26 February Thursday
I like seeing all of these people that I do not know. The city is full of people I do not know. As I sit on a bus in traffic, there is a man on the corner who is picking his teeth. I do not know him. I do not know him by sight. I do not know him by name. I do not know him by family affiliation. I am so accustomed to life in the country where everyone knows everyone or at least they know something about someone. At the very least they know something about where everyone lives and how they came to be there. We each become part of one another’s landscape. On one level this means there is very little privacy. In another way, it is very comfortable.
A teen-aged boy who walks along the opposite side of the street most days. He reaches one point in the block where he begins to dance. He dances with careful and practiced steps and he dances with the metal posts coming out of the edge of the pavements. He dances and he twirls and he makes deep swoops. I cannot see from the window if he is listening to music. His dance and his moves are almost always exactly the same. He moves from one section of the opposite side of the street and he crosses and then he dances the entire length of the block. When he reaches the next street to cross, his dancing stops and he continues his journey with normal walking. I do not know this boy but he is becoming familiar.EVH
Source: Le Livre Ouvert