The Language of the City

One sleepy morning, when the whole world had a dairy touch to it, I fell in love with a city. I fell in love with the city when I only knew its name was Abrëville. It was like a phantasmagoric name to me back then. But I knew I was in love with the city. Later, when I saw the blue dome overarching its streets like the unbeatable, sovereign cosmic smile, I knew I was in love with the city called Abrëville. I knew it because its buildings were like a look of a warm pair of eyes guarding me no matter how cold the weather might be. I knew it also because its parks, full of trees and the flowers, smell like my hair. I know it because when I first saw it, it told me:

Hey! Yo mafotherfuckin gerbera, how about a nice huskian twist here, huh?

I was like yo, I see you’re quite open and speaking. Me thinks me likes it.

(Some people are my memories. Some of my memories are just my memories. Some are just mine.)

Over time, I started noticing a layer of that urban gem that initially eluded me. It tricked my attention and made me fail to realize that amongst the exemplars of architectural beauty, an architectural subculture was emerging. A devotee of eclecticism though I may be, the stylistic dialogue within this urban planning struck me as incomprehensible. Soon afterwards, I realized its effect on me had an air of sincere disgust. But I knew I was in love with the city called  Abrëville because its voice is like the color of my eyes. I know it because the second time I saw it, it told me:

Do you fish? If so, lemmie be yo bait!

I was like, yo get the fuck outta here. I fish fish, not fuckin baits, capishi?! Me no likes the sound of yo fishing invitation!

(Likewise, I imagine I am among the things constituting some people’s memories. I wonder what places and times those memories belong to. They certainly do not belong to me. I am certainly not among the things constituting some people’s memories. Because it’s not me.)

As time went by, my encounters with it were becoming singularly fuzzy. First I did not know why. Then I started listening with heightened alert and decided it was due to the language in which the dreamy morning spoke to me. It made my eyelids heavy, my thoughts sluggish, my movements nearly non-existent, my words echoing with little hope to be detected on any wavelength. I fell in love with a city one sleepy morning. As I was falling asleep, I was awakening into a dream called Abrëville. With its sweet flavor, it licked my scars. Made me feel like a child playing with puppies. Laughing at each other, understanding only the laughter they share--their linguistic currency.

Me likes the sound of it. Coz it looks like my mirror, were it a mirror.

That language gleamed a glimpse of a gutter on a building in a back alley. Crying its lonesome tears, unseen by anyone. Because nobody walks those dodgy lanes. Pouring those secret rivers of sadness into the pavement. Annihilated sadness, since the incessant rain is dissolving it as it leaks out of the gutter. The language of the façade abutting the stairs leading to the areas of the city where street clowns spread the whisper of wisdom, where jugglers tell the stories of perseverance, where acrobats are nothing like their stereotypical, muscularly implacable image. Rather, they are wizards of a zillion kilometer long look embracing the lonely gutters, shy facades, and other shadowy, yet uniquely crafted, components that together pulsate unmistakenly spelling out the name of the city I knew I loved. Because its name is Abrëville. Because it breathes like the wings of a thousand doves spill whitishness over the blue dome—epitome of the smile primordial. Because when I fell in love with it, I was falling asleep on a morning veiled by dairy haze.

Awakening into a dream of an aesthetic that defies my wildest eclectic affinities, the city I love says to me:

If you think you can expect to know the languages of everything and anything, than you ain’t gonna taste that fruit whose sweetness has been the sunniest of the fucking climes imaginable.

Hey, yo ma fucking elfin guy, aren’t I?

No, thou R!

It sounds like an awkward address to me. Quite a weird conversation to be had, me thinks. But me likes it because it emerges from the cracks on neglected buildings, from the hopeless wrinkles on their forgotten faces, from the dreams of the kisses with squares, handshakes with atriums, hug exchange with viaducts…all these urban encounters that they hide even from themselves in fear that they can reveal unachievable pleasures…pleasures they fear because they shamefully remind them how embarrassingly ignored they are.

I know such buildings are part of what makes this city what it is. I know their unlikely speech is a silent echo deluded into a belief in its undetectability. I know that speech treasures numberless silences. I know those silences are the city I was dreaming when I fell in love with awakening into a thick, hazy jungle. Loud haze. Fuzzy veil. Ocean of bewilderment. Islands of mesmerizing clarity. Like a child, playing with huskies. And the fucking currency that no scar is deep enough to engulf.

I fell in love with the city when I only knew its name. When I first saw it, it showered me with that dwarfy language of yore. Within our second encounter, it told me that the words husky said and nobody understood were as follows:

It means sweet fruit and freedom from everything, but not for anything.

That’s how I know that’s the city who met my intention to fall in love with eagerness so intense that I didn’t understand it. Me likes transient moments of ungraspable messages. Because I like the language I can understand and speak. It’s called the poetics of the remix.