Toured by all the marks that make a city what it is, dilapidated houses are scattered in blocks, furnished according to personal preferences or temporal fashion. What used to be a cozy home, is now a heritage for signing and mediation.
He rests somewhere, maybe a seat within a pub, listening to the chaos around, like how one would be seated on a stone in forests, and listening to the mutter of triplets. He observes how humans live, getting acquainted, greeting, chattering, and bidding farewell. Living stories are tainted with fresh smells.
Sometimes he passes the showcase within museums. Exhibitions state for themselves while lying in a net weaved by artificial story-lining, tailored via a figure, a place, which are all around simple or intricate topics.
He passes by, like how he goes across a boulevard and smells the aroma of croissants; he passes through pronouns and descriptions like “Rome” and “Westminster Abbey.” A random dazzling and inspiring moment is waiting to “attack” him around corners, to make him dwarfed by something magnificent, and drive him to hide for a consciousness of being shallow. His knowledge has a boundary, while he would like to fill his bottomless curiosity with the unexpected each day. That process needs patience. Thankfully, he will be a modest one.
Sometimes, while strolling and getting lost, like how sailors recognize the direction in woodland, he finds the center as a cathedral, a city hall, or a sublime palace along a radiated direction. Patterns grow in palms, and the city thrives with cycles.
Upon the star rises, he finally gets home. Fumbling to bed, before falling asleep, thoughts dawn on him——“Would something in this house be displayed in a museum someday?” Only cars honk as a response.
Not sure what would appear in his dream today, maybe the collision among pebbles when a riverbed is washed against or chattering and laughter held by a downstairs passer-by. What is for sure is that today has eventually passed, and crevice would scramble to this house on a normal sunny day.
That would show how a river flows.
That is how a story starts and ends.
2020.08.21