Impossible cities I : London

I dream of impossible cities, cities that could not, should not, ever exist. They are so vast in scope, so at once futuristic and at the same time ancient, that no city planning in any universe could ever come to bear them.

One of these impossible cities I dream of is a London to which I arrive in early winter, usually. I arrive penniless and with naught but what I wear and carry with me. Ahead, lies a life filled with the dread of possible penury, but in those dreams I always find some spartan, victorian cubicle in which I abide. How I pay for it, I cannot imagine, for in those dreams I am wholly destitute, and with no employment in sight. There's always the hope of something coming along, but I am yet to see it materialize.

It's a vast city I dream of, its streets largely dissimilar from the real-life one; very wide and spatious, these streets are lined with gargantuan shops of every kind, as well as clusters of these very shops centered in either buildings - each also impossibly large and much bigger on the inside than would otherwise appear. - or ramshackle markets. There is a bookstore that exists only in my dreams, and it's an enormous sort of store, very high ceilinged and with the promise of gardens seen through windows that intersperse its many divisions. The bookshelves themselves are stacked high, and filled deep with books - picture a library that encompassed every book that ever and never was, but oh, here you could purchase any of them you wished. And in this very bookstore I find myself staring longingly at shelf upon shelf of books I want, but cannot possibly afford, at least not then - and maybe, just maybe, in the dream not ever. This directly correlates to a point in time in my life where I moved to London, in 2005, and found myself in a situation not entirely different from this one. As I stand and look at those books that seem ever so distant, I find in me a resolute will to somehow return there and bring them all home, and I leave, elated in this fleeting moment, before taking to the streets. 

Often I then return to that small and sparse room, taking a number of different buses to get there. Do I have a bus pass? Is travel free? I do not know. Eventually, I am far from the city proper, in some suburban distopia, and I hurry to where the supermarket is - yet another gigantic, sprawling place housed in a far more colossal structure, hurrying to get there just before it closes so that I can shop for food, though I never know how I pay for it. 

But some other times I give up and decide to fly back home, and I take to the immense and far-reaching network of trains and subways that somehow weave a tangled web across the whole of the city. The stations proper are yet another example of impossible scope in size, dug deep down far beneath the ground, and to which you get to down through a signifcant number of stairs, tunnels and corridors. And yet, every so often you'll find a fairly non-descript exit that will leave you somewhere out in the city, just in reach of any other means of transportation one might desire.

It is through this web of transports, motorways and tramlines that I ultimately arrive at the airport, and again - I arrive there with no money, no means to pay for a ticket to get home. I am nurturing the hope that somehow I can board a plane and return home. I don't know how, but I have to, I must. And the strangest thing happens : I remember I still have my home country bank acoount, with maybe sufficient funds in it for me to get a ticket. Had I never remembered, up till then, that I had this option? Or did I leave it as some sort of desperate last resort? 

I finally procure the ticket and must now make my way to some far-off terminal, of course miles away from where I am, and with the shortest window for me to get there. I manage, just in time, jumping down stairs and fying through escalators, weaving through the throngs that swim upstream of me, reaching finally my intended destination. I do, however, have to run my way through the tarmac to the plane, and this being an airport that only exists in my dreams, of course has military planes flying to and from it as well, because why wouldn't they? And just next to some vast flying fortress of war lies a miniature of a plane, as if someone had taken a regualr sized plane and shrunk it so that only half a dozen people or so fit in it. If in the beginning I feel in me the trepidation of stepping into this ersatz craft, as I sit I feel relief washing over me, and I feel my eyelids, heavy as heavy can be, begin to close and I drift away to sleep. And I dream...

And then, then I wake up.