I have visited many monuments in this world that try to immortalize the
cities that erect them in prominent places. Imposing men whose names
have already been forgotten but who still pose mounted on their
beautiful horses. Women who hold crowns or swords to the sky, symbols
of victories that no longer even appear in school books. Solitary,
nameless children engraved in stone, their innocence for ever lost
during the hours and days they were obliged to pose for some sculptor
that history has also forgotten.
And when all is said and done,
with very rare exceptions (Rio de Janeiro is one of them with its
statue of Christ the Redeemer), it is not the statues that mark the
city, but the least expected things. When Eiffel built a steel tower
for an exposition, he could not have dreamed that this would end up
being the symbol of Paris, despite the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, and
the impressive gardens. An apple represents New York. A not much
visited bridge is the symbol of San Francisco. A bridge over the Tagus
is also on the postcards of Lisbon. Barcelona, a city full of
unresolved things, has an unfinished cathedral (The Holy Family) as its
most emblematic monument. In Moscow, a square surrounded by buildings
and a name that no longer represents the present (Red Square, in memory
of communism) is the main reference. And so on and so forth.

Perhaps
thinking about this, a city decided to create a monument that would
never remain the same, one that could disappear every night and
re-appear the next morning and would change at each and every moment of
the day, depending on the strength of the wind and the rays of the sun.
Legend has it that a child had the idea just as he was … taking a pee.
When he finished his business, he told his father that the place where
they lived would be protected from invaders if it had a sculpture
capable of vanishing before they drew near. His father went to talk to
the town councilors, who, even though they had adopted Protestantism as
the official religion and considered everything that escaped logic as
superstition, decided to follow the advice.

(c) Paulo Coelho

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