The Man with a Flower in his Mouth

He wears a mask – he pretends to be an idling strolling observer of others: an amused spectator. He watches people on the street in shops in cafes: wherever he finds them he notes their peculiarities and imagines their lives. Like a naturalist with a bone of an unknown creature he extrapolates and forms an entire animal in his mind’s eye. It is his joy; it is his defence: he revels in life so as to ignore death. For its shadow lies over him.