the sound of my boot scuffles on the pavement fills a circadian rhythm. tish tish tish tish click. gravel swirls on the heels of my feet. then, here, the stench of the city has risen up, giving me new ears to the old. i smell see the exhaust of human parity--junked cardboard that has accumulated, been rained on, dried out, ranked up; a condom, with its creamy coloured sperm reduced and condensed by the elements, smells like a rubber raincoat on a radiator; sticky tar, the amalgam, mingling with dust and exhaust and I inhale it like a wet blanket. it is all a festering babble, the faded crust of dirt and discard.

my boot is marking a line, a matrix, across this soup. i am direct, because I am going somewhere, but I have my head down, and, I would not know a gesture of recognition in this mumble.

i think of the familiar things.  Get rid of the job that slowly kills you. Don't wear polyesters shirts in the sun. Find something you care about. Smile more frequently. i scratch my neck to divert attention from the streaking sun, burning. in the house I just pass, i can hear two PI kids fighting over something. "fucking give it to me!" i kick a stone with the tip of my boot.  "Be careful you two, or you'll break it" the stone flings off into the long grass. Get rid of your shit. a call, a hope, a fear, an unspoken mantra--Insistence, a long walk in the city.