Walking through the streets you glance into the faces of the people you pass and others glance back, mostly fleetingly. If looks connect for more than a fraction of a beat there may even be the flicker of a smile, or a pulse of fear. Every person is a potential source of uncertainty and you silently, rapidly, check to see that the bounds of this uncertainty are still valid, that the definition of stranger still holds, still upholds their relative anonymity. What is important is the system of classification, its readiness to hand. Faces are filled with intent and as you watch intent flitters lightly or is held, gains or loses focus, is dark or light, darkens or lightens; it circles around you but never catches you in its net, you too are anonymous, given to the passing crowd, le monde, the mundaine. It is only in dreams (or in novels or faits divers) that a stranger suddenly looms at you, makes an incomprehensible demand, keeps coming closer and won't let go. You struggles to remember if this should be a familiar face, but you draw a blank. You don't know them, have never known them, and yet they are coming for you. It is in just this way that an emotion can attack you, put its claws into you by your own unwilling consent without your knowing why, or where you met this fate before. And as in the novel or the dream there is always a story that can be unfolded, if you take the time, if you step back far enough to some forgotten corner of life, to some eerie dreamscape.