The Mood is on his side. Always. The Mood explains things; it gives orders/advice/quiet, whispering counsel. It is never intrusive, never domineering. The Mood, as he recognizes it, is the most intimate of his companions and the closest of his friends. The Mood is different things to different people, but always, it is beneficial in its selfless desire to guide. The Mood is a function of the City, a phenomenon born in the collective mind/brain complex of the City’s citizenry. The Mood is proof of evolution. The City, like its biological organisms has grown in complexity. It is not like cities in the past. It is intelligent. The Mood tells him where to walk. It is cold with the promise of rain, and so the Mood—sensing his mood—guides him along Adams Street, where stone and glass and even the girders and scaffolds of architectural repair bring wordless and nostalgic comfort. He knows this street. He seldom visits it, and now—with so much certainty behind him, and its opposite in the days ahead—the Mood chooses to immerse him in a recollection of past successes. There has always been a jumble here—signs and advertisements, jostling for his attention. Restaurants announce themselves with flashing, red lights. Bars call to him, subtly, with wafts of music carried from behind closed doors. He has always enjoyed this sense of urban life: signs eclipsing signs, shifting in his perception as he walks toward them, below them, by them. And now, years after his first forays into the City’s downtown restaurants, he finds himself alone, swimming in the sea of memory, and longing for… …something. It is cloudy today the Mood says, wordlessly, but the clouds won’t stick around forever. He senses this as his own thought and knows that in some way, it is. The Mood has simply read this in the convoluted meat of his brain and repeats it to him. It is a function of The Mood, after all, to encourage, to comfort, to make promises that this City or another City will keep. *** I took this picture last week, and it is a companion to the post entitled “17.” I was drawn to the ornate, old-fashioned signs adorning the old Berghoff Restaurant, and the contrast of modern glass across the street. There’s something about Adams street that will always draw me. This draw is probably the most prosaic thing around, or it may be something truly significant. I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting.