A Walk Home

Hong Kong

I went for a walk with a friend.

We started out in old Hong Kong, one that I never lived in but saw in the photos before us.

We went onto the university. There I walked through my childhood playground of grown ups and books where both my parents graduated, my grandfather taught and my aunt was attending at the time. As a little girl, I liked to walk among the ponds, trees and colonial buildings. Where women in bell bottoms and men with hair down to their shoulders, discussed ideas, thoughts and possibly the day when they took over so things could change.

Then my friend and I walked up a big hill to the neighbourhood I grew up in. I pointed out the park where my first love and I spent hours on swings discussing what it meant to be an artist and where he explained to me why he was different. I didn’t have much to say then but I knew I loved him because I didn’t fit in either and thank god he moved to Hong Kong on his 15th year because otherwise I would be all alone.

My friend and I then followed someone into a four block apartment complex where I lived for 11 years of my life. We trespassed into the nooks and crannies of my teenage and college years. A concrete maze of staircases, lift shafts and unlit space, where contraband of cigarettes, vodka or whatever was passed from one to the other along with music, books and gossip of everyone else’s family and love lives. Places where kisses were stolen and sneaked, away from the eyes of watchful parents and security men.

We found the roof that overlooked the whole city on one side and the forest that grew waterfalls after the rain to be locked. We decided to sit on the ground floor and looked into apartments with little girls who spun on leather chairs, as families ate dinner and where silent blue screens flickered.

We sat in the dark for a long time, not saying anything. For we were tired of words, because they hurt, slander and lie and we forgot the people who spoke them need not be heeded. We did not know who they were, some not even their real names, and had no gage of truth in what they claimed. They simply trespassed without permission.

It may be the nature of this technology, but could be shut off once the solidity of matter was realized. My friend and I sat in silence as we allowed presence to convey instead.