The world passes slowly by my front porch. On a heavy spring day there is a steady parade of people who go by, mostly on their way to nowhere but some time outside. Our world designates this the “public realm”, the empire of everyone. And so it is.

When there are no people, the ghosts pass by. There is Betty McGuire, who walked around the park until her hip became too painful. My dog Watney scouted out the sidewalks nearly every day of his life, all 14 years of it. The ghosts are only memories of mine, but they are as real as Ambrose who greets me every day. I feel them if I stand out on the sidewalk for just a moment, along with the hundreds of other people who have passed by over centuries.

My slice is laid out in land, but not in time. The public slice is free from all of that. It has its population as long as there is a memory, or at least a good story, of everyone who has been there. They own it as much as anyone ever did. All of these concepts are nothing more than values laid out in land and concrete, really. Every bit of it is arranged the way it is because we believe it should be so.

The arrangement is this: from the edge of the sidewalk over, the land is “mine”. I can call it that as long as I pay the mortgage and remain alive. From the same edge towards the road, it is the sidewalk. Public Works runs this in the name of the public. It was first paved in the 1890s with tile, and in the 1970s they staked out the concrete slabs. Through all this time, it’s been where people meet each other and chat. Not about anything in particular, perhaps something important.

Those small conversations and formal greetings are what make the memories. I know only so much about the particular people that built my house, but I know many details about the people that walked by it. We don’t make stories by ourselves, but with other people. Those stories build the memories that keep the ghosts alive forever.

And that’s what the “public realm” is all about.