The - not silver! - lining to the tragedy is transmutation. That such-&-such a place is ‘paved with gold’ is bastardised gibberish of course; but it is a folk-memory of alchemico-urban aspiration. Sufficient footfall does render a surface potent. Streets become alembics. Most matter remains stubbornly not-gold, but minor alterations are feasible. Dead favourites, for example, become jewels.
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‘A principal rule for writers, and especially those who want to describe their own sensations, is not to believe that their doing so indicates they possess a special disposition of nature in this respect. Others can perhaps do it just as well as you can. Only they do not make a business of it, because it seems to them silly to publicize such things.’
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
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