Shanghai as a blueprint
Shanghai was a blueprint that I unraveled on an endless table.
As I scanned the surface, the renderings began to warp and bend, suddenly destroying one building with the presence of another. Some areas changed so quickly they seemed to be black holes, maelstroms pulling the surrounding schematics into their tightening whorls.
The labels of many sections coalesced into a strange patois – not Chinese, not English, but something else, pointing to a semantic region boiling with activity.
I spent days poring over the blueprint, trying to reconstruct in my mind a city that I knew could not be constructed. For as soon as I had an idea of it in my mind, I found it had already changed in the blueprint.
I comforted myself in what seemed a futile task with the consolation that maybe, for a moment, as I had the idea in my mind and looked again, I had envisioned a piece of Shanghai.