Another trip, another airport, another all too familiar landscape glimpsed from above. Am I ready to face yet another past I ran away from? Never and always, having learned by now that the city will haunt me wherever I go.

Ghosts don't scare me anymore, I've come to appreciate their persistent, though delicate, presence . A worshipper of ruins, an obsessive collector of memories- my stubborn, ordinary self. Constantly attempting to resurrect what has expired; in love with all that wasn't, but could have been, if only...

In the end, I refuse to give it up, my pointless quest, doomed from the start. Perfect yesterdays cannot be preserved in brine, and withstand exact representation. In fact, their perfection is little more than a side-effect of their transience; flawed, mundane images idealized after they're lost.

Still, I won't quit, won't seek oblivion, because who will I be- who will you be- stripped of our cheap souvenirs, and ugly monuments, and cheesy songs reminding us of our days in the sun? Aspiration may instigate progress, but it is nostalgia that makes us human.