...

They say you can tell a tourist from a local by the way they see the city; one sees everything and one makes it a point to see as little as possible.

I suppose it's true that all things will become pedestrian with time, but I find the fact that I myself am so easily desensitized to the splendor or living quite unsettling. I remember just a few years ago how each step I took was recorded in journal entries and on scraps of paper as things to be treasured and never, ever forgotten.

Is it the loss of childhood or the loss of hope? (Or perhaps the two coincide?) The things that make each day so special, unique, vibrant, and worth cherishing trickle away like the way even the greatest of paintings manage to lose their luster over the years.

Once you've lost it, though, can you ever get it back?

Must we first lose to gain?

Do you ever feel like all you want to do is go home, but (at the risk of sounding obnoxiously melodramatic) you don't know where home is nor where you happened to misplace it?

Maybe home isn't so much a place as it is an idea, a fabrication of nostalgia and ideals, one that can all too easily elude us.

I don't feel fit to be living this life. Somehow, at some point, I got put into the wrong pair of shoes which have run me into a world that I can't quite find my own reflection in.

Sometimes I'd like to just commit myself, as if literally separating myself and the supposed "real world" behind locked doors (swallow the key) might make things easier, might finally free me of this.

But even within the world of the living dead, there surely still exists turmoil and distress in slightly modified form.