Is not Barcelona, it’s not Madrid, it’s not Toledo, it’s not Amsterdam and it’s not Paris, not even Lyon or London or Utrecht or Glasgow or Edimburgh or Florence or Geneve or Berlin or Newcastle or Santander or Perpignan or Rome or Bremen or Brussels, not Gent, not Koln, not Brugge, not Antwerpen, it’s not Eindhoven, not Girona or Lleida, not Breda, not Roanne, not Scheveningen. It’s not fucking Den Haag or Soria or Rotterdam or Burgos. And if Haarlem is a city, then it’s not Haarlem either.
My favorite city in the world is you and all the pieces of you that are scattered around the world. It is all the cities where I haven’t been. It is Naples and Sydney and New York and Athens and El Cairo. My favorite city in the world is all the things I never had and I’m likely not to have. In my favorite city everybody eats ice-cream and drinks baileys and everybody gets laid and has a nice hairdo. In my favorite city they greet you when you walk in and cry tearfully when you leave. It is made of all the nice kisses I saw and gave and received and sneaked and imagined and wrote about. Blankets are soft and pillows like fluffy spring clouds and smell of vanilla and channel 5 and old novels. Happy anarchy rules and everybody does as he can and receives as he deserves. Women and men and children and cats and elephants are equal at the eyes of the law. It is a city that has come from many dreams without colliding. It is the butterfly that dreams of a man that dreams of a man who dreams of a butterfly. It is at the end of the road that the chicken crossed. It is where gods are buried and carrots grow in the stoplights. Houses are made with books and furniture is built with directors cut’s dvds. Beautiful poems flash on the walls and change every day. At the airport of my favorite city you are greeted with sweets and flowers. And you have a house there with a cool boyfriend that makes supper every uneven afternoon and washes the dishes on the even ones. At my favorite city maps are infinite.
And yet I’ve never been in my favorite city. I’ve seen it in postcards flashing at me and travellers have told me of a chocolate fortress at the end of all roads. I’ve inceasantly looked for the signs, but it wasn’t there anymore when I got to the place. Whispered legends say that it moves quiet as a cat when everybody sleeps, to protect its secret location from Bush&Blair’s top-of-the-line ever-searching agents. It may be in Barcelona, or it may be in Amsterdam. It may be somewhere in China tomorrow and two seconds later on the top of the Klimanjaro.
It is not paradise or somewhere you get when you die if you’ve been good. You get there while living, if you’ve been good, without noticing. You may be there tomorrow or in 20 years. Just make sure to follow your route and the correct roadsigns.
And if you get there before me, make sure to take a cosy place for me, ’cause I’m coming.
And that’s what it says at the Entrance Gates…
