The familiar unfamiliarity of a hostel room, rhythmic subsounds of chests rising, falling, air rushing into and out of nostrils, ajar mouths.

Perhaps right now and right here, Hong Kong is pure remembrance distilled into these immense towers, sky-high cities. It reminds me of new, new, and dusky San Francisco, of a foreign Miami mostly lit by car headlamps, of a surprisingly warm Iceland. It reminds me a little of the second warm week of spring in New York, when the novelty of not wearing a jacket is starting to wear off, and of fifth grade in Korea, punctuated by shrill whistles in the school field, the steady ding--ding--ding tri-tone sound of an intercom.

And when I first stepped outside I suddenly felt like I understood all the mobster movies, the John Woo gangster action flicks, the archetypical villain looking out onto the city from his/her 67th floor office, the dream of fistfights winning over global capitalism really just a fervent desire borne out of the fetid mix of life here, shadowed everywhere by monstrous towering soaring stretching pullings leaning beings.