1.15.13
Ambling around the neighborhood this evening—it really can’t even be called walking—it’s too pointless, I’m reminded of the French verb errer or to err—i.e., to go nowhere, or rather, to wander, to go anywhere. It’s the opposite of getting lost: Everywhere you end up is exactly what you want. My neighbor from the fifth floor passes on his bicycle, waves, and as he passes, I see, tucked in on his little shelf under the seat, the white rat with whom he lives, who looks back at me. He never goes anywhere without him.
5.17.13
In a relatively quiet street that swells out at a certain point into a small square overlooking the river, a man on a cell phone is out walking his dog, milling aimlessly around the square as he talks, as does a woman, also on a cell phone, also walking her dog, and, of course, the two people don’t notice each other, but the two dogs do, and by straining gently but insistently on their leashes, keep trying to arrange a closer exchange, which the two people, of course, completely ignore, though finally the man gets tired of the constant strain on his arm and, jerking the leash, stalks off, heading east, leaving the distinct impression that his phone call is not going as well as planned.
5.29.13
It’s a world unmarred by color tonight, un-jarred. Which is a matter of the light, no doubt, perhaps its angle—perhaps its angle is unusually sharp, what there is of it, as it’s almost dark, what there is comes in low and flat, and the shadows are black and the sky that odd white that you only get right before nightfall.
Night falls. And all the dogs, too, tonight are black or white, with everything else different—size, fur, ears—but then I notice, so too are the cars, though occasionally one is black and white, but only rarely.
6.21.13
Walking down a long, quiet street in the dark, thinking that this is the shortest night of the year. For a while my footsteps are the only sound I hear until I hear something up ahead, and the noise grows louder, and soon is clearly a party in full swing, clearly coming from a building down the block a bit, and as I pass the building, I notice that every window of every apartment in it is dark.
I turn the corner and notice two people, somewhat similar in appearance, yet with identical dogs—schnauzers—pass each other without a glance and continue walking in opposite directions.
6.25.13
We have a cat. “We” is used here in the broadest sense, and in this case, one that signifies a body constituted by affection, and, in this case, for a particular cat—one with black and gray stripes in that odd but very common way in which the gray actually has a slightly green cast. The cat slithers through the café, particularly the sidewalk part of it, a few times a night, always clearly heading somewhere else, does not look to the left or right, but leaves in its wake this “we” who affectionately watch it pass.
7.5.13
Seagulls crying in the dark over the park or the not-so-dark, their cries sharp and always sounding so far away, though in fact they’re circling aimlessly albeit gracefully right overhead as I pass by the darkening park on the second day of summer weather, thus the streets are busier at 11:00 p.m. than they’ve been all day long, and no one is going anywhere.
7.13.13
The eve of a major holiday, so everything is very busy, very loud, with people absolutely everywhere, some of them literally dancing in the streets—it’s really quite nice. I turn into a particularly busy street, no cars—there’s no room for them—but down which a young couple is trying to negotiate a stroller in which sits a very miserable little girl, maybe four, crying her eyes out and clutching a cat. A very patient cat, which she brushes across her face to dry her tears, then goes on crying, while the cat continues to stare straight ahead.
7.19.13
In the course of my nightly walk, I stop, as I often do, at a certain sidewalk café, often to write down the thoughts and impressions of the walk of the evening—or of the night, depending on how late it’s gotten. And out of the corner of my eye, I see a cat scooting by, or perhaps I should say that I have the sense of a cat’s fleeting form against the face of the granite curb at the edge of the street just off to the side. It’s an unusually high curb—it amounts to a screen about a foot high. And this happens several times—several cats, all black and all zipping west at a good clip, which, after a while, I think, seems a little odd—when I happen to look up at just the right moment to see that, in fact, it’s nothing more than the shadow cast by bicyclists hit by a streetlight not strong enough to strike the building beyond, but turning the curb (much closer) into a lanterne magique. People walk by too, but because they’re moving much more slowly, their shadows can’t turn them into animals.
7.25.13
Cooler this evening, particularly crossing the bridges, where the wind picks up and is making a mess of the surface of the water. People walking, lots tonight, and almost in rhythm, as if it were a way of collectively resisting the wind. I stop and look over the parapet, down onto the quay, where five pigeons seem to be marching in step in a single, evenly paced line. I know this is only the projection of a human attachment to order onto random avian behavior, but still, it’s a remarkably straight line and remarkably evenly paced.