The City of My Dreams

I only go there when things get really tough.

I know, I get, that it’s a delicate balance, and I know that the City is only sort-of there, and only sort-of real, and I know that its vulnerable.

But.

There are some times when the rest of the world, the other city, some of the shitbags in it… well, you just have to put some distance between you and them. Days like that, nights like that, I shrug a jacket on and I set off into the CBD. I look for where it’s loudest and brightest and the neon is fluid, streaming off the signs and into the streets, melting in the concrete, blaring off the glass like sound. There’s always a spot, a sliver of silence, and a moment, when you can shift your eyes to the side a little, and then you can see exactly where you need to step.

The City is brighter and duller, it doesn’t have the flashing lights and streams of neon, or the flicker of moving headlights. But it doesn’t have the full darkness either. It exists in a persistence of amber, while the colours of the streets and buildings are greens and bronzes, touches of blues, shades of pearl, vermilion, turquoise. They’re rounded where the other city is towering, straight lines. Shorter and smoother, curlier, older, wiser.

The cats move through the streets, quickly detecting an unsanctioned presence.

“It’s all right,” I drop to a crouch, offering strings and marbles – little balls of paper will do. And foil to the coloured birds that descend from a ruddy-green sky, coins, sequins, bottle-tops, anything shiny. I’m a respectful tourist, I pay my way.

When the birds take off, and the cats part like opening curtains to let me go through, I can see at once where I want to go. It’s the only thing of any true height in a landscape that never ends. His tower is startlingly, glowingly bronze; a deep and metallic shade that captures the other colours and bathes in them, letting them run like water along its surface, pooling and trickling, forming streams and droplets. You can’t miss it.

No lifts here. You take the stairs.

He sits amongst his cushions, making sure all is well with the world below.

He offers me tea. The kind of tea that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

“What brings you here, my friend?”

“It didn’t work out with Roger. It was a train wreck.”

He only nods. Thinks. “You had high hopes.”

“I did. But… at the same time, you know, I knew. I could see from the moment we were introduced that this was going to be our path. He was hot, he was interesting, and I was basking in the attention he paid me. I can’t help it; I want to be wanted. I want to be liked, and admired, and desired and all that shit. I wanted that, but I could see our future in his face, I could see it ending like this. And I still go diving right in, don’t I?”

He’s not my psychologist. If he was, he might ask me how this made me feel. Or he might talk about my childhood, about feelings of neglect, or not being good enough. Or was I unpopular and lonely in my adolescence, was my sexuality denied as I moved into womanhood? He asks me, instead, “Is he sad? This Roger?”

“A bit. Probably. Not enough. He’ll bounce back.”

“Are you sad?”

“God, yes. And angry. Mostly with myself. I saw it coming. I could see all the things that were wrong with him, everything that screamed out: not. boyfriend. material. The way you can see that sometimes in a guy, even if he seems sort of harmless. He cheated on me, you know. I wasn’t even surprised.”

His eyes open a little. There are three: one red, one blue, one silver. “What will you do differently, next time.”

I sigh, “Probably nothing.”

“But what if you did?”

“I don’t know.”

“What if you planned it from the moment of chemistry, and re-mapped your future?”

“Turn him down flat?”

“Not necessarily. Love him differently. In awareness. At any rate, choose: see how the future can go, and choose a path based on what you know.”

Know. That’s a strong word. But I did know.

I say, “Did I mention that I hate my job and can’t pay my rent?”

“Yes. Last time. But you still live in the little room above the dairy?”

“Yeah.” And so. Yes. I can pay my rent.

There’s something so soft, so benign, so reassuring about his face. Never mind the strange folds, or the three eyes; the long, fluted nose, the almost cancerous bulge of his chest. He’s an incarnation of Yoda. A saintly grandfather. A living statue, alive with wisdom and patience and an aura of caring.

It’s hard to believe he’s a killing machine.

Unless you see it in action. When he flares and burns and launches from the window like meteorite crashing to earth. The streets light up with his descent, they take on a fiery glow after his collision with whatever threat might reach into the city. He hears the cats yowling, sees the birds circling. I never did. The time I saw it. I didn’t see the danger either, just the explosion. But he composed himself, reformed his mild, meek demeanour. Told me softly, “there are threats to the City.”

It goes on forever. What if I walked to the end?

“Try it,” he said.

But there was only city and city and more city. Neverendings of city. Until my feet burned with walking, my stomach roared. Until I admitted defeat and found a little sliver of silence, stepping out onto a highway, some fifty or more miles from home.

“Satisfied?” he said next time, months later, as if I’d only just left.

“Well, it can’t go on forever.”

“Why not?”

“Because matter isn’t infinite.”

“Who says?”

“Physicists.”

“Physicists aren’t infinite? Are they?”

How would I know? Maybe physicists are infinite. Who am I to judge?

He warns me not to come too often. The risk of being followed. The risk of upsetting a balance. I can’t see it, but he reminds me: “The City is vulnerable. Bone china. Be careful how you touch it.”

I’m always careful.

But some days, some nights, sometimes I just need it.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work