Lopping through city streets like a kangaroo, legs kicking behind me, sometimes touching hands to pavement for balance, or to change direction. There are people running and bicycling past me, and of course automobiles. I am proceeding uptown, moving easily and quickly. I pass a dark patch in whose shadows a panhandler asks for spare change. I hop right past him, and he yells after me, "I only have a short time to live!," shaking his head in exasperation.
Now it's light again, and I cross an intersection, on a corner of which is a crowd of young people who are squeezing into a car, like they might into a telephone booth, to leave on a trip.