I'm loving angels instead

This time before Christmas I feel inspired by the cities I have lived in; it reminds me of countless evenings or nights I have spent walking through places that seemed different in daylight and now revealed forms and dimensions unbelievably alive. I am an admirer of the beauty of pure urban; cities are more enticing when viewed in the light of their lamps, or of the moon, with little of the daily worming of people going on. The solitary evenings I have spent in discovery have been some of the best of my life. So I have found places in Romania, Germany, Austria, Poland, Italy or France which may have escaped my attention in the daily turmoil.

They say that true love’s measure is when you believe that nobody has loved in the same way before us and nobody will love in the same way after us. Well I say that you can only love a city in your own way. Nobody will have seen or see it the same as you do. I have seen them all through the lenses of my camera, through the lenses of night and through the reverential fear I felt when walking alone through unknown streets. It all has deepened my perceptions, and parts of me have thus rubbed into the spirits of the cities, to stay.

LET us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question …
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit.
(TS Eliot, The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock)