The funicular to Mtatsminda is older than it should still be, and I mean that as a compliment. The carriage rattles at a pace that suggests it has made peace with its own age. Outside, the window is scratched in a way that turns the whole city into something softer than it actually is, less city, more suggestion of city.
At 17:32 the light starts doing that thing it does in Tbilisi in late afternoon, going gold and a little tired at the edges. Below, the rooftops layer over each other like they were never meant to be looked at from this angle. Balconies with laundry, a church dome catching the last of the sun, streets that from here look like they make sense, which they do not, up close.
There is a haze over the far suburbs, the kind that could be dust or could be distance or could just be the day exhaling. I keep my camera on my lap and do not raise it right away. Some views need a minute before they become photographs. The metal creaks. Someone's grandmother is talking on her phone in Georgian, fast, amused, and I understand none of it and all of it.
I think about how every city looks honest from above and dishonest up close, or maybe it is the other way. Tbilisi from the ground is sulfur baths and balconies leaning toward each other like gossiping neighbors. From here it is just rooftops and ridge and haze, quiet enough to hear the cable pulling us up. Che meraviglia, I think, and do not say it out loud, because there is no one to say it to, and because some sentences are better kept for the window.
