Street Scene 

Gratuitous photos from yesterday's bike ride.

On my way to the library I came across about 50 business cards scattered along the road as it passed an intersection. These cards are made of heavy translucent plastic, with a tough layer of blue ink and black lettering. Almost the thickness of a credit card. Very durable. So durable that they had survived being run over. The various scratch marks made them interesting, so I stopped to pick up a few.


 While I was doing that, two women came along and as they crossed the road, one stopped to pick up a bunch of the cards, and then offered them to me. I asked her if she wanted to keep any of them. She said no, so I took the stack, and they continued on. A moment later another woman came by and said something I didn't understand, so I asked her to repeat it. She said, 'whatcha gonna do with those?' I said I didn't know, but that they were too interesting to pass up. Maybe I'd write something over the top and hand them out to friends, or make sculptures with them.


 She said 'they make good ice scrapers'. I laughed, and said, 'When do we ever have ice around here?' She said 'it gets that way at my sister's sometimes, and those plastic cards come in real handy'. So I said that settled the question of what I was gonna do with them. I'd give 'em to my friends as ice scrapers! She laughed, and went on her way.


 What's just as interesting is the fact that these women stopped to engage with a complete stranger. It reminds me that there are various activities that will induce complete strangers to strike up friendly conversations with each other, as with the aerial photo of Moseley that I found in the rubbish and which prompted five conversations within the space of an afternoon, as I carried it home. Litter-picking seems like one of those activities. If I wanted to talk with more people, I could scatter these cards again and again, then start picking them up when people approached. This coud be an art project aimed solely at conversations with strangers. The trick would be to write a funding proposal to emphasise the artistic quality of the spontaneous interaction. There might be a difficulty in documenting the activity, as people tend to avoid interaction when there's a camera around.

The Gratuitous Cards 

A New Adventure Of Sorts In Which I Forget

 This blog is supposed to have a point. Or a purpose? I forget. So that must be what it is about. My forgetfulness. It's not about the ironies of slow lane cyber-wonking. Or maybe it is, and I haven't realised it yet. I did decide that cyber-wonking isn't the best word for what I meant. Think about this: you are on a bus, on the tube, or even on a ferry. Do you strike up a conversation with the person next to you? (Yes, I know you start conversations with people in queues, and that if you go into a pub, you're meant to strike up a conversation with whoever is at the bar.) Think of all the places where you sit or stand next to someone, or a bunch of someones, for an extended period of time. No, I don't want to include airplanes or cross-country trains. People always start conversations on those trips. Do you ever talk to people in waiting rooms?

 All these places where you're set next to other people but don't say a word. What's that called? I think Devo called it 'assuming the position'. It's not cyber-wonking. It's not wonking. It's not twonking. I looked on the internet, just to make sure. Twonking is used in a bunch of places, usually without much meaning. Google seems to think it means thinking. You know how Google suggests alternative words if it thinks you've mis-spelled something? That's a new game. I call it Google-saurus. Google comes up with a word that it thinks is related, just like a thesaurus. It's not that easy. You might think that any made-up word would return a Google alternative, but it just took me six tries to come up with something it didn't recognise. The first five attempts returned surnames and proper nouns. 'Twonking' did return one site that was a bit more specialised, but unsurprisingly, it was as sexual slang. Not very original. But entertaining nonetheless.

 Okay, so you're on the commuter train, or you're in the waiting room, and you are next to someone, not ignoring them, but avoiding contact in whatever ways possible. That is what it's about. Watching TV, cyber-wonking, whatever. It's city living, where you already get more than enough of some kinds of social contact. So it's no surprise that when you hang out with your friends, the really enjoyable thing is to ignore them, to luxuriate in their presence without feeling obliged to make any effort whatsoever.

 What's that called?

Today's bike trip to and from the library. 

 

Life In The Slow Lane

 I had something like this in mind - although I didn't know it at the time - when I asked what this blog is about. But I see it now, after seeing this. I looked at that picture and I wondered why three of these four people would spend an evening engrossed by their computers instead of interacting in some way. Then it dawned on me: television. This is what TV watchers do. Friends sit next to each other and are zombified by the box.



 I don't have a TV. I am from another century. I have all the wrong ideas. If I go visit someone and they turn on the TV, I watch politely for a little while, then leave. This is confusing for some people, as they think camaraderie revolves around shared experience of whatever drivel happens to be on. This is the ritual, and it's become so commonplace that hardly anyone thinks twice about it. It's become so commonplace that people are developing an even more alienated form of socialising. It's a bit like working from a cafe: they're in a convivial environment, but not interacting. This will be confusing in places where cafes have been used mainly for socialising rather than by multitudes of cyber-workers. This is the scenario that came to mind when I looked at that photograph. All it needs is a name. I'll call it cyber-wonking for now. Wonk is phonetically similar to work, and denotes an excessive attention.



 I had another bit of insight when I came back here and saw my photo of the broken branch and collapsing garden wall. I could be cyber-wonking, but instead, I'm paying attention to pokey details of the physical environment. I could be doing all manner of high-tech stuff, but instead, I'm inspecting somebody's garden wall and looking for detritus on the foothpath. Do you ever walk around and look at the stuff on the pavement? Artists get paid to do that sort of thing. Do a one-meter transect of the sidewalk, photograph and catalogue everything that's visible. Instead of being mentally engrossed in surfing and building the cyber-world, I'm engrossed in the most primitive of things, the low-tech equivalent of cyber-surfing: making my way around the neighbourhood. It was a bit of a shock to switch from thinking about complete absorption in the computer screen to seeing the broken branch. Even though both are on my computer screen.



 So yeah, that's why my blog is about. The ironies of cyber-wonking about life in the slow lane. Or something like it.


 Now I have to go to the library, on my bike. Before it starts to rain.

Broken Things

I did three intermingled series of photos while walking today: one about paved driveways, one about broken things, and one about familiar sights along the way. So far, I've only put up one of the images, and I intend to do no more than another one or two. The entries I did last week with a bunch of photos is just too crowded. I'd prefer to see at least two inches of text for every inch of imagery, so that there's a decent break between each image. I'm going to skip the driveway photos - I'll put one up at eTwine as a response to the 'pet peeve' theme someone suggested last week. So that leaves the broken things. There are lots of broken down walls around here, plus a few decrepit garden gates, the occasionaly dilapidated vehicle, a broken street sign and more than one broke-down palace. Of them all, this is probably the best image.

 

On The Way To Ladypool Road

I walked to one set of local groceries this afternoon, and passed the place a Johannesburg friend used to live. Since I had my camera with me I thought I'd do a series of photos as reminders. After I got home and looked at them, I decided that there are about ten that would be worth displaying, and that of those, this one is probably the best. I will put some of the others on Flickr 

Walks And Thinks And Squishes

 Yesterday I went for a walk. I need excuses to get out of the house. I need to move around a lot more than I do. I need exercise for an hour or more. But I dislike walking around residential areas. They're boring. Cannot motivate myself to walk down the road, around a few corners and back again, having seen one front garden after another, one house after another, car after car after car, pavement pavement pavement. Tree wall drive car tree hedge wall car pavement garden hedge car hedge kerb car car car.

 That's why I like canals, and old factories, and underpasses, and woodlots, and hills. But those kinds of things are mostly out of walking range. So I haven't been out much. On Thursday I went to a meeting of the Friends of Highbury Park. Someone had suggested it as a potentially useful networking opportunity - where my volunteer skills might help me get information relating to my wider interests. So I went.

  It was at a place called Highbury House, which I'd never heard of, never been to, and of course I got lost on the way over. But once I found it I realised that it was in a corner of the ward that I'd never explored. All the times I'd passed near, and taken a look along a side road, I'd seen houses that were noteworthy only for their sameness, plus a huge new block of chi-chi flats, po-mo style, which of course were even less interesting. So in getting lost, and ending up in the middle of this neighbourhood by coming round from another side, I was chagrined to learn that Highbury House was not only a stately pile, but the home of Joseph Chamberlain, Birmingham's celebrated social democratic mayor in the late 1800s. He and his pals like George Cadbury gave substance to the term municipal socialism, imagined Birmingham as a garden city, and set about making it that way in suburbs like Bourneville and Quinton.

 Chamberlain lived in luxury. The entrance hall in Highbury House is two stories high, intricately carved and paneled. It's grand. Outside, the grounds stretch away to the south for half a mile or more. I'd been across the southern portion of the grounds, in what is now a banal municipal park. Grass, trees, grass, footpath, grass, trees, football field grass grass grass road. I've never bothered to go into the northern part, as it looked like more of the same.


 Turns out that between the house and the grassland are an arboretum and the remains of the estate gardens, some of which are entirely derelict, and that's what the Friends are trying to do something about. I knew none of this before the meeting, and had only a vague idea after, given that the sky was dark by the time it ended. On Friday I decided I'd have a reconnoitre, which would do double duty as a walk. I didn't get there that day, so I went yesterday, mid-afternoon, and took my camera. I decided that a few snaps might work as promotional materials for the Friends - given that they have a miniscule budget, and were casting about for ways of raising enough money to do a tree survey. I imagined putting together a portfolio of distinctive trees and using them on flyers, posters, t-shirts, and the like.

 So I walked and snapped and nosed around in the woods for about an hour and a half looking for interesting angles on trees and shrubs. My little cheapo digital camera works just fine for some of this stuff, but at 640x480 pixels, it is never going to have the tonal range one needs to capture the colors, range of shadow and details of many plants. I knew that most of the images would be less than satisfactory, but that a few would be okay. Out of 95 photos, 7 turned out well enough to manipulate further, as I have done with the one above.

  I went again this morning, in lieu of a second mug of latte. Again, about an hour and a half, from about 7:45 til sometime after 9:00, and returned with 150 photos. The dog walkers were out under a mostly clear sky with the sun coming over the trees as I got into the clearings. The grass was wet, and by the time I'd wandered halfway across my feet were squishing in my socks. Definitely more fun than being on the pavement.

What's It All About?

This blog, that is. Not Life, nor anything like it. I mean, every blog has a purpose, right? Mine has had several and it's only two months old. First it was as a better-looking alternative to eTwine. It works pretty well at that. Then it was as an experiment to see if I could write something nearly every day. That worked as well. Then it was a place to tell stories about where I live and what I see. Again, it works. But I find myself asking, when I go to other people's blogs, what's the focus? I want to see a little blurb in one of the upper corners that tells me what the blog is about. A lot of blogs are about Life. I'm not so sure that's what mine is about. Is it Stories From Moseley, New Templates, and Shenanigans? Don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question. I'll figure out the answer and let you know.