#12: Visual Memory

invisible cities, oeufs mouillettes and bookshops; an entry written between London and Paris

I walked outside of the Tube station, elbows up sideways like butterfly wings, tapped my card and passed through the gate – déjà vu. Heads down, I made my way to my friend’s home without paying attention. The sky had a haunting tone, fiery above the skyscrapers in Liverpool Street, but the moon was full, the same colour as a duck egg, still in Leo. The morning after, I put on my running shoes, and I followed the water that connects canals and rivers within and beyond the city—‘The river will be lowered here to make 350m-long, west-facing riverside park with moorings for visiting boats’, I read a sign. My legs carried on, my brain thought. On the bridge above the highway, I stepped into horse manure; street art and protest signs; Salmon Lane made me smile, as always. I was aware that I didn’t live here anymore; I moved slowly, uncertain, yet I could spot every single new shop and café when I had known the ones from before so well. In that fast-paced dance – let me correct myself – through gentrification, I find it complex to create a relationship with a city where I’ve lived and only return to. There are changes to celebrate, or to encourage, others to regret, and I hold myself accountable with the eternal question of how much I’m allowed to say now that I don’t live here.

‘Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.’
— Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino