The infinite city.
I’ve been wanting to post something about this for sometime, but never managed to put my thoughts into words. I hesitate to even start this post knowing that it is a weak attempt at trying to describe something that borders on the infinite. If you have ever spent any time in Budapest, you will instinctually know what I am talking about, but will have the same problem with your words: feeling the limitation of language when trying to describe something which is elusive and enigmatic.
Budapest is an infinite city. You can have walked down the same street many times, but still feel like you have never walked down it before. The sensation can be rather odd and disconcerting the first few times it happens. It would be something akin to temporal dislocation. The feeling that you have been, not yet, here before. The street is familiar, you know where it is you are going to and where it is you have come from, but this same street is one you have never walked down, many times before.
Emotionally speaking, Budapest is a magical city. Full of scars, pain and with charred and broken histories, it yet has the amazing ability to heal. To heal itself and to heal its inhabitants. Like all mega-cities, the mundane things can be maddening and frustrating. Traffic is horrid, city services desperate at best and all of it is embraced by the gritty ugliness of decaying urban infrastructure.
But then, just when you don’t mean to look, it catches you unexpected as you walk down the same street that you have never been before. Suddenly you are somewhere new and magical. You are somewhere where your heart feels gladness at something mysterious unfolding before you. And in that unexpected moment your scars are healed, salvation is offered, forgiveness is given and you are born, new, into that place, and into that moment.
Infinite is this city.
