futurebird's Diaryland Diary
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Like sleepwalkers with eyes that look awake.
While walking today I stopped and watched the people. This is one of the best cities in the world for watching people I counted more than 50 in just the space of a few minutes. But, they never looked at me, or anything much for that matter, unless it was in their way or they thought they might buy it. Even the people walking slowly didn�t glance around. It didn�t feel like a Sunday today. On Sundays people should walk slowly and look at each other. If there�s a scrap of spiritual feeling left in me there it is.
I�m reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat again. There is one case of a woman suffering from total interference. She calls the doctor her sister and can�t see why it�s important to distinguish one thing (or person) from another. Maybe, she like a new yorker caught in a perpetual state of walking.
I shouldn�t be so critical. I do the same thing when I walk. There�s no time I think to look at everything to see the people or the buildings or the dogs. Even the dogs have learned not too adsorb too much of the world! I guess the dogs would get nothing done if they did. I wonder of they think I must keep my mind on getting to the park, there�s no time for sniffing that ...
Today I ran down Madison avenue and I looked at all the galleries and the shop windows with clothes in them. The models in the windows always have a huge monolithic-looking plane of white, or black behind them, and it is because of this, more than anything, that the clothing looks so appealing. Most of the city is cluttered: like the newsstands covered with stickers for cigarettes and candies and newspapers. Seeing an enormous open space is so astonishing you are compelled to look longer, to wonder at the object that has earned so much precious space.
I wonder if people from New Mexico would be that impressed? It seems to me that to impress someone from such a poetically unuttered part of the world you�d need a whole bunch of clutter all over the place. Maybe that explains the eclectic jumble of designs found in some southwestern folk art.
Or maybe we look for space unconsciously, universally. And that�s why people walk in trances and all the dogs ignore me.
1:15 a.m. - 1979-07-09
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