Even the best-reviewed cities, in all their coffeetable-worthy builtworld gloss, harbor a hidden vein of real humanity. Because people still live here. Day-to-day life isn’t a curated social reel; there’s sorrow, shame and pain nipping at the heels of the stories we tell ourselves, about ourselves. Whether you’re John Wick or John Doe, there’s no escaping this shared human condition.
I excavate these buried fissures like a Skywalker senses The Force—an attunement I developed on the streets as a kid. It used to feel like that. A superpower. But with age, I’ve learned to despise the signs of what we categorize humanity. What we’re really referring to is that sorrow, shame and pain that reminds us that something is deeply wrong.
Now, like everyone else I know, I exercise denial as a form of protest in the face of decay and death. If the light is everlasting life without fear, I rage against its death.