We stood on a hill overlooking the city. A city haunted by its angels and demons, not from the heights of heaven or the bowels of hell, but in the soul of a kindhearted woman who works at a soup kitchen on her day off, or a drug dealer who lurks in the shadows of an alleyway, kicking the plastic bottles which have fallen out of a dumpster with his hands in his pockets.
A city of music, it is the sound of a homeless man strumming a guitar in the subway station, his hat on the ground, collecting loose change from the pockets of passer-byres. The sound of footsteps shuffling on cement. The motors of cars, rumbling like hungry monsters. Their horns sounding like swear words that have been replaced to make a TV show suitable for children. Bleep. Bleep. Bleep.
This is a city of stories. All the hell that hides behind the faces of pretty people. The smile conceals the lie, from the woman who is afraid of being hurt. And the loud voice and attitude which conceals the heart, from the man who is afraid of being loved.
We are only what we hate. This is infinity. This is now. This is you. One of billions of people caught in a stream of memories, pictures, pain, and love. A pinprick on a timeline that exists like a train which never slows down.
This is a city. And you are haunted by the faces of ordinary people who are all extraordinary in some way, because the flesh and bone of their bodies is a living story.
And look at how marvelous it is! You have a chance to walk these crowded streets, to meet these colorful people, to exchange words, glances, emotions, to fall in love with the very cement beneath your feet and the feeling of being alive.
This is a city, in a world of possibilities.
This is a world, where dreams are made and fulfilled, but often broken, dashed to pieces, and then they settle into the places where they pick up and start again.
This isn't just a city. This is YOUR city.
This isn't just a world. This is YOUR world.
You shape it, create it, mold it, design it, dust it off and imprint your footprints into its sand and soil.
Those footprints will wash away with the coming tide, but the memory of them will not.
You have an affect on all eternity. What you do, will change what comes after you. The world and the moving train which is time itself has been affected by your existence.
And I will stand here with you, somewhere in a dream, where we watch over OUR city.
A city of a million stories, all connected, like pieces of a puzzle so complicated it could only be designed by God.
You're one of them.
