Trafika Europe 11 - Swiss Delights

Odile Cornuz

sidewalk. Not on my sidewalk. My clean sidewalk. My sidewalk is clean. I have to care for the sidewalk because no one else does. No one aside from me bends down. They all walk, but none of them bend down, none would lower themselves, yes, that ’s what they believe. That to bend down is to lower oneself. Whereas they just do without whatever falls. They prefer to keep walking than to stop. To come to a stop on the sidewalk is suspicious, they think. Anyone who stops on the sidewalk is someone who has lost. Someone who doesn’t know where to go. Someone no one is waiting for. Someone who’s alone and knows it. Someone who stops and bends down is someone who humiliates himself. A loser who shows he’s a loser. That he’s lost. That he lowers himself before the world, in broad daylight, on the edge of the sidewalk. Someone they must pass by quickly, someone they’ll be glad to have passed by, to have out of their field of vision, someone it ’s uncomfortable to look at, but whom they have to look at, since he has stopped and bent down. Bent down to pick something up off the sidewalk. Don’t touch that, it ’s dirty, the mothers say. It fell, it dropped onto the sidewalk. It ’s no longer the same piece of bread, the same toy. Once it touched the sidewalk, it was transformed. It ’s no longer desirable. Don’t touch. People don’t touch it,

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