Sleep no more

If you find it weird that I say I miss Shanghai. Or if you find it totally sensible that I say I miss Shanghai. It depends on your relationship with the city. It also depends on whether you think it is a place that is worth returning to. The quality of friendship that we have seeded over the years determines the answer.

The reality might just be that, it is a sham city from bottom to top.

You might waver over the number of concert nights that you have already lost count of. Each time you walked out of the concert hall only to be electrified again by the ever-bright city, where each fiber of its brightness reminds you of the infinity of infiniteness. The city is the first reception of the hopefulness within the music. The city reframes and heightens the fairy tales told by the musical narrative. The city gifts the illusion, delusion, and allusion that music fabricates. The city whispers into your fulfilling ears, “impossibility dwells only in non-dreamers.” The city plays you like music.

You might waver over the night walks you have taken in each corner of the city. Each time you chatted about art, philosophy, and music. You were so nonchalant and despicable of the quotidian. You sought after one interlocutor after another to give birth to the most beautiful dialogue. You listened with silence, responded with carefulness, and spoke with accuracy. You paid attention to how the city behaves. You looked for confidantes and intellectual intimacy. You thought the connections between you to be everlasting and even outlasting than what the city can endure.

You believed in Shanghai.

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Until you didn’t.

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Until you give up wavering.

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