Just recently, I moved to a big city, and of course, it makes sense that it’s not easy to get around here; it’s an old town with narrow sidewalks where all the pedestrians simply can’t fit. You bump into someone every few moments, you have to dodge someone every five steps, and that interrupts your train of thought. I simply can’t think of and solve as many things while walking, but after all, you can get used to that. I told myself that I just had to take my outdoor thoughts elsewhere and process them there. Gradually, however, I noticed that my outdoor thoughts, which you have only in the cold air, were coming back to me, but it wasn’t because I was spending more time walking. I was just spending more time outside because I found myself stopping every few moments and then standing in the queues, which were forming on sidewalks all over the city. Crowds of people were forming on every corner of every third street, but they dispersed quite quickly, and the waiting time was 4–7 minutes, and thus it was easy to get used to. I simply set off 4–7 minutes earlier for each turn I wanted to make.

At first, I walked around the city following its detailed plan for a while, noting down the time I expected to spend waiting at each turn. Nevertheless, the actual waiting time soon began to increase. And then, it started to take me more and more time to rewrite the times at each turn and create alternative faster routes, which took me longer to figure out. In addition, the joy of discovering a new turn I could take disappeared from my travels because it would disrupt my schedule for the whole day. Sometimes, you spend more time planning than sleeping.

A problem which became quickly apparent when queues began to form is street aggression. Its prevalence is directly proportional to the sharp changes in temperature or pressure that are occurring more and more frequently from day to day. There are only a few days left when you can really dress comfortably, and so whether the temperature or pressure is higher or lower, there will always be someone who starts acting out and kicking around because they are desperate and just want to get through. Instead, they have to stand at every corner for about 10 minutes, even if it’s pouring rain, and the time allowance for each turn increases by about 2–4 minutes every two weeks or so. About a week ago, the city administration began considering the possibility of introducing shuttle service on sidewalks. In a neighboring country, the maximum speed for pedestrians was set at 6 kilometers per hour.

It regularly happens to me that one of the stations on the route I plan to take is exceptionally closed on the day of my trip. It’s closed somewhere else every day, but I also take a different route on each one. It’s strange, and I don’t know why, but often, too often, these two things coincide, and then I sleep even less. My period also slows me down, as I walk much slower and lose my breath more easily. I usually need to add 2–3 minutes to each turn because of it. In the initial days of my period, it’s usually 3 minutes, and by the end, it’s only about 30 seconds.

Sometimes, when I have enough energy, which I rarely do due to lack of sleep, I also go shopping. I started going to the store recently again based on detailed maps with a legend created in accordance with what time of day it’s strategic to be in a particular store. Here, it’s on Tuesdays between 10 and 11 am, and on Wednesdays around 1:30 pm. This applies differently to other stores, but I don’t go anywhere else because it would take me too much time to plan a new route. Instead, I can sleep for about 5–9 minutes longer. Everything happens within a range. My life takes place within a range of 8–12 minutes. I function in such intervals; it’s like musical functioning. Fortunately, as I mentioned, the time spent in queues is increasing, so I actually have more time to think. I’ve already thought up an entire novel here; I just don’t have time to write it.

I’m still in this store where I went the day before yesterday to buy just a few basic items, such as rice, bread, and bananas. I hope that when someone lets us out, I’ll be able to show them this notebook, although it’s quite possible that they won’t be able to read it, anyway, so as not to be late for something. The point is that the store is so crowded that no one can get in or out. No one, including shift managers, cleaners, and security guards, has been outside for about 10 hours, and there aren’t even that many of us here, barely 40 in an area of 90 square meters, according to the cameras. However, the aisles between the shelves are getting narrower every month, and every turn in the store adds about 4–7 minutes to the queue, so it was only a matter of time before something like this happened. The spaces between the shelves are already quite narrow, and even with two people, it’s hard not to completely block the aisle. But that’s exactly what happened now. Stores have already started posting signs on their doors indicating the number of people who can be in the store at one time to prevent what is happening right now, but this procedure is still in its infancy. After all, stores are not really meant for people to be in them, but mainly for goods to be there. Cashiers needed to receive raised seating areas so that they could fit in the store, at all. There are usually five cash registers, but there is usually only one working person at one of them. The other registers are occupied by people waiting in line or boxes of electronic cigarettes and lighters falling behind the registers. 

But the bottles of alcohol, which are also behind the cash registers, never break because there’s no room for them to break. And even if one fell, it wouldn’t have anything to shatter on.

Translation by Petr Uram