That anonymous crossing…

That anonymous crossing, the singular and special moment in which so many people graze shoulders and arms. The seconds you take to cross moving firmly feet and legs with the same rhythm of arms. The head in a topic that worries one, but at the same time concentrated on not stepping on someone’s foot or crashing somebody. Only grazing is allowed. The endless moment of unknown and serious faces, people carrying books, suitcases, talking at the cell phone, a child holding his mother’s hand. That uncomfortable moment in which one feels nothing… Or rather one more in the unknown crowd, who not only unknowns everybody doing the same movement, but even thinks he unknowns himself. New faces in one’s life, some we might recognize, but not greet, just an exchange of looks; if one’s not staring at the floor fearing a fall. Uncountable shoulders, uncountable feet, unaccountably one tries to count them, or at least estimate how many. But once more one fails, that answer can’t be gotten that easily. That anonymous crossing to which many people who were talking stop it in order not to loose the conversation thread between so many people, so many faces with other conversations in mind. So many people, so many lives, so many unknown bodies. I am a stranger, he is one too, but looks are unavoidable. Firmly one crosses, finishes the peculiar moment and stays thinking in one of the faces… But generally they have been simply ‘nothing’ and ‘nobody’. Simply unknowns we don’t know and we do not care about their lives, their worries, their faces. That anonymous crossing tends to be eternal although it lasts just some seconds. It can make us think, it can make us feel we are nobody. One more, just one stranger more. One more, one less, whatever. That singular moment were there are unavoidable grazes, exchangeable looks. Firmly one walks, firmly one goes on. We did it, we didn’t crash, we didn’t hook, we didn’t fall down, we didn’t recognize each other… That anonymous crossing to which many people call ‘crossing the pedestrian path’ is which makes me feel one more, one less between so many people alike, but so different at the same time. That anonymous crossing over parallel white lines. The singular anonymous crossing over the pedestrian path.

Vale Becker