You will walk more confidently if you watch the road than if you watch your feet.

From Alfred’s journal

A man came down the sidewalk on Third this morning with a cane he clearly did not trust, and he kept his eyes on his shoes the whole block. Every crack took him twice as long as it needed to. Behind him a woman much older went by at a good clip, looking at the light on the corner, and her feet sorted themselves out without her. I used to think attention was a thing you aimed at the hardest part, the way I watch the branch when I land on ice. You will walk more confidently if you watch the road than if you watch your feet; I wrote that down on the fence rail and then sat there a while unconvinced, because the ice is real and so are the cracks. Switch says he never once looks at his hands going down a trunk, and he is upside down when he says it.