Recently, they have painted the town all over in colour, and it feels a bit jarring given that this only happened when I made up my mind to leave. Like a lover who starts to glow, whose eyes get bigger and bigger as you mention the thought of parting your ways, this city, too, has shown how much it would not prefer me to be here. Of course, I exaggerate. The freshly coated walls hide murkier truths below them with the reluctant pizzazz of a prima donna. But what do we care? The everyman does not think of the world below or the one above. He walks on the sidewalk even if it is paved with broken blocks, and he walks on it if it is pristine still.
Now, I must come back to this city after I leave, for a tryst, a moment to see it once more, like a lover who leaves impatiently, almost impulsively after a fight, who begins missing the other as the bus starts to move, as the plane begins to fly, who thinks of nothing else on arrival but to get back someday. I am too familiar with the feeling, and often, this town has been at the centre of it. What I am in love with now is not a person for a change but my life here. The life I wish to leave because it has become too comfortable. What a curious thing it is to be a person. We only want what we do not have. The trick, I wonder, must be to lose wanting itself.
But then, what is a person if not someone who wants?
To live is to want things; to live properly, I reckon, is to be aware of this fickle nature. To live properly, correctly, and rightfully is to know that some things you can only want from afar, like a morning with a person you will never be granted, like a different beginning, an atypical path you never took, like a wish to try it all again if you could. It is in knowing that none of this is possible and still yearning for it, like the dog who waits near the gates of the building no one lives in anymore.
To live is to want for the past and the future and for a better present, most of all. To live is to want to leave, and to live is to be asked to stay. To live is to be suspended in the middle of all you ever wanted, all you will ever want, and the absurd wish to not want at all.