I had arrived in Riga to visit a woman friend. Her house, the town, the language were unfamiliar to me. Nobody was expecting me, no one knew me. For two hours I walked the streets in solitude. Never again have I seen them so. From every gate a flame darted, each cornerstone sprayed sparks, and every streetcar came toward me like a fire engine. For she might have stepped out of the gateway, around the corner, been sitting in the streetcar. But of the two of us I had to be, at any price, the first to see the other. For had she touched me with the match of her eyes, I should have gone up like a magazine.
—Walter Benjamin, “One-Way Street”
Street-plan. — I know one who is absent-minded. Whereas the names of my suppliers, the location of my documents, the addresses of my friends and acquaintances, the hour of a rendez-vous are at my finger-tips, in her political concepts, party slogans, declarations and commands are firmly lodged. She lives in a city of watchwords and inhabits a quarter of conspiratorial and fraternal terms, where every alleyway shows its colour and every word has a password for its echo.
(from ‘One Way Street’)
