The mind is at birth a clean sheet, a tabula rasa, wrote John Locke. This column is yours. Sincerity, rather than writing skill, is the only requirement.
You get to have a feeling about a place as you’ve been there for a while. Like whether to lock your car doors or not, or leave the windows up or down, or your purse on the seat or not; or what to wear when you pop out to the 7-11 , shoes, shirt, tie? But this feeling, rather than an abstract attunement with the night sounds, the temperature of the air, or the personality of the people, is a probabilistic estimation of losses and gains. That is, you don’t want to be ripped off your only night in town, for example, but after you’ve been there for a while, one out of 5, say, or 9, or 59, isn’t so bad that you won’t risk it, locking the car being a hassle, especially in the summer. Many other considerations enter in, of course.
