I’m sitting under a plane tree that’s supposedly two hundred years old. Who decided that — I don’t know. The tree won’t say. The trunk is so wide you can’t wrap your arms around it. Roots crawl out of the ground like ancient muscles. When they built the house behind me, when people still wore different clothes and spoke different languages — the plane tree was already there, growing a millimeter a year. Now its branches hang over the bench so naturally, it’s like it doesn’t even notice people or the asphalt.

Time near the tree starts acting weird. I came here to sit for an hour — that’s a big deal for me. For the tree, that hour is just a speck between two breaths. Nothing really happens.

I try to imagine its life story by normal standards: moving, meeting a friend, a storm at night. But for the tree, events are different. Real shocks are ten years of drought or a string of especially cold winters. A new shoot appears after a few seasons of hesitation. What feels like change to me is just background noise to it.

If the plane tree had memory (a doubtful thought), it would be written in layers of wood: a thicker ring after a wet spring, thinner after a hot summer. Not faces or talks, but long breaths of light and cold. Maybe I get in there too? Like a barely noticeable warming at the roots or a shift in the air on those few days I sat here more than usual.

But the longer I think about it, the clearer the awkwardness gets: I’m still looking with human eyes. The tree isn’t a person on slow rewind. It lives outside the rhythms of my body’s senses. Its life is both thick and flowing; changes happen so slowly I don’t even catch them.

A picture pops up from some article: somewhere in California, there are bristlecone pines over four thousand years old. Their life began before the Egyptian pyramids — before the Latin alphabet, before any language I know. One such pine adds a ring under its bark for forty centuries straight… Human wars pass by faster than climate shifts.

A strange gap: we both exist now under this sky and even share a yard — but we have almost no common ground. My life fits for the tree into a couple of season flashes or one heatwave among many other weather changes.

What does the tree “see” in me? Hardly anything like a memory. More like a brief trace of warmth on the trunk or the air moving around leaves from my steps on the gravel.

Even if I left a mark on purpose — carving my name into the bark or sticking a coin between the roots — the tree would live through it like a scratch as long as one ring of wood.

And me? I can look at the plane tree every day on my way home and still only notice outside marks: a crack appearing one day or a branch tilting after the wind… But between those moments, the tree stays completely outside my time.

The longer I stare at this scale difference, the more I feel the paradox: we’re both real here and now; only our fit is an illusion from the start. I don’t have an organ to sense tree time just like it doesn’t have nerve cells to grasp my speed of events.

And suddenly it’s clear: sitting under a tree isn’t about going back to nature or finding peace (not that I’m against peace). It’s a way to slip briefly into someone else’s flow of life without the right to be noticed back.

Maybe besides a couple of microscopic wood layers and a dent under my boots, nothing of me will stay with this plane tree.

Maybe that’s why it’s worth sitting here sometimes — to remember: there are always beings around with a different speed of being.

I wonder… is it even possible to look at your own stay through the eyes of someone who’ll never even notice you?

You’re standing outside with your bag. The route is already set on your phone. The “bye” has been said. Hands have let go. The air between two people standing there has just tightened a bit. The last second before moving — no one steps first.

And then, almost on autopilot, it comes: “write me when you get there.” Sometimes the other person says it, sometimes you do. A quick nod back, an invisible smile, like both of you agreed to the rules of the game. No one asks if anyone really plans to write. Everyone knows — the message won’t show up in any chat. And yet this line sounds like it’s meant for the scene itself, not the people inside it.

If you linger in that moment longer than usual, look at it under a microscope — the meaning of the phrase starts to fall apart fast. You know nothing will come after. Even if the trip was just to the next block — why promise then? No real ask, no future action.

But if you leave right after “bye,” without that little gesture — the scene feels half broken. There’s a feeling of something left unsaid, like you missed something basic.

It’s not a trick or just politeness for show. There’s no demand in those words, no expectation to follow through. The phrase lives apart from its meaning — almost like magic: a thin thread of conversation was holding on, and suddenly it’s given one more second of life by a simple “write me.”

Sometimes you catch yourself: you purposely delay leaving after “okay, bye,” waiting for that tiny move back. If it happens — you walk away calmly.

Other times it’s sharp and quick: the goodbye ends abruptly, the ritual phrase isn’t said, and then you feel the whole evening unfinished, like the door’s left slightly open.

Maybe it’s not about what the words mean at all, but about the chance to say them together. They’re only needed here and now — to voice a non-goodbye inside the goodbye.

The word “write” should call for action, but really it means something else: we both silently agree — the link between us stays formally open one extra second.

If you pull this moment out of habit and look closely — does it seem empty? Or is it that pause that keeps the scene from falling apart?

Without this little loop, the last words hang bare in the air. The energy of the meeting shrinks to a formula that asks for nothing. Without it, leaving feels oddly unfinished.

What’s more important — doing what you said? Or letting the words sound where they hold a minute of connection longer than they should?

A friend came from the other side of town — though it’s just a half-hour by subway, it feels like another country. We walk through my neighborhood, which I think I know like the back of my hand. Suddenly, he stops in front of a store with a red sign, and I freeze too. Not that I haven’t seen it before — my eyes just slid past without stopping. I’ve walked here for twelve years, but this part of the street isn’t in my memory. Through the shop window, a strange light leaks out, and it feels awkward. Is this still my neighborhood or someone else’s now?

A map pops up in my head like a route tape: home, the crossroads, left turn by the pharmacy, the café with the green couch. Everything else — a blank spot.

The weirdest thing isn’t even that a neighbor lives nearby. His city barely crosses with mine, even if we’re on the same floor. He takes a different road in the morning, greets other dogs in the yard, and knows a different doorman. Turns out, inside one Milan, hundreds of different cities live — their paths layered over each other but hardly ever matching.

Turn a corner or walk a bit further than usual — and everything changes. Faces and smells crowd in, the air feels thicker like a different climate. The blank spots press right up to the apartment door.

It’s absurd: I’ve lived here so many years and know nothing about 90% of the streets around me. You can live your whole life in a city and never step into the yard across the street — just because it’s off your usual path. A tourist comes, looks at your buildings with fresh eyes, and sees facades that seem invisible to you.

When does it start to feel like you can “know the city” at all? The truth is, everyone has just their own squeeze from the city mass: a chain of steps between point A and B, a collection of random meetings on the way, a daily sequence of fleeting gestures and glances.

Everything else stays a blank canvas between the patterns of habit.

On paper, the avenues are straight lines, the blocks neat grids under Google Maps’ shine… but no one ever walks like that.

Every route is a private ritual.

Michel de Certeau called this the “city from below.” Instead of one plan — thousands of individual paths that never fully fit into each other.

The paradox grabs you by the collar: when you move away, you don’t lose the whole city (it stands still just fine). You lose your version of that city: the exact road past a familiar window in the morning; the empty bench at the stop where you smoke a cigarette; that very alley where you know every pothole by foot, even at night.

The feeling of loss hits suddenly.
You miss your map that dissolved along with your registered address.

The city stays drawn from above as it was… but your map disappears completely.

You can’t catch that moment of vanishing — it slips away like a dream after waking.
Like memory itself erases the edges of your own city version: you can’t get back that road to work or the small ritual of buying coffee at that exact kiosk.

Sometimes I catch myself wanting to go back just to those details, not the whole city at once.

And then the question sinks deeper: can you really lose a city if each of us only ever loses our own route?

I don’t know.
But sometimes an empty map inside feels heavier than a new strange home all around.

When a person leaves, silence doesn’t just come back — it shows up again. Strange, a bit thicker than air, with a taste of words just said and awkward pauses between them.

Can you remember this silence by name, if none of it has a name?

Late evening, lying on the couch. The familiar creak of the headrest, the light outside goes out. Through the wall, the kettle turns on. That sound always feels like it’s right in my own kitchen, even though I know: it’s not my tap or my mug. Over six years, the sequence barely changed — the dull knock of the kettle on the tile, the bubbling water, quick footsteps, then a pause.

Sometimes someone laughs, sometimes the bathroom light switch clicks — that sounds different, echoing through the pipes. Funny how I can remember this order more clearly than my friends’ meeting schedules. Which days the neighbor comes home late. When there’s an argument. How long the cabinet door slams after the laughter.

These sounds have settled in my head stronger than any face details or stories from someone’s real life.

It’s a strange kind of knowing. A person becomes part of your usual landscape not because they’re close — but because their life is layered by the hours of your day. I recognize moods by the tone of water in the pipes or the voice behind the wall, though I’ve never really seen this person for more than a second in the elevator.

Faces blur into half-transparent shapes. Eyes down, a distracted “hello,” the door slams — and everything goes back to the usual blind presence. This closeness without knowing is so thick it sometimes feels like we both live in the same apartment and just can’t meet in the kitchen.

The city does this automatically. In concrete walls, everyone becomes a stream of acoustic traces for others. Footsteps above — did someone change shoes? Water at night — not asleep or came home late? The hum of a TV two floors away — did the show end? Even a rare child’s cry is known as new tenants or guests arriving.

Biography details without a single word or name.

Here’s the paradox: these ties turn out sharper than formal acquaintances. Regular people pass by — you know their faces, but never noticed the rhythm of their evenings or the tone of their lives. But here it’s the opposite: the whole lifestyle reads in tiny details, but the person isn’t there. The name is forgotten right after another hallway meeting. But if a stranger slams a cabinet door louder than usual — the brain instantly sounds an alarm: something changed.

At some point, the thought hits about the other side of the game.

If I can recognize a neighbor’s life so clearly by sounds — do they hear me the same way? They must have guesses about me: what time I come home (less often than usual — probably a business trip), how I laugh on the phone (too loud?), how many minutes I spend in the shower at night (nervous or tired?). For them, my footsteps and the pauses between them also form a kind of story.

It starts to worry me — the existence of a “me” born only from the pattern of my own sound traces. Someone nearby has a whole story about me that I’ll never hear from the outside. What conclusion do they draw about me? What seems obvious to them — though to me it’s just a random part of daily life?

When one of these rituals disappears (neighbors move away or just vanish for a long time) the space inside my head changes immediately. The silence becomes thick like a down blanket right where someone else’s life used to be the background of mine. It’s not even emptiness… More like a gap in a strip of my own feeling routine.

I catch myself more and more thinking: city life is built exactly like this. You leave dozens of autobiographies around you — a sound one for some, a visual one for others, just a map of nighttime steps for a third. And you’ll never fully read any of them yourself.

Maybe the very “I” we live inside is just an echo of other people’s careful listening?

Morning starts with a complaint. Not like an event — more like breathing. Not even awake yet, and the tongue’s already mumbling: these algorithms again, all the same stuff. No surprise left, it’s stuck to the routine that tight. The complaint just pops up by default, on its own. Like it’s something needed to kick off the day.

And right away, you reach for the screen. Finger slides over the feed on autopilot, eyes barely focusing. Everything’s annoying: same old pictures, bad jokes, news from yesterday.

Funny thing — but after a minute, you catch yourself smiling at a meme or zoning out on a cat video with a silly sweater. Just now you were mad at this circus, and now you’re back inside it.

The irritation leads nowhere. No escape, no real anger. It’s too shallow — like an itch that feels good to scratch.

The feed annoys and yet feels necessary. Like strong tea after a sleepless night: it burns your tongue, but no point in saying no.

Usually, complaints lead somewhere. A fly in your soup calls the waiter, a glitch calls the repairman.

Here, no one calls anyone and no one plans to change anything. The complaint becomes part of the whole using process. You watch a show and mutter “what nonsense,” but keep watching till the last scene.

It’s not even hypocrisy or weak character.

It doesn’t look like giving up to a big tech giant with its tentacle algorithms.

Closer to a weird balance: wanting to use the place but also keep distance from it. The complaint turns into a ticket to the show — you can be part of it without the risk of fully belonging.

Does everyone do this? Those who moan about extra messenger features are the first to react to new messages; those who curse the news feed for trash refresh it the most during the day.

Sometimes it feels like the loudest critics are the most hooked regulars here.

The word “user” feels flat now. It used to be simple: like it — stay, bored — leave or look for better.

Now the inner setup changed: half of you is hooked and devours content with appetite; the other half stands aside and comments on the absurdity out loud or in your head. Both lines run side by side and don’t bother each other at all.

The complaint gives inner permission to keep doing the same without feeling awkward.

A moral alibi: I get that this is nonsense — so I can use it calmly.

It’s not liking the place; it’s a way to stay inside it and keep the illusion of being free from its rules.

I’m writing about how weird it is to keep complaining about social media… And then this text itself becomes another post in the feed I just cursed.

An algorithm inside an algorithm.

Can you even get out of this loop?

You sit by the sea and can’t even remember how you got here. Just ended up here — waves rolling one after another, the smell of salt sticking to your skin. Your eyes get stuck on this rhythm: back and forth, back and forth.

At first, it feels like just rest. But after an hour, you catch yourself with a weird feeling — like you stopped being yourself. No usual inner voice, no story about “I came here to think.” Everything slips inside the water or melts into the air.

It’s not even dissolving — more like coming back. Like all the built-up language and thoughts step aside, and something very old wakes up in their place. Something that doesn’t know words. You could have sat here a thousand years ago and been no different from some great-great-grandfather many generations back. Or his great-great-grandfather might have looked at the surf the same way — everything disappears except the very fact of watching.

Fire does almost the same thing. If you stare at a campfire long enough, the same change happens inside. Your gaze jumps over the tongues of flame, thoughts soften, lazily follow the fire, and start flickering on their own.

At some point, you’re left almost without thoughts; even “I” becomes an unnecessary word.

And here’s where you stumble: nothing else around brings on this state. A phone holds your attention way stronger than any fire. It’s hard to look away — but after an hour of scrolling, you feel different: anxiety under your skin, sharp sticky thoughts, a tiredness like someone drained your battery through your eyes.

It’s like attention hypnosis — the same thing holds your gaze. The inability to look away feels the same. But inside, it’s the opposite: water and fire take your thoughts gently, bring back clarity; the screen holds tight and lets go broken.

The longer you look at this difference, the clearer an ancient wordless logic shows up: water and fire were here before us as a species. They tuned our nervous systems back when words didn’t exist at all.

You can imagine generations of beings — not just humans — who in the evenings stared into reflections on the water or watched the dancing flames at the cave entrance. Watching was the main mode of attention long before anything else.

It’s like a built-in program: see the movement of water or fire — a special presence mode kicks in.

Screens now grab us no less than these old forces of nature. Maybe even more: how many hours slip through your fingers just scrolling news? But inside, the difference still hits right after — when it lets go, there’s emptiness where there should have been fullness.

The truth filter works strangely simple: the real thing is known by coming back to yourself after watching the elements; the fake just pretends to bring you back.

And here’s a twist I hadn’t noticed before — it’s not just about what holds your attention longer or brighter. It’s about what happens after it finally lets you go back to yourself.

The pause between waves suddenly feels like the pause between thoughts.

If both these hypnotic pulls can hold you just as tight — why does one bring you back alive and the other leave you empty?

The moment you try to catch your breath — it feels foreign. Too neat, like you’re visiting yourself.

Forget about it, and things seem to settle back to normal. But then you can’t catch it again: what’s breathing now if you’re not watching?

You’re standing by the shop window, it’s Friday, everything glowing yellow and smelling sweet. People pick out flowers. They know that in a week there’ll be a jar of cloudy water and rotting stems. In two weeks — the trash bin. No one pretends the bouquet will last longer than a vacation or even the weekend.

And yet you catch yourself arguing over the shade of pink. Staring at the wrapping for a long time. Why does it suddenly matter?

If you think it through — it’s weird: it’s better to give something that lasts. Stone will outlive centuries, a tree can grow by the house. Even another mug will stay on the shelf for a long time. But no one gives a brick for a birthday or a cobblestone for a wedding.

Flowers aren’t just things by themselves, but a process inside the gift. You give someone a piece of time. It starts to vanish right away — right in your hands, even as you carry the bouquet down the street and wonder how it’ll be received.

It’s like an hourglass you can’t flip back. Watch it run — then it’s all gone.

Every ritual has room for a gift that won’t last. Not just flowers: fruit on a plate disappears fast, pastries vanish before the feast ends. No culture has made eternal gifts for holidays or goodbyes.

There’s a feeling — the shorter a gift’s life, the stronger you feel the moment of giving.

Money can be spent another way, it doesn’t lose shape for anyone in the exchange: you can get it back anytime, no forever-spending gesture.

But a flower dies here and now.

If there was a magic flower that never wilted — you’d have to throw it away on purpose just to keep the ritual of letting go; otherwise it’d just become room decor and stop being a gift.

At funerals it’s clear: you lay the bouquet where its life matches the last day of the one you came for. Two short lives pass side by side — it feels right to leave something alive and temporary with those who leave forever.

With love it’s even more interesting: you bring fragile beauty knowing the story’s end — it’ll end soon.

In this is the confession of everyone’s biggest fear: nothing lasts forever; but right now it’s very beautiful.

A gift without an expiry date would be an investment in the future or a relationship; flowers work because they’re fully tied to this moment and will vanish with it.

If the meaning of love hides in the ability to share what’s doomed to die… Maybe the true name of love is loss?

You stand at the bar, and everything’s by the book. You haven’t even exhaled — and he’s already setting down the cup. Doesn’t ask, doesn’t look you in the eye. Just knows: ristretto, rhythm, you like a tram at eight in the morning. Ten years running. His name has never come up once.

And you don’t want to know. It’d get harder to breathe nearby if you tried to say it. The whole thing holds together on silence.

This happens in every city. The street cleaner outside your window — you know his silhouette before dawn, but never asked his name, where he’s from, if he has someone at home. The security guard nods at you a bit longer than at others. Sees you every day — yet both of you are invisible outside those twenty seconds at the door.

The neighbor with the dog shows up more than many relatives, but between you there’s always just a quick “hello” and a nod toward the animal.

Sometimes it feels like almost all life passes through these nameless people. The hours with loved ones fade among brief meetings with figures around. Loved ones sound loud, but rare; strangers quiet and in the background — but constant.

Something’s off in this layer. You want to call these ties shallow or random — but the word’s wrong. These meetings become part of the city’s fabric just as surely as the train schedule; only this fabric has no names.

The comfort is strange: as long as no one asks for anything — you can just be a movement through someone else’s day.

A name brings extra weight. Hooks on expectations, adds awkwardness, ties you to things you don’t want. If the barista ever introduces himself — that light daily bridge falls apart; fear kicks in of messing up a smile or being too much.

Turns out the city’s coziness isn’t built on how many close friends you have or deep talks at home at night. The usual world is made of nameless faces — figures on the subway route or the usual bench.

If someone disappears from this layer — suddenly it’s empty where there was just a dot in the landscape before. You can’t explain the loss: it wasn’t really friendship… but still something’s missing so much the day breaks in two.

Maybe these weak ties are needed to feel part of something bigger? Seems logical enough…

But then why does anonymity feel like a must? Why does a name bring almost a physical pushback?

The answer feels close: no name leaves you a free element in the coordinate system of strangers. You can just be here and now without a story on your back.

And then the view flips: you yourself become that figure for others almost every day. Someone knows your silhouette in the morning coffee shop better than their own reflection; someone’s used to your walk at the bus stop; someone notices the book in your hands more than their own apartment keys.

Inside these people lives a version of you you’ll never fully see. Their memory collects details: coffee cup always without sugar, a glance past the checkout in the evening, a smile only on Fridays.

Part of you belongs to these looks forever.
What will be left of this shadow when one day you vanish from their route?