As far as dreams are concerned, there is not much difference here compared to the countless small-town boys who grow up in terrible neighbourhoods that reek of piss and chaos at all times, where the roads are barely paved no matter how the rest of the city looks. That is all you want when all things are tallied up, no matter how fancy the wine or how strong the coffee is. You want a place of your own, far away from the streets and alleys you know like the back of your hand. You want not just to run away but take everyone along with you. Even if you leave alone, you wish to return and take the others along. No one should have to live here, you think, and then years pass, and you continue visiting the streets where pigs still roam and swine talk about other people, and you tell yourself there is work to do. Much work is done already, but in your heart, you know tenfold remains.
A poor house remains that way. No matter how well you live, a house that was poor once finds ways to remind you of where you come from, and if it doesn’t, the neighbourhood is not too far behind. You must leave the place for anything to change. Unlike ideas wildly propagated by the films we watch, no one wants to remember their roots. All growth is pointless if we remember everything about where we began from. The urge to leave, in itself, is an urge to forget. Things happen now, so we can forget what happened before. Such is the dilemma of having everything in the palm of your hand—the other hand remains empty. Looking back at my life until now, as I wrap a quarter spent neatly with the ribbon of time, my days are a whimsical irony. No matter what I do, I will always live between two worlds.
But in my house, we do not shy away from work. Perhaps, there is some merit in those streets after all. Even if I run to some hill half the world away, I will always belong to a crowded market neighbourhood where everyone dreams about leaving and gets stuck forever, in one way or another. This has given me the best about myself, and it has, in many ways, given me the worst of myself.
Yet, it has only been twenty-five years. Much work is done already, but in my heart, I know much remains still.