Walking and Reading Journal
I went on a solitary walk during this past week around the DePaul Lincoln Park campus. The things I noticed while I was walking include:
- Students and professors rushing to cross streets and crosswalks to get wherever it is they need to go
- People walking in groups together and getting lunch from Whole Foods
- The warm and inviting smell of pizza and pasta from Whole Foods wafting out into the street
- While walking to Starbucks I overheard two boys behind me getting to know each other as they were heading to Starbucks as well (they were talking about the Mexican Independence Day parade that happened the night before)
- The bitter and sharp smell off coffee that smacks you in the face and infiltrates your nostrils as soon as you open the Starbucks door and step inside
- I saw two girls who knew each other run into each other on the sidewalk and they started making small talk
- I walked into the university bookstore and observed how calm, quiet, and relaxing the atmosphere was
- I saw a guy laying in a hammock reading a book in the quad. I tried to figure out if it was already there or he brought his own but I was appreciating the sight of him basking in the sun and moving gently and rhythmically and wished I could lay in a hammock under the sun too because it looked so peaceful.
Two experiences that I can vividly recollect from my walk are the following: a couple of campus police officers standing together and talking about concerns of public safety and a woman’s boot laying on the railroad tracks at the Fullerton train station. As I walked near the quad I realized there were many officers standing together and talking and it seemed like a strange sight to me because it seemed odd how many there were together. As I got nearer I heard one of them talking about a robbery and I felt a little scared because I did not know to what extent the situation occurred that would lead to the officers clustered tighter on our campus. Later I would learn about robberies and other unsafe activity taking place near our campus and I remembered the officers that I had seen. Their light blue shirts and black pants with golden badges on their sleeves and walkie talkies on their belts glistened under the sun and all I could gather from the experience was that it was odd, as they stood in the midst of a bustle of college students trying to get to their classes. It seemed surreal as it seemed how there were so many young people worried about their classes and college life and then there were officers standing right in the midst of them; it felt strange and out of place and had me hoping everyone will stay safe. My second experience took place as I stood at the Fullerton train station observing everyone and everything around me. I remember there was a man with long white hair standing to my left and he seemed very impatient for the train to come, as he was pacing around and continuously checking the time board to see when our train, to the loop, was due to arrive. On the opposite podium were the people who were waiting for the red line and I remember seeing a tall and skinny boy standing across from me and just staring at the tracks in front of him. As I turned around and stared at the tracks in front of me I saw a camel colored heeled boot with red laces on the edge of the tracks. I just kept staring at it because it was very oddly placed and I never saw anything else on the tracks so seeing someone’s shoe was a bit jarring. Hopefully nothing bad happened to anyone because otherwise it would be on the news but it looked really weird because it wasn’t near the podium, it was on the other side near the ledge and all I could wonder was how a person’s ankle-high boots could fall out of an automatic train. I hope someone just threw it in the air.
Two objects that I have observed were a rock and a piece of paper. As I was walking along the sidewalk I saw the sun glisten on something in the corner near the bushes and it caught me eye. Getting closer I realized it was a thin, flat, oval-shaped rock with bits of translucent pieces on it like glass. It was so smooth and shiny, with a prism-like touch to it as turning it under the bright sun exposed it to all sorts of angles and light. I also saw a piece of paper on the path in front of me and picked it up to find a trampled up printed sheet with some student’s class syllabus. There was dirt and mud on the page and a clear visualization of a footprint in the bottom right corner and it was obvious that it either fell out of a person’s bag or they just carelessly threw it on the ground. Although it was wrinkled it was not crumpled into a ball, which had me wondering if it really did fall onto the busy sidewalk by accident.
The following is the sketch map of the walk
In “The Solitary Stroller and the City,” Rebecca Solnit writes, “Cities are forever spawning lists” (p. 202). Why do walking, lists, and cities seem to go together?
Based on the reading of “The Solitary Stroller and the City” by Rebecca Solnit, there is a lot more to the city than what meets the eye at first glance. As the title suggests, walking in the city serves as a solitary “stroller” because whether you are walking alone or with a group of people, everyone sees the city through their own view and no one view is the same. Therefore we are all like little children in strollers left to observe what the city has to offer and process it uniquely and differently in our minds. This can be further connected to the idea of lists, which are sporadic and spontaneous bursts of thought or imagination yet at the same time neat and organized as well. Walking in the city is hence similar to a list because the actual structure of the city itself is the same for everyone. Chicago, in particular, is very geometrically concentric and architecturally well-developed. Yet despite such organization, a person walking in the city would have different thoughts, reactions, and observations that show no limits or bounds, similar to how lists do not have to exhibit the normal structural or grammatical correctness of sentences. (200)
