Streets harbour secret and public stories. A street has its habits and repetitions. If something significant has happened in a street it will happen again, in new ways.
There are streets where people are prone to accidents, streets where people are inclined to fall in love, suicidal streets. There are streets where people go mad, streets of inspiration, of revelation.
A poet was once walking along the canal on Maida Avenue. He had been writing an epic, with great difficulty. Half way up the street a leaf falling from a silver birch made him grasp the true nature of his composition. He hurried home and destroyed the epic he had been labouring over for seven years. In its place he composed a haiku.
Many years later another poet was walking down the same street. He had been writing a haiku for five years. Half way down the canal a bird’s nest on the bare branches of a chestnut tree caused him to grasp the true dimensions of his composition. He rushed home and destroyed the haiku he had been struggling with. In its place, over the next seven years, he composed the epic of a nation coming to being out of fire and returning to the trickle of its magical origins.
These events do not appear in history. The histories of such streets are invisible, like underground rivers.