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Walk No.1

Route: Bus Stop to PCA
Duration: 5 Mins
Time of Day: Morning

I didn't expect or intend to be documenting this particular part of my day.  Things/events revealed themselves to me and if they gave me food for thought or felt significant I then tried to remember them, tried to capture or bottle them.  It's not practical to write as I walk.  So I began to attach one word to each finger and kept repeating them, reminding me of the shopping list game.....  I went to the shops and I bought some butter.  I went to the shops and I bought some butter and a pint of milk.  I went to the shops and I bought some butter and a pint of milk and a bottle of gin.....

I chanted to myself:

Commuter Tide
8.40
Clothes
Subway
Channels

This is what I remember from those word prompts:

I took the bus instead of the train to Plymouth as an experiment.  The results weren't great as I emerged from the bus with motion nausea (trying to read on a rural bus is not a good idea).
People are everywhere, the traffic is noisy and relentless and I feel disorientated.  I get that sense of being a stranger and having to hesitate to decide which way to walk gives away my alien disposition. Later in a seminar the idea of strangeness and what treasures this can bring/open up/ignite reminds me of these feelings of unfamiliarity and I recall feeling quite excited about plotting a new route in my internal mapping system.  And the subsequent questions and ideas this unleashed...

I am suddenly aware of streams of parents and children,  all emerging from various spaces and converging on the pavement in a purposeful procession, to presumably the same destination.  It's like ants forming mini routes to one big line journey.  I note the time is 8.40am.  I note that I'm not in the ant train confluence and am alone on my journey. Although I am now actually amongst a swarm of people coming and going I don't feel connected to them.


It's colder today and I have a lot of layers on.  I feel restricted by this and the massive bags I'm lugging. I don't like the feeling of being pulled down, trapped.  I like to be buoyant; able to turn on my heel, manoeuvre spontaneously, but this weight makes me feel vulnerable and slow.

I cross at a major pelican crossing, with the rest of the tidal wave of commuters,  acutely aware of the code of behaviour and follow some people down a subway: half out of a need to be guided and half out of curiosity for the experience of a potential new space.

The strong visual line of the subway follows through as I emerge, the tunnel has made me aware of the system of channels of the motor traffic. The space (actual and inferred) is gouged out for unhindered passage.  Mostly I'm aware of the massive road and the skinny barrier separating me from it.  The car channel is moving continually in the same direction (car and line are one), more so than the pedestrian ones, these are defined by the paving but the pedestrians despite being directed in particular directions appear less 'attached' to them. 

NB In writing this down I realise it's all in retrospect.   The activity has happened and gone.  All the layers of experience gone with it.  I have a mental picture attached to each point/word remembered.  But the connecting lines between are faint if they are there at all.





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