distracting me from my daily obligations. because let's just be honest right here and stress the fact that the man is awesome and is a far better "DON'T DO IT" motivational speaker than any counselor on campus. speaking from personal experience too. hur hur hur. bet that makes things awkward.
do i move with the city?
absolutely.
yes.
oh-hooooo yes.
i am bound by the roads, the transit, the very walk of the people. hub mall is a perfect example of this in which you are chastised for moving against the current. it's such a large city that if you don't fall in line you end up mud-splattered on the end of some highway. edmonton is not a walking city so you use the parts of it meant for walking or driving the way they ought to be used.
this can be depressing but...well, not so awful.
take a look at the high level bridge. there is reason and coherence in moving southward while you're in a car. sometimes i've seen expensive motorcycles or luxury cars cross it. i've even heard them honk at me as i've walked in the opposite direction. but despite their flagrant difference they move in the same direction, the same speed, the same style as the ghetto beater car.
there's something about following this current that allows for easy accessibility to the parts of the city. you become one of the locals, a part of the city by joining its rivers. and what are roads other than concrete, asphalt rivers?
moving against the current of the city can be retroactively progressive yet it can cause problems if you want to truly know the city and accept it for what it is as it is. to know the city you must be part of its flow.
I like how you likened moving in the city to moving either alongside or against a current. I agree whole heartedly that "to know the city you must be part of its flow." However, the danger of always following the current is that you become complacent...or at least stuck following paths that others have already laid out. I think that a large part of knowing the city also comes from drifting off from the current - not necessarily against it, but just diverging off off it. It leads you to different aspects of the city that may not necessarily be accessible to everyone but are nonetheless apart of the city itself.
ReplyDeleteThe High Level Bridge is a huge icon of Edmonton. It's a bit of a freak piece of architecture, though. I still do not understand why the traffic only flows in one direction. I think that's weird, but at least, it's not counter-intuitive to the idea of the derive. Derives are done on foot, so at least as wanderers, we have the luxury of being able to cross both ways.
ReplyDelete