Broken Landscapes

People who get information overload from cities should spend more time in forests, not as a cure but to intensify the disease til they pass through to the other side and gain the potential to read everything around them.

Urban areas present you with things you can't assimilate: messages to and from people that aren't there or don't speak your language. So do woods. They're called trees fallen across the path, marsh areas with no visible watersource, holes dug by God himself (apparently, because who else could have ripped a 50 foot tree out by the roots), quiet cries, rustling, snakes.

Urban areas present unassimilable elements but also new forms of order. New geological formations, as it were. New York's grid system, with its play of linear buildings marching down the avenue in a legible line. An intersection implies four directions, each of which will lead to a similarly structured intersection. Something like a basin and range, where one form implies the other.

It's the interstitial areas, industrial parks and cul-de-sacs visible from the train coming into the city that I can't read, don't like, can't stand. My first thought is that they're broken landscapes, but my second thought is that maybe they just haven't gone far enough.

Soundtrack: Rhys Chatham, Brooklyn Guitar trio and a very short, easy run at midnight by headlamp down the trail by my house.