Late in the afternoon I go out: for a walk, to run some errands, feel the air, see the sky, experience the relationship of being among persons and things, move away from the writing I do all day, alone. I choose a way I have never gone before, in a neighborhood where I have lived for 15 years. (Sometimes I choose the same way I have always gone and step into as if for the first time.)
Everything has a new slant, like entering a new city. I see the same buildings from new angles. A wall overlooks a vast construction site I hadn't seen before. There are trees I never knew existed. They are new, I am new. Who are these people I pass and where are they going? Who am I and where am I going?
I think of a Cartier-Bresson photograph in which Giacometti is a blur, in motion among his apparently static works, advancing like his tall walking man, leaning into the flux that is the undercurrent of all things.