Invisible Cities: memory, desire, signs

Several posts ago, I included an excerpt from Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Here. The Calvino was prompted by an earlier conversation in the week I had with Lynn A, during which she mentioned she was re-reading the Calvino after a long hiatus. Lynn A, let it be said, knows a thing or three about writers, writing and reading. Reading it second time around, she said, had proved to be an even more rewarding experience of what is a superb book. She went on to speculate that a life lived in the interim had now enabled her to see and appreciate the book in ways that were not available to her first time around.
Like Lynn A, I first read Invisible Cities a long time ago, but now my appetite was whetted. Hence the posting. A few hours later, I got an email from Billy C. It began:

Wow this is one of those weird earthly coincidences that often tend to happen even when the unbelievably improbable outweighs the probable by the odds of 99 to 1. It's nothing drastic, but yesterday, by chance, I found this interesting book on the vast shelves of the Hong Kong Central Library and today - not being able to go rollerblading because of the 'lovely' weather - I started to read Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. 1 hour later I went online and decided to write you an e-mail after recognizing a picture on your site. Lo and behold, by the time your page had refreshed there appeared an extract from Invisible Cities.

Weird, eh? Well, there's more weirdness. The section I put on the blog was about the 'inferno' and 'not inferno'. Late the same evening, I discovered I still had my copy of Invisible Cities. Opening it, there was a note to me from Louise A, dated 1/1/87, that said: Find the not-inferno.
Is there something in the air? The water? Five Flower Tea? In the memory, desire, signs of certain people on a little island in the South China Sea?
As Billy C says, with a nod to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "one of those weirdly earthly coincidences that often tend to happen even when the unbelievably improbable outweighs the probable by the odds of 99 to one." Here endeth one of today's lessons. Thanks, Italo Calvino! Thanks, Lynn A! Thanks, Billy C! Thanks, Louise A! Thanks, Everyone!