Fragments of Angel's Maps - a prose-poem / Sebastian Ysz-kit Yim

A
Everybody is here, having a worldly, speedy yet tragic-comic party: men and women, boys and girls, buyers and sellers, walkers, loners, strangers, the exploiter and the exploited. But he is not one of them. An outsider. He cannot figure out why, he simply isn’t - confidently and assuredly the angel spreads his wings . . .

B
flying . . . singing . . . dancing . . . moving . . . remembering . . .

A
He remembers walking, talking and smiling with that person here, though that person might be dead, or happily alive somewhere in the city. He does not care, he thinks. He is here, he and that person were there, yet he cannot choose where and when to love and linger. He now just walks from here to there on the crowded streets, being frustrated by unfeeling elbows, seeking for a node which would arrest him for at least a moment. He hates to think, he thinks.

B
Yet, the angel flies across the sky . . . glittering and weeping. He now stays above Mongkok . . . and . . .

A
Mongkok should not be a capitalized word, though, to the commoners, it is the capital of their unhomely city. He is always amazed by the boisterous beings he meets here: what’s so talk-worthy about their lives? Their voices and words fight each other in order to be cherished, joining the neon signs which whisper to loners. He is affirmative that that person is still a friend of McDonald’s, KFC or Café de Coral, though he is no longer one of his, or maybe never was . . .

B
But the angel lovingly looks back as he embraces time, yet . . .

A
He sees that person getting on a bus, but the images are blurred with that person gazing back towards something, not sure if it was him. Sometimes he is not certain whether that person knows who he is, after all these years. But he promises to keep on walking, towards the end. He thinks of all this, while holding in his hands an angel figure, an pricey yet princely toy he purchased from a shop in Mongkok. He knows it cannot replace the one which that person left him. But he hates to think. It is still the same angel, as both of its wings are broken. Yes they are the same. Yes. He remembers . . .

B
and he sings in chorus, knowing the meaning of love . . . the melody flows and grows, and . . .

A
Now everybody is here, yet that person is not, and so he does not know what he is searching for, amidst the lights and sounds of the vivid multitude. Maybe a few secrets of this radiating and secular place could be located, only if the clock listens. Guided by the missing angel, he walks through shopping malls and tunnels, running amok in Nathan Road, gathering strength and spirit and speed to abandon his departing youth . . . He senses that he will fall down for good once he stops, but it does not happen. He just feels a sense of loss invading him endlessly. He stops in the middle of the street, panting, regaining a sense of space and place. Yet that person is, unexpectedly in front of him across the road, face to face, yet he turns away his eyes, waits, and looks again at where that person stood: nothing. He should have seen nothing but some floating feathers in the air, which are then trampled by the pedestrians. Maybe it’s time to go home, he thinks. The neon signs continue to blind his hazy eyes, illuminating Mongkok, the place where he was not alone. He knows that something new and beautiful is waiting for him, somewhere in Mongkok, a place he will always return to . . .

AB
Wings closed, eyes closed, but the world and time expand. Angels leave and come again, he knows and we know. Release one’s palms and watch, the angels fly, and we follow them, with love missed and love found… hence, a city breathes and lives, again and once more.

*A story/narrative/soliloquy inspired by Walter Benjamin’s idea of the angel of history.

Sebastian Ysz-kit is a student from CLIT2018 Critiques of Modernity 2008-2009 second semester.