Happy, very happy, Miss Nobody Knows. Abruptly sits down under a porch, writes, laughs silently:
-- Air.
Why it's pleasant to walk quickly.
Blue clouds.
Clouds in a bundle.
Balloon clouds.
Clouds that are looking.
Those who say Good morning Miss, are you looking for something.
Kind people.
So kind.
A satiny color.
Shiny jackets.
Women.
Why all women.
Leaps up and starts walking again.
The city goes through her legs, in between her steps. A city suspended and full. River city, ocean city. Large city, disorder.
Large.
Spread out and flat, stretched out, laid out flat under the sky. Spread out to the four corners, stretched out.
With openings, filled with holes. Windows, intersections, lights.
Streams and puddles, reflections. Oozing water. Old sewers.
Sections of walls, fissured, and yellow. Graffiti. The grain.
Tree-lined alleys.
Wind.
Wind. Is it really so brutal.
Buildings, spread out. Roofs. Iron stairs, gaunt facades, impossible. And right in the middle of the city, trains.
The wild speed of trains in the middle of buildings.
A quiet little girl goes home after school.
Disarticulated and full, a city, its certainties, its neighborhoods. But worried, crying out. Shot through with cries.
Emptied city, old city. Young.
Disorder, evidence, disorder.
Clock towers at the bottom of the hill, on street corners.
A man stops on the avenue, he pulls a passerby by the sleeve, he asks him, in a whisper: And the wide suspension bridge, does it still exist?
An old lady, carefully made up, screams into a public phone, she cries out, They've cut me off again, this phone stinks, this filthy phone, it's not possible, I can't believe it. She gets into a state, chokes and laughs at the same time. She's already lost three coins in the machine, she goes on, harasses it again.
One eats. Sidewalks filled like plates.
Fries, rolls, hot-dogs, veggies and coffee.
It's a holiday, of course. The sky can be so alive, so vast, a clean, new oilcloth, blue squares. But there're all those old people walking, light as feathers, they walk prudently, lightly, when one looks at them, one feels the hard pavement under their feet, one feels it when one sees their beaten-up sneakers. Their sport jackets, too short, incongruous.
With expansive gestures, mean talk on a roof.
In boxes, on the ground, jackets, dresses, books, records, bottles of wine. Household utensils.
Motors.
Sheets.
Something floats in between things, insinuates itself in the grooves of the sidewalk, window frames, blinds, insinuates itself, affirms itself, yields against the walls, and rises up, withdraws and leaves.
On a pediment: God never wanted you to be less than yourself.
Young God, demanding and calm. Atomic God. How to live up to everything He says.
A radio pours out its music in the street.
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