Mode of Attention

Walking the streets of Tucson near the university over the summer is like walking completely different streets than when school is in session. When school is in session there is more hustle and bustle, there are students speeding around in cars blasting music, college boys throwing footballs in the street, and an ever constant stream of people moving around creating a buzz around the area. Walking the streets near my house now that it is summer, things are calmer, more peaceful, the buzz is nearly gone.

What seems more evident to me now are the sounds of children playing. I didn’t even know that elementary aged children lived in my neighborhood until now. It is unusual to hear the laugher of children since I have been so used to hearing the rowdy horse play of adult boys. I hear the barking of dogs and the jingle of dog collars. Cars seem to pass less frequently with the slight whisssh that they seem to make as they go. Every once in a while, passes with the same base I am used to hearing during the school year. I can hear myself walking. My flip flops snap as I walk, and the ground makes crunching noises as I go.

I brought my dog with me on this walk. He stops every few feet, and I wonder what it is that he can smell. To me it smells hot. I find it hard to explain the smell of heat. It is almost as though the sidewalk and the asphalt are producing a smell that rise as they get hotter. It also smells like dirt. It hasn’t rained in a while, and as I walk the dust gets stirred up and fills my nostrils. Then my dog pees, and the heat makes the smell of dog urine reach my nostrils sooner. There are garbage cans along the way. Some smell like stale beer, others of rotting food. The heat seems to speed up the process of rotting, and it makes the smells stronger and more putrid.

The weather has not yet reached 100 degrees, to my knowledge. It feels hotter though. I think this is probably because this area has so much concrete and asphalt. My flip flops heat up as I walk. There is a gritty feeling under my feet as I walk due to the sand that gets in my shoes when the sidewalk disappears. There is a warm breeze that is almost unnoticeablebut it starts to pick up as I walk, and clouds start to roll in. It is a dry heat. My shoulders feel like they are burning and they probably are. I feel like I am sweating in my underarms, in the creases of my knees and arms, and most uncomfortable in my cleavage. I find this to be one of the more annoying things about being a girl. There is a tug at the leash in my hand as my dog tries to get closer to something that smells interesting to him. The leash feels hard and plastic, and I push the little button on the top that makes the leash stop releasing.

I always do this walk alone. Just me and my dog. It gives me time to think, and it gives my dog much needed exercise. I connect this walk with time to think. Time to be by myself. Living in a house with four other people and two other dogs, this is a usually needed escape. The sun starts to set as I get home, and it is another beautiful arizona sunset.

Mapping the Grocery Deit Fad Scene

I am what you might consider a yoyo dieter. I have bought into a lot of diet fads. I buy anti-oxidant, super fruit chews that say they help you lose weight because they rid your body of free radicals. I drink “Lean Shakes”, a protein based, meal replacement shake that is supposed to help you lose weight in a “healthy way.” And most recently, I joined Weight Watchers.

For this walk, I spent a few hours walking around the grocery store trying to map the Weight Watchers fad that seems to have taken over Frys and probably most other grocery stores. It seems to me that a least one third of the aisles could be deemed the scene of the Weight Watchers member.

In one of the frozen food aisles, a whole side has Weight Watchers friendly food. It hasn’t been put out by Weight Watchers, but the Lean Cuisines, Healthy Choice, Smart Balance, and other microwavable meals have a circle on them that contains their Weight Watchers point value. (For those who don’t know what a Weight Watchers point is here is a quick overview: each member gets a certain amount of points per day, usually somewhere between 20 and 30. Every food and drink has a point value assigned to it. These microwavable meals tend to be worth 5 or 6 points.)

In the soup aisle, at least half of the soups also have the same circle showing their point value. Progresso Light Soups seem to range from 0 to 2 points. The ones that are only broth and vegetables are 0. This is interesting to me because it seems to me that all food should be worth something. How can a food not have any food value? I also found that all the vegetable in the produce section are worth 0 points. They don’t have a circle point sticker on them, but my Weight Watchers point pamphlet tells me this.

In the dairy section, I found individual cream cheese packets and yogurt that have the Weight Watchers logo on them. In the drink aisle, I found Weight Watchers smoothies. In the bread aisle, I found Weight Watchers bread and muffins and cookies.

While mapping the grocery store, it seems like diet fads have over taken the aisles, but the fad that seems to be the most prevalent is Weight Watchers.

Infernal Noise

What I found most intriguing about the concept of infernal noise and art/music as a political statement was that the people who are performing the music and the people who are originally the onlookers often seem to become one in the same. At first, the performers are a separate entity, but when the onlookers start to dance to the music that is being preformed, they too became part of the spectacle. I thought that it was interesting that onlookers can become part of something larger without knowing it and without having practiced as the performers had for weeks.

Another thing that interested me about this idea was the power that music has to move people. It has an effect that inspires people in a way that speeches and rallies cannot. Depending on the music, people are moved in a different way. This was shown when the musicians that were at the WTO protest ended up playing a tribal warrior song, This act in some way triggered the police to tear gas them. It was interesting that there was probably a connection between the music that was being played and the reaction that the police had. Other music that was played provoked onlookers to start dancing, thus making the onlookers part of the spectacle.

The idea of performance just being something that is conducted in the sphere of a theater was pushed aside with these acts. I thought it was interesting that people could conduct an act of political protest without saying a word about the actual thing that they are protesting. I didn’t previously know that groups like the Infernal Noise Brigade existed. Music is something that can get past barriers that often keep people from understanding the same message. Often, a message can be lost due to language or cultural barriers, but when the message is being transmitted through music, many of those barriers disappear. People were able to know that at the WTO protest the music was a form of showing their opposition, even though no one said anything about being opposed to what was happening.

I thought that the idea of a political art movement was very interesting, especially when it was compared to actual political movements like Marxism. Performing music being compared to a political movement had never crossed my mind before. I was surprised that such a thing could cause such an impact.

Cacooned

Living in Tucson in the summer, it is nearly impossible to jog during the day. The heat keeps me from jogging until later in the evening, usually 9 or 10 at night. I have no misconceptions about this being safe. For some reason, however, I feel safer jogging at night when I have my ipod with me. I listen to fast paced music, and I run for about an hour. This is not becuase I run a far distance, but becuase I walk for a large part of my "run."

For this walking excercise, I made my excursion about twice as long. I traveled my usual path twice. For the fisrt half, I preformed my usual routine. I ran and walked and listened to fast paced, motivational music. For the most part, I felt safe. I know that not being able to hear my surrounding is actual less safe than not listening to music, but the cacoon of my music provides me with a sense of security (even if deep down I know it is a false sense of security.) I get lost in the music, it helps me find my thoughts, and before I know it I am home.

I then repeated this routine without my ipod. Much like the article I had read about the Personal Stereo, I found myself feeling much less secure in my surroundings. I also found that I was much less motivated to go as far as I had before. This may have also been a result of how much I had previously exerted myself, but I also found that I was more prone to look at the people that were around me and wonder what they were doing. I no longer felt like I was in my own world, but I felt like my surroundings were more foreign.

I thought it was very interesting that my ipod provided me with such a different feeling, but reflecting on it, I also realized that I do the same thing when I am walking on campus. When I have my ipod I feel more empowered. I feel like I am more in control of my environment. I think in a large part this is becuase I am in control of the music that I am choosing to listen to. I had never realized before that my ipod gave me such a cacoon until I participated in this excercise.

A Performance as Experimentation

For this walking excercise, I decided that I would elaborate something that generally happens in my everday life. I have a tendency to trip. I don't usually fall all the way over, but if I don't trip once a day it's a miracle. I saw an episode of a show that introduced the concept of "surprise trust falls." In high school, I participated in a Ropes Course, an event that tried to build team work among each grade of the High School through team building excercises. One of which was a "trust fall", when you turn your back to a crowd, cross your arms over your chest and fall backward in the belief that the people behind you will catch you. "Surprise trust falls" have basically the same premise other than the people behind you knowing that they are participating in the excercise.

I decided it would be interesting to do something similar. Nearly all the people who hang out with me know that I am a tripper, but I decided that I would come closer to falling than I usually would in hopes that I could be caught after performing my "surprise trust fall." To my extreme delight, I only fell all the way down once. Most of the people around me began to wonder if I was drunk, due to my extreme lack of balance and general poor walking capabilities. At first, they seemed to be caught off gaurd that I had actually fallen, but after the first time they seemed prepared to catch me.

I did this at home and around town for a few hours, and the only people who seemed to be concerned for my well being were strangers. I thought that it was very funny that my friends, roommates, and boyfriend all seemed to think that it was completely normal that I didn't seem to be able to walk more than more than 100 yards without falling over or almost falling over. It showed me that it seems nearly impossible to phase the people I spend most of my time with unless I do something completely outrageous.

Desire Lines

Desire lines are defined as: an informal path that pedestrians prefer to take to get from one location to another rather than using a sidewalk or another official route. The paths in the photos I included are trails that have been created due to constant though not designated usage. The trails have been created by people who wish to get to the top of a hill, Duey Hill, in order to look out over the small town of Spring Lake, MI. It is a way to pass the time, but I thought it was interesting that these desire lines support a desire to create entertainment for ones self, as well as serving as a path created to quench that desire.

I thought that it was interesting that there was not simply one path to get to the top. There were paths through areas that were dense with vegitation and trees, and then there were paths that were closer to the road (like the one pictured above). I also thought it was interesting that some of the paths were formed becuase there was no where else to walk. Some went straight through trees, but others seemed to be curvy for the simple purpose of wandering the area. In the photo pictured above, it seems as though the path is curvy not becuase of obsticels, but becuase of some other reason. Perhaps people were simple too wrapped up in the veiw to realize they weren't walking in a straight line.

It seems to me that sometimes desire lines are created out of a convenience that is not provided with sidewalks. Sometimes a sidewalk does not provide the fastest way to get somewhere. However, what I enjoyed more about my exploration of desire lines was the fact that they seem to also commonly represent a desire for freedom. A desire to explore. A desire to venture a way from the conformity that sidewalks provide and explore the unknown. A desire to walk in a line that is not straight. That is what I liked about desire lines, the fact that they don't seem to always have to serve as a means to an end, but can sometimes simply represent a desire to be freed from the conformity that life often presents us with.

I Walk in Your Name

For this walk, I went on a walk in the name of my boyfriend. In the name of getting to know eachother better. It was the first time I had been to his Hometown, and we walked together in the name of teaching me where he came from.

Over the course of this walk, we talked about what he did during his childhood. He showed me how to create a whistle out of the top of an acorn or a blade of grass. Being from Tucson, I had never really seen the top of an acorn, so not surprisingly, I also had never known one could make a whistle out of one.

We then walked a little further, and he picked a leaf off of a bush and told me to chew on it. At first, I was hesitant, but I was walking in the name of learning more about the man I love, so I chewed on it. It was called Sassafras. I thought it tasted like aromatherapy. I didn't really like it, but it was a flavor of his childhood.

We then walked for a while longer, and came across a group of children who had nets and were catching frogs. This is apparently something that most kids do in Michigan. I had never tried to catch a frog, but the kids let me try. We caught frogs with them for a little while. I was interested to find small groups of children along our walk all doing the same thing.

We talked about our childhoods. We talked about how the landscape had changed. We walked in the name of learning about one another. We walked in the name of our relationship.