Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
"But which is the stone that supports the bridge?"
Kublai Khan asks.
"The bridge is not supported by one stone or another,"
Marco answers, "but by the line of the arch that they
form."
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds:
"Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the
arch that matters to me."
Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."

from Invisible Cites by Italo Calvino

& then drawing and text
from Noa Noa by Paul Gauguin (The Tahiti Journal 1894-1896)

...through her I enter into mysteries which hitherto remained inaccessible to me. But, for the moment, my intelligence does not yet reason out my discoveries; I do not classify them in my memory. It is to my emotion that Tehura confides all this that
she tells me. It is in my emotions and impressions that I shall later find her words inscribed. By the daily telling of her life she leads me...


l'a-ro