on ugly cities you dream of leaving
on ugly cities you dream of leaving
I walk these streets, or, well, more precisely, I ride through them in an Uber, because it’s dangerous to walk here, and I keep thinking: what is all this for?
I’m in one of the most dangerous provinces in Argentina, and it reminds me of the city where I was born, 11,000 kilometers away from Argentina. I hated that city. My only desire was to leave it forever and never ever come back. That’s more or less what happened, and I have absolutely no complaints.
And now people in this Argentine city where I am ask me if I like it here. What am I supposed to say? That the only advice I can give to children here is to leave as soon as possible and never look back?
When people say that every city has something good, that you can live well anywhere, they are either blatantly lying or have a very narrow understanding of life. Or maybe it’s my understanding of life that always extrapolates, perhaps that’s also a problem.
You can live anywhere, in any way, and still be satisfied with your life. But small cities where there is literally no future are not made for people like me. Or rather, those cities do have a future, but the process of transformation takes at least one human lifetime. I’m not ready to give my most active years to a place that will slow down my development.
If some cities have ambition, others resemble drunk, abusive fathers you need to escape from as soon as the opportunity arises.