Sublime

Paris, the figure of the solitary stroller who both records and comes to symbolize the emergence of the modern city has a name – the flâneur.

Everything about him was peculiar, starting with motives—or at least what he believed his motives to be. He didn’t come right out with all of it on our walk, maybe because he realized how implausible it’d sound to a total stranger. He needed infinity dollars because he planned to address the biggest existential risks to life on earth: nuclear war,

I found myself shaking his hand warmly. Minutes later I was out on the street. A boy walked splay-footed across a public lawn, nudging a soccer ball before him. A second kid sat on the grass, taking off his socks by grabbing the heels and yanking. How literary, I thought peevishly. Streets thick with the details of impulsive life as the hero ponder

Normal people carried out their lives in them with a density and individuality that no one trip could ever encompass.

mumblecore).

“not yet touched by the mild boredom of order,”

The idea of taste became a series of ever more granular preferences, liking A instead of B, rather than a deeper-seated, holistic sense of self.