It has passed some time now that I live with an idea about the city of Lisboa. Or better
yet, the idea of me living in this city. We have ideas about every possible thing that exists in this world and is part of our knowledge, no matter if we actually perceived directly it or not, but we like to dwell only in few of them, the ones whose objects we would care to last indeterminately long because of the imaginary esthetics of space and behavior that take place in that ideas. In this way, time loses its power and space is no longer relevant, for we can, at any given moment, move in and move out of these imaginary cities without (tres)passing any borders or waiting to be allowed in. But for me, not all that constitutes this idea was created by mere imagination and intuition. Some parts of the map were inspired by actual person's telling from this city that I have met elsewhere. The first of the months that passed, where I was becoming the city's dweller was a continuous approval or denial of preexisting idealizations. As one dear friend will say, Lisbon becomes a city of memories built on the grounds of the ruins of personal desires and dreams. It still gives birth to me, his stranger, and for this I find it to be a shelter, an escape towards something, not from something. For now I walk through the city's streets as an unknown silent shadow and busy folk speeding to the next bulletin points of an agenda with their eyes focused on the next step of their feet don't notice me until I pronounce a word in their language and only than is the mystery revealed: he is probably just another tourist. Well, it is true when Karl Krauss says that we exist through our language, but I refuse to exist as a tourist in a city I would rather call home. Tourists take pictures of themselves in front of monuments, squares and other attractions that, besides what they stand for and witness, do good for the economy of the country, and they run with their maps and guides to the next highlighted destination so to share it on social and tourist networks and give publicity advices which hotel is... and what restaurant is...what club... etc, etc. I rarely take photos, but the ones I do, are of our houses we live in that give life to the city, and of people I randomly encounter. I wonder the streets and often get lost so to remember how lost I actually am. I travel to places that are always new so to forget my inconstancy. Is it really some kind of tautological emotional nomadism? Is only our place of birth our home? In this temporary incertitude I'm fortunate to live, work and be surrounded by persons that help me see the city with many eyes and create an impression that is exclusively mine , for it is only through persons that we know and remember a place, a city, and we perceive it as a person as well. For now we remain strangers and the thrill is still on. Will I be able to call it home after the walls of intimacy are crushed, or it will remain just another nice place I've been to? And than again, as my dear friend, I too, often ask myself, how many places of birth should a person have, so to escape death or the memories of the cities in which he lost someone?
Nenad
