Girl with the Glitzy Eyes, she notices and pulls in her leg. The Young Man who has dreamed away the Colour from his Eyes, he is nice, I can tell. I like him. The man with sad tobacco in the whites of his eyes is sharp, focused on the rattling of the carriage. He yields his place to some more people who get on. Greasy-hair, sun-smear grey, concrete forehead, concentrated-on-the-rattle man, he yields his place without looking. The woman who has bones too big for her face, she just sits and watches, and I feel at ease because she is there, and it is good to travel with these people, and the weather is warm, and I can relax for a while and get to know them better before we shudder and jolt to the next stop. It is Sunday, a Sunday as long as a tram ride to the outskirts of town, yet the next stop always approaches too soon, and I feel anxious that one of them will leave.

I make their names, I know, but these are only the short versions of their names - a one thoughtful serving of their names, to be thought in one grasp, all at once in a gulp. Their real names take whole minutes to think through, and couldn't be written at all. Something like: girl with all parts of her face rounded, curve of cheek already describing curve of hip girl who believes in the power of a smile which is not fully hers, mercy for the man whose shoulders are slack girl, aware of many things girl, creature of nape and fringe, wisp and poised in space form . . . and so on.

People are amazing. They will always do things to surprise you. You never know when some badly-dressed character will walk up to you and start a conversation. You think he is going to try to beg for a few coins, and the next thing he offers to buy you a beer or a job as a grave-digger in Norway. You may think that you can simply observe the people on a tram, but don't forget that they are not stuffed and behind glass. The possibility of a closer contact is always there.

Another day it's the number 5 tram and there are three more stops. I hope she will stay. I've hardly begun to read her name, and who knows if there will be another chance. It's always like that. Just as you are really getting to know someone, the tram shudders and jerks to a stop, the doors fly open, and then all that is left is a final glimpse, and they never look back. The last glimpse can be the most important, even if only because it's the last. I turn my head to follow them thinking, "This is the last time I'll see them," and "Now, this moment: this is the last", and then they disappear and the tram pulls away and a kiosk blocks my view, and we rush on. Then I might catch sight of them again, one final last time, striding through the crowd of unknowns, with their faces and hands, and the way they walk, and me just beginning to fit it all together.

The man with the creases in his face lined with cigarette smoke and the big muscles in his jaw - he will be friendly to me. I have seen him before in other places and I know I will be safe with him. The people of this city have been good to me, they are marvellous people. Yet still I feel anxious among too many strangers. There are always so many more walking around, and I come closest to despair when I realise that, mathematically speaking, I can never get to know them all. Some will be forever strangers, and for me at least, it will be the same as if they had never been born. Their lives will never touch mine, their faces and names will be, for me, unknown.

I passed another one that I know from Wroclaw street just a few moments ago. For a full fifteen seconds I was remembering her name and adding to it. Lady of the wide hat, Lady whose eyes change from wide to almond, Lady of the small mouth who thinks she is beautiful, Lady who pretends not to notice - all her names and additions came to me, and I knew her more fully than I`ve known anyone for a long long time. Then suddenly, unbelievably! she nodded at me and said hello. I was left tense and apprehensive, and couldn't understand why. It could be that she has names for me - perhaps that was what shocked me.

The city is full of strangers and savages, crude haircuts and angled noses, strange earrings and runny noses. I have control though - they are not images on a screen; they are not a tropical rainforest to me. To me they are known, when I choose. I pass through and I name them and their names come to me. Iris-girl, forget-me-not-blue, white-of-eyes, straight-gaze. She will speak to me. Our eyes will meet. She will trust me.

I was walking on Berlin street, going along there. Perhaps he spoke to me and I hadn't heard, because he shouted at me: "Rat's moustache." I turned to see who had spoken.

"I'm talking to you, moustache face. What have you got for me?" he growled.

"How did you know my name?" I said.

"Are you trying to be smart?" he said. He sized me up and walked up to me.

"Crinkle eyes, I've seen you before. 'Angel eyes' is what you're called," I said. He laughed.

"What the hell are you talking about? Are you looking for a few kicks in the head? Who calls me that?"

"It's your name. I know it."

"Why? How did I get it? Where did you hear that name before? Who told you that?"

I walked on and he looked after me in puzzlement. Then he got a grip on himself.

"Fucking weirdo!" he shouted, just to have the last word. I have no illusions. I know well that under different circumstances he might have slit my throat.

Children look at me and know me. Their parents stop them from coming over to me, holding them by their struggling shoulders. I try to ignore these little ones, but it's no good. They come up to me, round-eyed, and wait for me to speak.

Drunks of course want to talk to me. I detest their fake familiarity, and their too-ready approaches. They nod knowingly to me and I feel like saying: "Do I know you? Don't nod at me. Who am I to you? Go and bother someone else." If they're sober it's different. They clap me on the shoulders and try to make me listen to their problems and stories. I nod and try to get away to someplace else.

Irreducibles I call these my people. They are more different from each other than any snowflake is from any other. I realize I know so little about them, almost nothing. A patch of sunny weather, a few dogs chasing each other across a city park, and one sits down with a crushed newspaper and I'm hooked, fixated on the way they hold the paper and cross their legs and cough, and the look in their eyes.

"Pleasant weather for April," he looked over at me and remarked.

"Undoubtedly", I replied. This was a typical way of starting a conversation, a standard phrase. Never a simple sentence. It's a rare person indeed who will begin a conversation with something like: "I am possessed by the spirit of Dionysios."

He told me how to make money. He said I shouldn't feel envy for people like him. He told me of how he has to hire and fire people, and work fourteen hours a day. We talked for a while about the stock market and foreign investments.

People want to speak to me, but when they do it's not for very long. They tell me everything - I don't ask them to - then they feel at my mercy. They expect in return some words of understanding, some words of approval for their choice of life. They want my validation and I cannot give it.

Every day I grow more and more open and honest in my approach to the people I meet. I get to know them better and better and trust them more and more. Some I have met four or five times. They recognize my face and nod to me. Summer is getting closer now, and as I travel about through the streets on my daily business people will be nice to me, and we will greet each other and be friends. I look forward to the day when I will get to know them so well that we will sit on some terrace, over cups of coffee, and have conversations about the seasons, and about the trams and about all the people, the way they look and walk, and about the days spent walking around.

Shiny cheek, sperm in her eye, she will hail me from a distance. Old tremble-leaf, smoky moustache, we will shake hands and nod and light a cigarette together.

Some day I will be able to willingly give my assent.

The city can seem a strange and menacing place unless you get to know people.

^