Having visited the city I grew up in, it feels the only way I can say it would be "this is not the future we once dreamt of". In fact, I don't really know who could have dreamt of such a filthy, crowded and hideous cramming together of buildings and people. Only the enemies of those once living in the said city. It is not applicable only there, I know, other places have been also filled by business and dirt and by the invasion of an unhappy life, dragging the people from here to there to nowhere. But there I can place myself back n the time, looking upon the future.
Maybe the mistake with the world we live in was the lack of dreaming - 30 to 50 years ago the surroundings were taken for granted by most of the people. Why dream of a city so and so? It was already worse than before for the older ones, and the younger ones had a busy life... Maybe the young ones of today see nothing wrong with the ugly buildings and the filth, either. I wonder... People were busy dreaming of having food on the table the next day and to be getting by in a better way with their money, relatives, health, colleagues, love life and so on.
But somebody must have had the dream of the ugly city - filled this gap left by the lack of wonderful dreams with it - otherwise why this hideous urban future? Like a huge container, the city I once knew - and also started to see falling down - seems to be waiting for that unbearable point of breaking down into pieces.
Never had I imagined my house locked with not one, but three iron gates (probably now it is inhabited by three paranoid families), never have I imagined the sad sad death of old houses left to fall down in order to sell the land easily to some investor... the layer upon layer of unfamiliar things unpleasant to the eyes, that have enveloped almost every landscape I once knew. Like the familiar faces that have turned into sometimes unfamiliar, unexpected people, the city has changed in a way that pertains to no dream of it I have ever knew.
I suspected that what I knew is now locked not in a "where", but in a "when", but I should add that I feel not having left far enough from the "where", maybe not even soon enough. The road, maybe, was not supposed to be so short. The sadness of seeing how much and worse the change is asks for a bigger distance between where I used to know stuff and where I am now.
In a new city one is never quite sure of this evolution or involution - it is not within the newcomer's memory to perceive this shift.
But there are still known points where this shift comes like an unbearable conclusion. It brings out all the unfulfilled dreams also. And, weird enough, the smell of wanting to gallop further in order to forget, like a horse follows the smell of grass onto new horizons...
I suspected that what I knew is now locked not in a "where", but in a "when", but I should add that I feel not having left far enough from the "where", maybe not even soon enough. The road, maybe, was not supposed to be so short. The sadness of seeing how much and worse the change is asks for a bigger distance between where I used to know stuff and where I am now.
In a new city one is never quite sure of this evolution or involution - it is not within the newcomer's memory to perceive this shift.
But there are still known points where this shift comes like an unbearable conclusion. It brings out all the unfulfilled dreams also. And, weird enough, the smell of wanting to gallop further in order to forget, like a horse follows the smell of grass onto new horizons...
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