“Marcovaldo or the Seasons In the City” : Italo Calvino

“This Marcovaldo possessed an eye ill suited to city life: bill boards, traffic lights, shop windows, neon signs, posters, no matter how carefully devised to catch the attention, never arrested his gaze, which might have been running over the desert sands. Instead, he would never miss a leaf yellowing on a branch, a feather trapped by a roof- tile; there was no horse fly on a hose’s back, no worm-hole in a plank, or fig-peel squashed on this sidewalk that Marcovaldo did not remark and ponder over, discovering the changes of season, the yearning of his heart and the woes of his existence.”