To begin with somebody much like any other is walking and continues to walk along streets much like any other only despite the similarity between these streets somebody walks and others alike somebody has walked before the ones walked along now despite the similarity in appearance and arrangement between these streets and streets somebody has been known to walk before despite this somebody walking begins to grow gradually less sure of where these streets like any other are leading and whether they are the same streets known before and others walk alongside going in the same direction and past going in the opposite direction and on the other side of the paving there are people like any other walking alike but as somebody walks the streets and others walk alongside there is a sense growing that those walking these streets they have walked and continue to walk haven’t entirely a clear picture of where they are or where they are going in walking along streets so alike any other and yet if that is the case somebody walking the streets sees no trace in anyone else of appearing lost or in any way disconcerted by the gulf widening between what they know as a recognisable street leading to another recognisable street and what they actually encounter in walking and continuing to walk down streets alike any other and yet seemingly utterly and yet subtly changed or altered in their very structure only in a way that somebody walking as somebody has been doing as somebody continues to do and will do again might not notice the change except in registering a gathering sense that one is growing lost among lost people a sense that has to be stifled so as to continue walking and not halt in walking these streets in a city like any other these streets with their tall grey stone buildings on either side delimiting a reduced image of the sky casting shadow on the pavement a continuous succession of buildings on either side attached one to the next without gaps or breakage no alleyways or sidestreets down which somebody walking could turn so as to divert course away from the seemingly straight undeviating lines of the streets along which all the people walk quickly but slowing imperceptibly as they walk above them the sky changes almost imperceptibly but the flat grey fronts of the buildings that they walk alongside do not change all the doors being the same brown door all the knockers being the same brass knocker all the windows similarly curtain-veiled only as somebody walks and begins to notice in anxiety that these are not doors seen before and that these are not buildings walked past before and that these streets like any other in a city like any other are not the streets of a city ever known before.
Somebody walks along streets and doesn’t want to admit to the lack of recognition not wanting to admit this to others walking alongside for a variety of what might be called credible reasons given that this person doesn’t want to be revealed as one who is lost or who does not belong or is foreign to these streets that somebody had only just been walking and has for a long time been walking secure in knowing their outline and how they are coordinated and which one links to the next so that one what might be called credible reason somebody walking doesn’t want to admit to not recognising the streets along which somebody walks for this would then raise the question as to why the ability to recognise has been lost and what brought about this change given that there has been no change to the usual route and the change from familiarity to unfamiliarity so sudden and subtle it occurred and continues to occur as somebody walks along a street only just known so that almost as if with one step everything changed as with an eclipse of the sun or as though a modification had taken place in the very structure of light itself but somebody walking knows this not to be the case given that everyone else the people so alike any other do not appear to register the faintest acknowledgement of this alteration they continue walking with apparent momentum and direction or else at ease strolling and though the overwhelming percentage of walkers do not acknowledge or seem even to notice each other in passing there are a select few rare and in some way devious or even criminal who have formed a couple with another walker and though they continue walking without stopping down streets with identical grey stone buildings alike any other they huddle together and talk to each other as though conspiring or sharing sweet-nothings or even as though attempting to guide one another and give directions in how to navigate this grid of monotonously straight streets where the only meeting is when two identical streets intersect before continuing much the same alike any other and yet for somebody who walks so fundamentally changed and so dissimilar have these streets become to those known that there urge is there to cry out and stop but this person cannot stop that is what cannot be done what must be avoided at all costs that is to stop walking because then somebody may not start again and may have to sit down and lay down and never get up again and given that no one either in advance or retreat has lain down the somebody we follow does not want to be the first to acknowledge that no one knows where they are or where these streets are leading.
In walking then despite not knowing where to go or where the streets lead somebody might in continuing to walk feel an urge gathering to reach out to another walking beside and form a couple for a brief moment a step or two or even for the length of an entire avenue walking together so as to conspire and direct and even reassure the other that they are walking in the right direction and that if not there is another street connected to this one that will provide a route back to where somebody is not lost but in reaching out so as to form a couple with somebody else one of the others like any other and yet changed through the coupling into somebody not like all others in so doing somebody would betray to others that they do not know where this street leads and that guidance is needed but a credible reason this is to be avoided somebody might think is not just that it would reflect badly that somebody like this has become lost but that it might disconcert the other walkers such that they too become privy to a dawning sense of their own waywardness and the increasingly indisputable dissimilarity between what they have known as the streets of this city and the streets that they actually walk along causing amongst all the many others walking in either direction a sudden involuntary reflex to stop and to sit down and to sleep so as to rest but if they stop will they restart and if they sit will they get back up and if they sleep will they wake somebody might ask these questions as somebody walks considering that if reaching out to form a couple did result in such a response then that would in itself put an end to forming couples for everyone as everyone who had been walking would see that everyone else has stopped walking and so realise none of them ever knew where they were going or were sure in their direction and that the forming of couples was but a means of reassurance in the face of so many streets all so similar and so without apparent end and not just a means of reassurance but an active deception of self and other given that if it was revealed to be the case that nobody knew where they were going then in every couple there must have been one half providing the other with misleading advice and inaccurate suggestions falsehoods even if well-intentioned as they knew no better than any other where any street led and it might even be that somebody reached out to form a couple to provide false directions without even the glimmer of a good intention but simply to deceive to make more lost one already lost and yet even this deceit carries with it a good intention as in deceiving a walker with a false direction one was not shattering their illusion of direction but providing them with some hope that they may eventually walk back to where they’re lost no more.
And yet despite this when walking somebody finds in walking beside somebody a couple forming like any other along these streets receding so far into the distance in either direction and receding so far into the past any memory of having known them or this city or to where they lead in this city so like any other recedes so far away and yet now there are two walking beside each other in a couple so as to conspire and provide each other with directions even if these directions are false or if not false then futile only not futile in that they provide somebody walking with an impetus to keep walking and to not stop so as to sit and sleep as must be avoided if one wants to keep going and yet somebody may ask why keep going and yet keep walking now with another beside both gesturing with hands as if adumbrating the propositions of a complex philosophical system that could in this circumstance walking streets stranged beyond recognition and yet to the eye unchanged help them in navigating its particular conundrums but there is no such system that can help them in this circumstance so it may be that with their continual hands gestures they are instead pointing to some street proximate enough to be indicated directly or else some faraway street its distance indicated by a vague movement of the arm gesturing at a street like any other but never gesturing at the street they actually walk along pointing as though to say that street over there is known even if this one here isn’t and if we can get there walking we will be closer to home pointing as if to say this street is so suddenly unfamiliar but there is one further along that intersects with this one and from there we can get our bearings and begin to navigate assuredly and no longer feel such disorientation so lost so frightened left so utterly bereft by the sudden loss or departure of streets like any other in a city like any other that can be easily recognised and negotiated without this freezing sensation of being stranded even in the presence of another walking beside you as a couple even more stranded than when somebody walks alone in this paralysing atmosphere that leaves somebody like any other with nothing but the gathering desire to stop walking and to stop and then to sit and then to lay and sleep in the middle of the pavement or in the very slight recession of the identically arched doorways such that those walking in either direction unsure of where to go or where they are and similarly unaware of anyone else around them will be forced to acknowledge an obstacle to avoid such that they will have to walk around somebody sleeping that is if they are not tempted by the sight of this peaceable restful creature to likewise stop to lay and sleep.
As along a street that was once known somebody beside another walking in a couple gesture with hands as though conspiring or directing but it might become clear to somebody walking who acknowledges and watches those like any other walking in either direction that the gestures are ultimately vacuous and empty and without meaning but that they allow the hands and arms which are so motionless in contrast to the legs and feet that must walk step after step continually one before the other down these streets between buildings they allow the hands and arms to perform some pointless but necessary series of movements so as to void and circulate the immense clotted gathering of anxiety that paralyses the body in the presence of these once familiar buildings and the mind in its inability to recognise what had once been intimately known in this circuitry of endless streets with unknown names in a city like any other somebody walking constantly with another beside gesturing vaguely without respite might be struck by a spell of drowsiness and a desire to stop and lay down in the middle of a street not as a single lost shape but as a couple beside each other who have given up walking to occupy a space in the middle of the street or slight recess of a doorway where the two of them can finally grasp some semblance of peace and sleep without ever waking up but this cannot be allowed to happen somebody walking beside somebody walking in a couple might think because somebody walking even if lost like any other along streets that have become frightening and unfamiliar somebody walking even if wanting to stop will not yet want to fall and sleep and never wake up so whether alone or a couple the temptation to stop and sit must be resisted and even to acknowledge the changed structure of streets once so well-known must be buried along with the attendant sense that somebody walking is fundamentally lost like any other in order to continue all this must exist in the background as a denial in the periphery as a shadow on the pavement overshadowed on either side by the tall grey buildings that deny a wide expansive view of the sky these buildings so mute and rigid like the bodies of those who stop walking to sleep but while it might be thought in watching a couple walking along gesturing vaguely with hands that the two may benefit from a rest that is to stop and sit together as a couple on the pavement or in a doorway while it might be thought that this could occur and would do well to occur it would never occur as somebody walking beside somebody like any other in a couple never stay in each other presence’s long enough for either one to stop and sleep the coupling is always brief relative to the soloing ending always once one half of the couple realise the other has no clearer idea or better picture of where they are going or where these streets are leading than the other does so while they were briefly coupled inevitability they split apart never to see each other hence why when somebody walking attempts to look at those others walking alongside in either direction what is seen is not groups or couples but an overwhelming percentage of solitaries.
To end then somebody walking is no longer walking beside another like any other a split occurs when one realises the other is not leading them any nearer to streets that can be recognised as familiar but is rather taking them further away into a confusion of streets so identical and so unalike but what somebody might ask makes them so changed and different from what was known once as a city like any other even if somebody walking finds somebody walking along a street not known it used to be that this unknown could still be slotted into a wider network that made its direction understandable connecting eventually to streets that could be recognised but now something has happened and how and by who and with what cause making it so that each street is unknowable as the next and the further somebody walks the further one wades into a deeper confusion of illegible thoroughfares and streetnames that can’t be enunciated such that somebody might turn briefly to look back but having come so far to find the way back now rears up as something even more treacherous than advancing step by step along streets that with each step continue to degrade obscured by the dissimilarity between what they are and what they had only just been moments ago and it seems so long ago now that somebody continuing to walk so as to keep awake to keep going on might have forgotten ever having been familiar with these streets and may have forgotten from where the walk started and having so forgotten also forgetting where was the last familiar street and forgetting too any memory of ever having been secure in the knowledge of where one is or was or had been going and the directions to get there except that it might have begun near a nursery and it might end in a cemetery but at the current juncture that is at an intersection of streets so like any other there is a grey stone piazza with a fountain at its centre to which somebody might walk like any other in order to stand in the clearing as though dazed and searching for something in the distance and it is here after walking step by step for so long that somebody might at last be allowed to stop and sit and lie down by the fountain eventually to sleep a deep sleep in which there is no more walking and no more navigating and no more streets and where nothing can be heard.
Sam Glover is a writer from London whose work has appeared before in 3:AM, minor literature[s] and Always Crashing.
minor literature[s] 