I wasn't sure how to approach my first walk.
Sometimes I'm not actually a very creative person.
I walk this route relatively often, from home to school,
so I wanted to shake things up, get a different perspective.
But all I could think to do was walk through alleyways.
So, I started there, taking photographs, hoping to string something together.
As I went, I noticed the stark contrast between walking down those narrow side streets and the brief moments in which I'd emerge back into plain sight to dash across rush hour traffic before slipping back into the shadows. Despite the time of day, sunlight seemed scarce on my route.
I thought about the Nato Thomspon reading, specifically about the ideals of the Situationists, even more specifically about their concept of the dérive. A dérive is defined as a type of unplanned journey through a landscape (which is usually urban) where an individual sort of allows their surroundings to determine their course rather than their own personal agenda. In English, the word itself can be literally translated to "drift." Ultimately, the intent of a dérive is to allow geographic and architectural aspects of an environment to direct your course in such a way that yields an entirely new and authentic experience.
So, I drifted.
WALK ONE
Instead of clinging to alleys, I took a cue from the sunlight and the shadows cast by the cityscape and decided to play the lava game.
I'm sure everyone played this game as a kid, in some form or another. Basically, there are certain rules for places on the ground that you're not allowed to step on. They're lava. Your feet will melt. Sometimes it's a certain color of tile or type of flooring. This time I treated sunlight as lava and tried to see if I could find my way across town without setting a single foot on lit ground.
I kind of had a lot of fun doing this. Don't get me wrong, it was definitely challenging (I had to cheat twice), but I wound my way through the city in ways that I'd never traversed before. Searching for shadow bridges across busy streets allowed me a new appreciation for light poles and street signs, made me more aware of trees and vacant city lots (i.e. wastelands of bubbling hot magma to be avoided at all costs). Construction barricades became gateways and pedestrians sometimes served as temporary taxis, if you walked close enough together. Sometimes the only way forward was to go back the way I'd come. Sometimes the only way out of a jam was in, as I found myself snaking my way through bank lobbies and the MSOE campus in moments of desperation. I was more in tune with the time of day as I watched shadows grow longer, changing my course. I was also made aware of just how easy it is to make people uncomfortable. Granted, there were times when I looked like a pretty big freak, emerging from the depths of a parking garage basement or pressing myself up against a wall to take advantage of the only sliver of a shadow that could grant me forward motion, but there were other times when all I had to do was change sides of the sidewalk to make someone think twice about me. As I hopped across the speckled lawn of Cathedral Square, I could swear there was a gaggle of disapproving mothers speculating at my intoxication. It was funny to think about the fine line between "normalcy" and "disorderly conduct."
WALK TWO
After having taken my first walk,
I was kind of excited by the dérive approach.
It was such an organic experience, forging a connection with cityscape that made us almost equal in determining the course of my actions. I thought about water and the way it circumnavigates obstacles. I wanted to keep up this approach, so I decided to make my second walk without shoes on my feet. I figured that this would function similarly to the lava game, but would allow me to switch filtering my perception through my eyes to experiencing my environment in a more tactile way. We do so much to cover ourselves, to overcome our surroundings, I wondered what would happen after the simple removal of one little buffer.
I started out strong, attempting to retrace the same path I'd taken on my first walk. How hard could it be, right?
I quickly came to understand the popularity of sidewalks as I stopped time and time again to pick tiny pieces of gravel out of the balls of my feet. My awareness of filth was also heightened as I could now feel the raw grime of the city streets on my skin. I took notice of the types of filth that I could pick up on (that's kind of a freak thing to say, I guess) and noticed the ways in which the surrounding buildings impacted their exteriors. Banks and school buildings had much cleaner back and sidestreets than that of restaurants, which made me feel super gross. I started dwelling on the idea of food slime and bacteria permeating through my feet and swore off restaurants for all of seven city blocks. I thought about the idea of "face value" as it pertained to building facades and how it seemed like establishments couldn't give a shit about the parts of their property that didn't contribute to their profits, the back and sidestreets that went unseen. I found myself praising the heavens when there was any patch of grass to take refuge on and cursing the heat of asphalt parking lots. Broken glass forced me to reroute plenty of times. I think what stuck with me most was my heightened awareness of the unnecessary waste generated by us all, particularly how insurmountable it is. It's everywhere. It's almost like our clothes and shoes allow us the luxury of ignorance, cushioning the impact of a harsh environment unfit for our bare skin. So long as we've got our Nike's on, that broken beer bottle is just fine. Those millions of cigarette butts go seemingly unnoticed. It was odd to realize just how careless we are, how that carelessness has perpetuated itself so deeply into our society that it no longer raises eyebrows.
WALK THREE
This walk wasn't actually a walk.
I, like most other people, also took the bus.
This sort of felt like a copout compared to my other walks, though.
Anyway, I took the bus.
The 15 route is home for me.
I take it at least once a day on average.
I tried not to do anything particularly different on this ride,
no games or rules to dictate my interaction with my environment or removal of clothing items,
I just tried to kind of be more "there" than I usually am.
Instead of zoning out and staring out the window with my headphones on, I tried to take notice of what was different about traveling through space in this vehicle rather than just as myself.
Thinking about this mode of travel in comparison to my other walks, walks that had been so much more committed to my surroundings, made the bus seem really weird and creepy. I mean, right? What weird things, buses, cars, trains, planes, these big boxes made out of metal and glass that we hop in to expedite our passage through space, space that we have no actual relationship with, especially when riding as a passenger. When you're driving you at least have to look at and pay attention to your surroundings, interact and yield to them in some small way. But riding the bus felt almost like sealing myself inside of that capsule at the bank drive thru that shoots through that tube from the building to your car. So cold and removed. If there's something interesting, you can't stop to look at it. If you see someone you know walking down the street, you can't get their attention without a creepy text message. I could have been traveling through any place and that bus trip would have felt the same. By comparison, the disconnect was huge. It felt weird shifting from the interactive mindset of my previous walks to the expedited numbness of my typical commute, but it felt weirder thinking about how I would probably reacclimate to this mode of transportation by the end of the day.
No comments:
Post a Comment