Nadezhda is hope. It is a city of cycles, a city of layers, a city of rings. Everything happening in the present Nadezhda has happened in the Nadezhdas of the past, and will happen again in some future Nadezhda; like ripples in a pond, the city is always moving, overlapping, overtaking, canceling itself. It is a city of change in which nothing changes.
Nadezhda is an ever-growing city. Sometimes it grows outward, accruing rings much like a tree. To give them a false sense of permanence, the rings are named: China-ring, White-ring, Garden-ring, Highway-ring. Sometimes it grows inward, cataclysmically convulsing itself, purging the past, replacing some aging inner ring with a renovated version. The changes are not necessarily complete: in some places the convulsions have been frozen, simultaneously revealing and obscuring two or more intertwined Nadezhdas. Sometimes the city reverts to an earlier Nadezhda, resurrecting its buildings and claiming them as its own. When the sun is low and bright, if you fly high over Nadezhda, you do not see the city. You see a maze, a patchwork quilt, a tapestry of space interwoven with time, a gleaming, sparkling veil cast over a rough, gray land.
Like their city, the people of Nadezhda are subject to the same forces of change. Also like their city, the people divide themselves into layered groups. These groups change with time, some disappearing, others getting stronger. While these transformations appear random to the residents, they always conform to the same rules. Thus, there is always a group of people who have everything worth having in Nadezhda. And there are always people who want to have everything worth having in Nadezhda. The groups are not static; one flows into another, replacing it, only to be usurped itself by the next generation. It does not matter to Nadezhda how the people control it: each group finds its own way of expressing ownership - building churches, destroying churches, driving BMWs.
Some time ago, there was another group of people in Nadezhda, one that neither had control, nor wanted it. But these people could not be happy there: there was no place, no role for them. They were forced to accept one of the roles, or else to flee the city. When they come back as travelers, they recognize the city, but they do not know it. They feel alienated by the familiar sights and sounds, amazed at the unfamiliar ones. Even more than foreigners visiting Nadezhda, they have the urge to leave and never to come back. And yet, with time, a feeling grows within them, drawing them back to the chaos of Nadezhda.
(c) 1994 - 1996 Gene Golovchinsky
Many thanks to Luisella Romeo for her suggestions.
This piece is based on the style of Italo Calivno's Invisible Cities.