It does not have its body about it. It lives under a proverbial yet real bridge, having dropped out of a school, a university, and its first and last selection process. The bridge is of old stone and doesn’t rumble much or indeed at all. The police look away, which is polite of them. It has a deep shadow for a doorway and a black puddle for a doorstep. The police look away because there’s nothing in it for them. Because ‘There’s good and bad in everyone’ (meaning ‘everything’). Thus, if the birds aren’t afraid of the people any more, it’s because the people are now harmless. And if everyone tolerates everyone else doing and being what they want, it’s because everyone is now the same (because the two types of indifference are as good as one and the same). It likes to philosophise like that, looking out at the world from out of its shadow and under its bridge and outside of its body. It likes a good, slippery-as-shit aporia. It likes to feel slightly nauseated by how liquidly the thoughts at once bemire and escape the cupped hands which are meant for their containers. If its body aches or smells then so does a torch shine into it and a policewoman’s indifference cruise through it. If it goes out into the sunlight or the light of an overcast day and no-one screams or runs away then there must be such a general indifference abroad as makes ‘It doesn’t have its body about it’ mean as much or as little as selfishly-motivated selflessness, say. Because ‘It does and doesn’t have its body about it’ doesn’t preclude ‘It doesn’t have its body about it’. And what if it said it ‘simply’ because it felt like it? Would they do away even with those ‘simple’ truths? If, for example, it said, ‘If the urban foxes can’t get at the rubbish any more and become so ugly as a result that hardly anyone leaves food out for them any more, how long will it take for them to disappear?’ and it answered itself by saying, ‘They will never completely disappear’ — would they cite the last wolf, killed in seventeen-whatever-it-was, when there were still a lot of people about who actually believed in God? It would be amazed if they did — if, Godlike, they descended on it and its intellections under an old stone bridge. The mere idea sets a big toe fidgeting. Should it make some kind of attempt then? It would seem (from the silence) that it should. Thus, semi-religiously, would-be hopefully, and without knowing what it means, it says it yet again: ‘It does not have its body about it.’ But it falls short of the silence, slurrying down on this side of it; which makes for more than enough nausea-pabulum to be savouring while waiting for the police car.