The Greeting
The small four-legged animals here are required to be tied to a person, and when two of them meet on the sidewalk both people stop and let the animals decide.
There is no hurry in it. The people say nothing to each other of any consequence. The animals establish whatever it is they establish, and then everybody carries on, and the whole event takes perhaps a quarter of a minute.
Ommet did this. Ommet did it with everything — with the door, with the low wall, with my brother, with a stone that had been in the same place its entire life. Ommet had to know a thing before Ommet could be near it, and the knowing took no time at all and could not be hurried.
I stood at the corner for a while. One of them came over and knew me. The person apologised.
There was nothing to apologise for.