I realized that I like looking at the ground when I walk along. I enjoy the sidewalk or path or whatever's underfoot, more than I like the scenery or faces or cars or buildings. I prefer it, so I'm not going to keep trying to change. Dogs are nice but you can hear them coming, their distinctive sounds of nearness, and glance up. People sometimes make a warm face for you, but not often, it's really not worth waiting for. Usually their faces remain pointedly blank, like they wouldn't waste a smile on the likes of you, or cold and ugly and pinched, ready to turn hostile at a moment's notice, almost eager to do so should the opportunity arise. They don't care in the least how they look, they're only concerned with judging how you look. They're so busy scanning you for signs of degeneracy or difference that they forget to mind their own appearance, and so their sourness and suspicion rise to the surface and become visible to any who care to notice. Once in a great while someone will present you with a genuine expression of warmth, that's nice to see but it's not worth suffering through all the rest of it. When a stranger smiles at me I don't feel anything in myself, in my heart nothing stirs even as I'm smiling back, it's more that I approve of a higher degree of public pleasantness generally, for some reason I can't discern.