With this article I intend to contribute to the debate about how to study urban life. Firstly, I argue for the relevance of invisible and silent aspects of cities and inbetween sutures, which I understand to mean a third ’something’ beyond forms and flows. Secondly, I explore several examples and draw on arguments from Wittgenstein and Lefebvre to frame this hypothesis. Thirdly, I use the chess game as a metaphor to illustrate the multiplicity and unpredictability of engagements of urban life. Finnally, I propose to approach cities in an open-ended and ordinary way, paying attention to dialectically interconnected processes and the particular conditions of possibility for knowledge