All those stories that inhabit the cities, both real and fantastic, that Ailene fell in love with.

So many things happen in the span of one day.

Minds change, hearts fall, hands reach, hugs are traded for kisses, decisions flicker and falter or shine steady on to meet a brand new day. We sleep, drink coffee, eat processed meat (with zero trans-fat), check our Facebooks, Tumblrs, Twitters, and then keep our thumbs on our shiny plastic toys that send SMS’ across the air. We run, jog, stretch our bodies, we fill our lives with all these little trinkets that we think define us.

We glance through the advertisements, the pithy little PR articles in our newspapers, absorb the facts, pretend we care what the score is in today’s games, and it is all futile. We are all, each one of us, a mere statistic, a slash in the blackboard of worldwide economy that determines the daily average consumption of ___________.

We read books, play our songs, think our thoughts, change our stands, switch allegiances, make enemies, make friends, play inane relationship games where we dance around one another, treading the fine line between lust and love and friendship and seduction and fucking. Documents (thoughts, plans, strategies, stories, conversations) saved in rectangular steel boxes that hum and blink its little lights.

With each little action, each strand of thought, we shape the fabric of lives around us, and in the process: shape our own lives.

Our hearts spill out its feelings and emotions through our mouths, until they become words, and the words take flight, never to come back. And still our hearts churn out its deceitful, beautiful thoughts. Traitor to our own world values and the beliefs we would like to say we stand for.

Sling shot staccato sounds of popcorn popping in microwaves, hissing sounds of the water boiling, steam rising, and the city moving in a steady roar (do you hear it?) around us. Trains, construction sites, radios, buses, cabs, cars, SUVs… we make a tremendous ruckus as we change the landscape with every mile we consume.

A birth, a death, an anniversary, a memory made, a song written, a song sung, a poem written, a story started, a story ended, a business started, a business ending, a sale made, a sale not made. Tears, laughter, giggles, moans, whistles, sighs. Far away, thunder rumbles, a hurricane leaves a town, rain falls; my city fries in a pool of its own sweat.

So many things happen in twenty four little hours, in one day.

And we are all none for the wiser.

So little of us bother to make the most of what time we do have right now. We keep half of ourselves in the past, and the other half in the murky soup of our own thoughts (the pot that holds the what-ifs, maybe-I-should-haves, and-yets, et cetera ad nauseaum).

As that song went, “My only goal is just to be. There’s only now. There’s only here. Give in to love or live in fear. No other path, no other way, no day but today…”

Who knows if there will be a tomorrow? But as sure as I am writing this, there definitely is a now. What are we doing with our now’s?

Before 6AM, my neighborhood is ruled by cats.

I was intruding on a monarch’s kingdom and the familiar streets take on strange shadows and corners.

I saw cats everywhere.

There was an orange one sharpening her claws on the tree stump while another looked on with head tilted to the side. A cat looked at me through slitted eyes as I ran by. A cat with strange grey markings never moved from its place, and I ran past it several times. A cat munching on grass stalks. A cat sitting on our neighbor’s wall. A cat licking its side. There was a cat crouched low behind the santan bushes. Slow perambulations from a sleek dirty cat. No kittens, though. Maybe they were in day care. All of them gave me that heavy-lidded stare when I ran or walked past by them.

Then I turned a corner. I saw the sun directly above the street I turned into, and the world filled with a glorious white light. Everything, even the dirt on the wall, seemed new.

I blinked and noticed the humans.

There was a purple-track-suited woman being coached by her grandfather. Men in weirdly cut shorts were swatting tennis balls back and forth. The maids started watering the plants. I saw a man lovingly trim the leaves of a beautiful bonsai. Carpenters working on the new mod-ish apartments in the corner. The smell of meat being fried in oil. Children sitting, blinking, on the stoop, hair still mussed from sleep. A man with a tie and a big bag full of white paper folders opening the car door. A woman running in a rather weird, jerky manner. (Her shoulders are going to hurt tonight.)

The cats?

My guess is that they’re dreaming, slumbering, waiting until we relinquish control of the waking world back to them.

Typing this short missive from the lobby of our hotel here in downtown Kowloon. There’s a rather elegant-looking silver teapot that’s waiting for me to empty it of its contents, hence the “short missive.”

Hong Kong still looks the same – pristine, clean, and humming with a high-charged energy only real cities generate. I can’t help but love this city. It’s such a, well, city.

I’m tripping on the street signs (what is that font they use? Helvetica? Oh come on…) and the boutiques so near to our hotel. I intentionally did not make an itinerary for myelf. Oh the joy of empty days.

If we are friends and you’ve been trying to get hold of me, the bad news is that you can’t reach me unless you leave me random notes and messages on our social networking sites. (The roaming function doesn’t work , which I find unusual, as my service provider usually finds every possible way to add charges to my phone bill.)

The good news is: you can’t reach me, and we are free to enjoy the novelty of corresponding in paragraphs and straight sentences. No more handy “like” buttons or 150-character limits in our Twitter. Write me an email. I miss reading about your days.