CLIT 2028 The City as Cultural Text               Journal FOUR

　

Love At Last Sight

 

On the day that you told me you are to leave, I started fall in love with you.

 

On the day that you decided to leave, you started fall in love with Hong Kong .

 

And I, who to love what you love, started loving Hong Kong .

 

You come to realize you have to treasure it when you know you are going to lose it. It is not because human beings are foolish. Since love has quota, we have to consume as much as we can within the time limit. If time started to countdown in an unexpected way, we are driven to mad and try to love to maximum -- To burn hundred years of love into a single spark -- and suffer one hundred years of solitude after.

 

That's why our love is deterministically a melancholic kind of love.

 

The time limit was one month. You tried your best to love Hong Kong , and I tried my best to stay with you. We went to the peak, to Stanley , to various kind of museum, to sit on a tram for a whole afternoon, and on ferry in the evening to greet the sunset of Victoria Harbor . You were thirsty to go around Hong Kong and memorize all in your brain; and I am with you -- always be with you -- at least in the last countdown period. It is just like a dying cancer patient who is crazed up to spend as much as he can. Time is not enough. Time is never enough.

 

To love or not to love, it is the question. Here comes a dilemma:

 

Shall we be just together in these last days and burn out our love in order not to regret that we have missed the last chance to love -- the only chance in our life, the very moment that love becomes possible;

 

OR

 

Shall we hide our love and remain calm so that we would not be torn apart and burst into tears when finally you have to leave.

 

Time is not enough, even to make a deliberation.

 

You said I am just stimulated to passion simply because there is no time left; it is just an illusion that fools me into desperation;

 

I said love is a priori. Love is no return. Love is pre-determined. Love is once you discover it, it is already existed.

 

You said it would be just a happy ending to leave without wistfulness. Why should I destroy your best memory in Hong Kong ?

 

I replied.....replied in a silent whisper. I knew that the one and the only chance were passed. Sorrow was dissolved in a sigh. You were gone before you have left.

 

You flight. You can escape from this city of grief but I can't. I have to stay and I have already loved this city. All landmarks of Hong Kong become gravestones of my love. Since I have visited every inch of Hong Kong with you, I have no place to hide. What if a claustrophobic fears not to enclosed area but a CITY?

 

"It's better to burn out than to fade away." Can you hear me? This is my answer. Can you hear me!?

 

When it reaches you, I have already gone. Timing never matches. This is the logic of love at last sight.