' as vividly and creatively as we inhabit the physical environment in which we live. Audible Cities is a travelogue of one man's exploration of that world.

    Inspired by Italo Calvino's "Ïnvisible Cities", this collection of poetic reports invite us to enter the vastness of personal imagination and from the locations it brings us to, consider some of the central questions of existence.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPuran Lucas Perez
    Release dateJan 4, 2012
    ISBN9781466089242
    Audible Cities

    Related to Audible Cities

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Drums, Lies, and Audiotape

      May 31, 2018

      My wife Ingrid and I had been in Aburi, Ghana for just over a week when our host, Kwame Obeng, informed me that I’d be joining the royal drummers for a performance at the chief’s palace the following afternoon, in celebration of an important holy day

      15 min read

    • Article

      Walking With The Sufis

      Oct 7, 2020

      Walking With The Sufis
      4 min read

    • Article

      Frontierland

      Apr 2, 2020

      Frontierland
      7 min read

    • Article

      “Time Like A Ball And Elastic”

      Jul 1, 2022

      “Time Like A Ball And Elastic”
      17 min read

    • Article

      The Darkness And The Light

      Dec 10, 2019

      The Darkness And The Light
      11 min read

    • Article

      I’ll Have None of You: Reconsidering the Female Death Drive

      Mar 28, 2018

      On its most visceral level, Leila Slimani’s The Perfect Nanny is about infanticide: “The baby is dead,” we read on its very first line. What could possibly jar after that? But this literary blockbuster (Chanson Douce, or “sweet song,” in its original

      5 min read

    • Article

      Devendra Banhart

      Aug 15, 2019

      “I’M a little bit out of my mind,” explains Devendra Banhart from his home in Los Angeles. “I got back from Japan yesterday and I’m going to Nepal tomorrow for a month. It’s half a pilgrimage, half shooting a movie. Oh, and a video too!” The singer-s

      9 min read

    • Article

      Mexican Wave

      Oct 2, 2022

      A large portrait of a glamorous, red-haired European woman reclining on a couch surrounded by calla lilies (see page 36) is a key work in the Auckland Art Gallery’s upcoming show, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Art and Life in Modern Mexico. The 1943

      6 min read

    • Article

      Best Translated Book Awards Names 2020 Longlists

      Apr 1, 2020

      The 35 books on this year's fiction and poetry longlists represent 20 different countries and feature authors writing in 18 languages. The post Best Translated Book Awards Names 2020 Longlists appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Gods of Alexandria

      Feb 28, 2020

      Gods of Alexandria
      1 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry

      Dec 18, 2020

      Rattling around the house in the County Sligo hills, swinging from bouts of paranoia to moments of strange, demented hilarity, a 900-page doorstopper was just what I needed to stay grounded. The post A Year in Reading: Kevin Barry appeared first on T

      2 min read

    • Article

      Sound Systems Of The Sea

      Jun 3, 2021

      Sound Systems Of The Sea
      6 min read

    • Article

      Defining Moments

      Sep 5, 2024

      Defining Moments
      1 min read

    • Article

      How to Tell a Shattered Story

      Dec 21, 2017

      How to Tell a Shattered Story
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tiny Truths

      Oct 15, 2021

      @WilliamReagan Public transit offers a curbside seat to every stage of love’s rich pageant. The world may be continually evolving, but the crescendo and decay of ordinary romance still fills the bus with strange and beautiful music. She’s trying to r

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Music Of The Spheres

      May 1, 2021

      The Music Of The Spheres
      3 min read

    • Article

      IT’S ABOUT TIME: 20 Years of Buddhadharma

      Sep 27, 2022

      IT’S ABOUT TIME: 20 Years of Buddhadharma
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Audible Cities

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Audible Cities - Puran Lucas Perez

      AUDIBLE CITIES

      by Puran Lucas Perez

      Copyright © 2012 by Puran Lucas Perez

      Smashwords Edition

      Year One – Audible Postcards

      Year Two – Erotic Diaries

      Year Three – Wonders of the World

      As Italo Calvino told us, the great marvels of the world are invisible. The deeper human planet is imagination and his Marco Polo one of its chief illuminators. It is to Calvino that this collection is dedicated. And it was with Invisible Cities by my side that it was created. ~PLP

      Year One – Audible Postcards

      <<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

      Agaron

      Dear One,

      Who could blame you if you choose

      to set aside these words unread.

      The world has claimed me all these years,

      her roads and rivers pulling me through city after city,

      worlds in worlds, in a trackless dance that keeps me moving,

      arriving, departing, arriving essentially nowhere.

      But you came to me so vividly

      in those quiet days I spent in Agaron

      that I had to try to reach

      out into this silence spread between us

      like an uncrossable sea.

      Let me tell you of this grand city, and of its mystery.

      Broad straight boulevards, shining in the sun,

      lined with towering trees, and heroines high on marble palfreys,

      always go flat out to the horizon, without the slightest curve.

      Yet they all bring you back to the place where you began…

      like a round dreaming.

      In this city of circles, you began to haunt me.

      First I thought I heard your voice behind me in the market.

      Through the clamor of the street merchants’ selling songs,

      and the rattling wagons with their crates of whicker and seashell,

      and the tribal banners flapping proudly in the morning breezes

      your delicately penetrating call was in my ear, in my chest.

      I spun to find you… but was it you or the fruit sellers’ music

      meant to draw and hold you there fondling a lenomine?

      I kept walking, hoping that as I came back around –

      carousel-like, as I passed the market a second, a third time –

      I would feel your voice again calling my name.

      That evening I’m sure you called me as I walked

      the pearl limestone shore, teaming with seabirds.

      Your petulant voice – like when, on the verge of tears,

      you would insist that I did not understand.

      So sure I was that you were there that I waited,

      Knowing you would step through the pale mist.

      And waited.

      That night the murmur of your breathing, like the faintest hum

      wafted from the crooning silence on just this side of sleep.

      It was exactly the sound you made when we lay there

      after making love, resisting the deepening tide of sleep

      …lingering even if just a few more breaths

      in the devastating bliss that had befallen us.

      Next morning the rainbow birds sang your name

      over and over in the towering trees

      beyond the veranda where I stood so still.

      I fled from Agaron,

      like a man suddenly haunted

      by night-riddled memories of old desires,

      and the ever-present absence of you,

      of your loving touch

      upon my soul.

      <<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

      Lauristan

      Lauristan was more a mud hole than a city in the old books.

      But in time it blossomed into a proud, honeyed oasis, where

      the men are all soft-eyed, silent makers,

      the world rises from their industriart.

      and the women all have wide welcoming hips –

      the world comes through their birthing hips.

      They wear peculiar adornments – these strong gracious women.

      One will have a saffron smudge across her pearlescent brow;

      another has the feathers of silver swallows encircling her ears;

      on another, gold nails flash from scarlet fingers on indigo hands.

      But these are not merely decorative – they are charms:

      Carefully wrought and blessed, they cast potent spells.

      It works like this:

      When she comes of age, a woman sets her sights

      on one of the soft silent ones; her breath leads her to him

      and her heart rhythms confirm: he is the holder of my future.

      She prays to Hakianun for guidance and eventually

      she is granted a vision – a dream in which the color, form,

      and even the sound of her special adornment are revealed.

      It may take months, or longer, for her to find

      the particular materials, and realize her dreamed vision.

      When it’s done, she dons it and goes out to find him.

      Typically, at first, he does not see her or her charm.

      But suddenly the magic grabs and his eyes, his mind are caught.

      Innocently, he is mesmerized by the sight of these small feathers,

      or the glittering stones dangling from her everywhere,

      or the bright pink snake writhing round her neck.

      While he is in this trance she mounts him

      (which in Lauristan involves only touching eyes).

      As his state deepens there rises up from deep inside

      one of the only words he will ever speak.

      It bubbles up to his lips and is uttered into the air

      like a rare bird freed, or a spirit loosed.

      In that instant she becomes incandescent with life

      and the sound seed in her begins to grow,

      for he has spoken the name of their first child.

      In Lauristan, the old mud hole that over

      eons blossomed into a honeyed oasis,

      the men are all soft-eyed and silent,

      the women all draw magic

      through their birthing hips.

      <<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

      Qatarayn

      Because it only rains a time or two in a month or two,

      in Qatarayn, the populace is ever poised to listen.

      You see, the patter of precipitation is called Aurata.

      It is their Oracle, their Way

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1