Desires and Memory

"Cities also believe they are the work of the mind or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it give to a question of yours". (Page 44) I think that the point that is tried to be made here is that when you imagine or discover something new, it has to be based on desires and/or fears because if not your "city" is based on mind and chance only. And these to are not strong enough to hold the thought and make you believe it. Eventually the thought will crumble down if there is no desire, the driving force that keeps you building up on that thought. As we said before, desires and dreams are based on memories so in the end your city has to be based on memories that have impacted you enough to hold the walls of your thought. 

The book at this point is still very complicated, the point I still doesn't fit in my mind. I still quite don't get the book in other words. Specially at the end of section 3 when Marco says, "The city exists and it has a simple secret: it knows only departures, not returns." (Page 56) So what is the point of going to the city if he won't be able to come back and tell the Khan what he saw? Now there are cities everywhere, cities that do not exist and that they are only imagining, cities that they know, etc. It's all just very confusing, and it is having the spiral effect again. It turns and turns on the same idea. The reader still has the doubts of the intention that the author has. Where is the story going? Is there any chronology in particular that the story tries to portray? In page 29, the Khan asks Marco some questions that made me stop and think for a moment. "Journey's to relieve your past? Journeys to recover your future?" He is asking Marco about the purposes that he has for traveling and going through mountain ranges, rivers, valleys, etc. Marco answers, "Elsewhere is a negative mirror. The traveler recognizes the little that he is, discovering the much that he has not had and never will have."(page 29) I think that Marco is trying to say that the more you explore, the less you know in a way. If you explore more, you keep gaining knowledge but there is also more that you do not know because you are widening your field per say. In the end, you will realize that you will never know it all because there will be always something more to explore, there will always be something new. 

You will never know it all, you will realize that you are one small grain of sand in a world full of mysteries and adventures. So in the end is Marco trying to say that there is not point in traveling? To me, no. He is trying to say that one must try to attain his own empire. One must try to know as much as possible and conquer their own desires, dreams, fears, and memories. That is the purpose of life.