Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance - nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city - as one loses oneself in a forest - that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.
My favourite thing to do in any city is just to get lost and go for long walks.
Whoever has no house now, will never have one. Whoever is alone will stay alone, will sit, read, write long letters through the evening, and wander on the boulevards, up and down, restlessly, while dry leaves are blowing.
I love the 19th-century idea of the flaneur, the poet wandering through the streets.
The most important thing for me is to walk the little alleys of the city, to find the little alcove where someone is cooking something, and just watch them do it. That's my idea of fun.
My favorite place is whichever sidewalk is beneath my feet because I am just constantly fascinated by walking and looking and learning. If I've already walked a street five times, then the next five times I walk it looking up, and I learn something about the cornices.
I'm greedy about cities - I like to form my impressions of them on my own, and on foot as far as possible, looking and listening, having conversations with bridges and streets and riverbanks, conversations I tend not to be aware of until a little later, when I find myself returning to those places to say hello again, even if only in memory.
I was broke when I lived in New York City during college, so I'd spend weekends walking around town, grabbing something to eat, and interacting with strangers. That ritual has stuck with me.
