I was here before, and I am here still
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The mystery of things is in their ineffability. When now I try to figure out Lisbon I still long to see the city as from the windows of the cab on my first night here, a strange geography of decay where light and shadow allow glimpses of an old colossus at the end of the world. The buildings of the Avenida Libertade, streaked all over by dark tears and burdened by the sadness of obsolete signs that in their time must have looked grand and exciting, palms all around as static one-legged giants standing with their monstrous heads held high. The lights burning into the depths of the Assembleia as in a monumental subterranean cave. The fulgent dome of Estrela, an alien spaceship trapped in wires and surrounded by the black manes of the trees. The blinded eyes of the abandoned houses, mouths agape, neglected mummies of ceramic and wood.
And now, now I can almost feel the terrible ubiquity of familiarity, and I can finally place everything… Everything? I look up and on top of a towering building a fluorescent light is still on. Cold and eerie against the dark summer sky, it glows like the eye of a sea monster. I need more dull light, to dispel the tricks of memory, to become once again a stranger. Beware the anaesthetic of routine, you start to feel for places that are not even there. I walk with an eye turned inward and my city is all there, forever defiled and falling apart. When I will be gone, memory will turn sour, then recede. Will I be freer then? Will my inward eye weep harder than the outward one right now?