The streets belong to the dogs

July 13th 2009

At night in Thamel, the streets belong to the dogs. The pushers, the pimps, the transsexual whores, the children and the prostitutes (all the same), and the wayward tourists (in body and mind). They stalk the streets for meat. Gangs and loners suckling at the hemlock of modernity; dying in the refuse of the Holy Bagmati. Sweeping their ashes into the air and the water, so that in death they can join wholly the pollution that surrounded them in life.

At night in DC, the streets belong to the dogs. The belligerent white bar hoppers, the bastards of diplomats, the lawyers suckling on mellifluous smoke, plucking oral pyres from their cedar cigar boxes... on the West side. And the pushers, the pimps, the gangster and welfare mothers (all the same), the crack heads, the deaf kids (from concert and school), the transsexual whores and the white kids wondering what compelled them to move here... on the East side. And to the Southwest, whiteness and a river for drowning. And to the Southeast, blackness drowning in a white river.

At night in Lalitpur, the streets belong to the dogs. But lets leave the metaphor for a moment. Should you find yourself walking through the low lit corridors of this ancient kingdom at night, you will be alone and at once accompanied by a choir. I don’t know how the kids here sneak out at night. Every corner is claimed by our 10,000-year-old watchmen -- the dogs, who have secured our hearth since we named it. You don’t need to be quiet to hear the moment. The warnings undulate and refract around every slab of cement. Stop. Go back. Turn away for your life.

And as I find myself stepping through these dog-filled streets, I’m reminded that their inhabitants smell fear. So I turn the corner brazen, solemn, sincere, saying in a language understood throughout animality, “I am going to cross and you are not going to fuck with me.”

You want to survive? Pick a street, how about Wall Street? How about Willow Creek? How about Haight? How about H? How about Pennsylvania?

At night, in your city, the streets belong to the dogs.