the rules of the street are all the same; to engage, to disengage, to stop when you must,
to keep moving when you safely may;
to run when your heart says freeze, to stand firm when the crowd says go;
these are the gifts of a city, the gifts a city of lost souls gives to its people;
to heed when not asked to and ignore when one can, to distance oneself from the crowd, but not stand out; to step away from either side of a fight;
to walk the line of the law without appearance of judgement or context of innocence or guilt; without appearance of agreement or disagreement;
to just flow, one of the crowd, invisible, indistinguishable from the rest;
an overcoat, a shadow on the side of a building; a ghost or projection of self, no different from
the rest;
to see without noticing and know without seeing, to be above the crowd but not separate from
it, to know when to duck out and how, without moving your head, without blinking your eye;
to smell a predator three streets down and walk the other way;
to move in the manner or way the city of lost souls moves, and watch other men’s hands; to not
lose direction or stride, not get tangled up in your own or the crowd’s shuffling feet;
no panic, no appearance of disquiet or alarm;
to fill and empty your lungs, your eyes, your heart, with concrete and glass and empty glimpse
of sky;
to grasp and let go, and know which is which; to be content, discontent, decisive, indecisive, cold
hearted without cruelty, nobody’s sucker, no victim; loving without adhesion, street smart
without caution or calculation;
all that is a gift, a precious gift, to cut loose quick in order to avoid solicitation, to hang on when
there’s no letting go;
for this is the nature of a city of lost souls, and its law;
every engagement is unreasonable;
a returned glance is a proposition;
every knot which cannot be untied ought to be sidestepped, walked away from, avoided;
and a man must know when to cut and when to run, know how to discern what is essential from
the detail in which it is wrapped, for everything cannot be equally considered;
in a world of provocations set ups and head on collisions; in a world of sideswipes and one on
ones and spurious allegations and quick cons;
in a city of false movements and cool handed strangers,
in a city of lost souls, where the terrible cloak of invisibility and bloodlessness envelopes and
protects and silences its people, like night.
5.21.21
