The romance is this: move through these cities, use them, build breathless expectations and change our hair or clothes for them, parade them, admire and hate them, try to be more like them, strive to be opposite from them, cry in front of them, stay up until sunrise with them. They are the definitive and bold-print turning points that lead into some higher understanding of the world. We are suckers for their gridlines and grime and their smells of soiled streets, for the things they promise, even though we know they’ve promised the exact same to everyone who came before us. Afterward, they are nothing more than those we take in bodily form, love, lose, scorn, and probably one day love again. So then, nothing less either, I’m sure.
you look lovely today.
Notes From a Transplant on Loving and Living With the Cities We Come To
