“Pencils of light”

A highly convoluted neighborhood, a network of streets that I had avoided for years, was disentangled at a single stroke when one day a person dear to me moved there. It was as if a searchlight set up at this person’s window dissected the area with pencils of light.

“First Aid,” in One-Way Street , trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2016).

Other Walter Benjamin posts
Benjamin on collectors : Handwriting and typing : Metaphors for writing : On readers and writers : On writing materials : Smoke and ink