Living In The City

Treading back from the ocean in a sunny lazy afternoon, I really don't want to see what's in front me-- the whole city is imbued in gray color: A huge ball of hazy air hanging above the city center, dust on concrete buildings and asphalt paths, people's faces are like stone-statues'.

You can feel the heat wave storming into the body as getting closer to the city center, mixed with gas waste from vehicles passing by and those that are parked along the two sides of the narrow road, dark clouds formed around factory chimneys, blue smoke from young people's cigarettes and the elder's pipes, hot and spiced air pumped from those small, shabby restaurants out to the street-- Little kids can't help coughing when they are caught in the restaurants' territory. Those tiny dogs get over-excited easily; their owners usually catch them either fighting or quarreling with another over nothing but mere the sense of the other's existence, and this would give the rest of idle men and women on the street a good laugh.

As approaching to the center, I notice people in general walking much faster. Only those who wander about and stop occasionally to look up or around, appreciating the surrounding, the nature, are always tourists. But they would be the same as the others when they are back at their own cities.

Why do we have to hasten ourselves in life? What for?

Even if we are not in a hurry, we have to pretend that we are, or occupied by serious business. If somebody stands in a busy street and looks around, everybody else passes as swift wind, mocking secretly, "Another stupid tourist got lost!", then buries the dark thought with their own schedules, lost in the crowd. How come people have such an attitude nowadays? When you walk slowly, looking here and there aimlessly, no company, not busy talking on the phone or tapping to exchange some SMS, or at least playing games on the mobile, you must have lost the job, or love, or both, or just simply in some other's way. Either way, a loser.

Someone once said, "In the long run, we are all dead." So, go ahead and ask yourself, "What am I hurrying for?"