DA

I return, and as a lover who, after a lengthy period apart, reunites with his beloved, I search for all those familiar signs to connect my memory with what I now see. Thus, I wander through your wet markets, savor your haute cuisine, and listen in on the buskers nearby. It is not the sensory enjoyment that I relish per se, but the memories that are inextricably linked to them that provide comfort.

Some may see an urban Wasteland; but with each rusted bolt and murky sewer, your every pulse reminds me of where I came from, tells me where I stand, and perhaps, if I am attentive, shows me where I am heading.

And so, Hong Kong, I love you.

“A world that can be explained by reasoning, however faulty, is a familiar world. But in a universe that is suddenly deprived of illusions and of light, man feels a stranger. His is an irremediable exile, because he is deprived of memories of a lost homeland as much as he lacks the hope of a promised land to come.”
–Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

travel

“And it came to me then.
That we were wonderful traveling companions
but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal
in their own separate orbits.
From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars,
but in reality they’re nothing more than prisons,
where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere.
When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths,
we could be together.
Maybe even open our hearts to each other.

But that was only for the briefest moment.
In the next instant we’d be in absolute solitude.
Until we burned up and became nothing.”

— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart