Category: Dreamt
The Dreamt room holds the foreign places I have never been to — cities and far landscapes built from films, photographs, documentaries and other people’s memories rather than from any visit of my own. It is a standing record of armchair travel and Fernweh: the abroad longed for from a desk and drawn in charcoal, because I have never been abroad and have no photograph of my own to show. These are the places I keep meaning to go to, and somehow never do. Start with Zürich, Venice or New York.
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Jerusalem
A single walled hill that three faiths trace to the same root and have fought over for millennia. I come from outside all three, and I would like, once, to stand on it.
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Istanbul
A man who has never crossed a border, dreaming of the one city that is itself a crossing — where you change continents in the time it takes a tea to cool.
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New York
Of all the cities I have never seen, New York is the one I have seen most — pre-dreamed on my behalf, in advance, by everybody.
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Hong Kong
Hong Kong I dream of vertically — a city of millions folded onto a few scraps of land, assembled mostly out of things that are quietly leaving.
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Cape Town
Cape Town is one of the few places I was offered not just to visit but to work in — and let go. I keep a receipt for this particular longing.
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Venice
No city has been handed to me more often, or visited less. I have owned Venice for thirty years without once paying the fare.
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Zürich
I know Zürich the way you know a word you have read a hundred times and never once heard said aloud.
