The City I Crave

The city I crave resides in a fantasy of pressed together flesh. Space is not scarce, nor is identity stable. Where one oversleeps is called home. Restaurants are made up of a myriad of rooms where one can be alone or with company, eat or sleep. Space is unsigned and unmarked and no one space is marketed for a single functional purpose. Lips press against ears, language is spoken for the pleasure of oral compulsion, communication attained by gesture and gaze. Belonging is temporary, shifting with backdrop and desire, and no expectation of its permanence is understood. Activity is not regulated by time. Borders and nationality are fictions to be answered to by all with the theatrics of multiple identification cards and contradictory allegiances. Policing is impossible yet life is respected. Flags exist only to add colour, their designs and imputed meanings replaced every week on a Tuesday. Cities change name with the flags, their citizens dropping pieces of paper with scrawled phonetic renderings of alternatives into a hat the day before to be picked at random. Buildings are covered in digital skins, changing architectural features at the touch of a button, their height variable at once through the projection wrapping their upper floors in the shifting colours of the sky above.