past five days of mapping, navigating and getting lost

It’s strange how quickly you get to know a fragment of the city after navigating it map-less and from memory for a week. I’ve tried to take a different route everyday between home, studio and wherever else I may go. Navigating the major roads, the small in-between streets, the laneways behind houses and the bicycle paths, through parks and along roads. The pace is mostly unhurried (with nothing else to take up time) sometimes walking up steep hills, or through crowded streets. Stopping whenever the fancy takes me, to film something that catches my eye, or to read and draw in parks and libraries and cafes. Sometimes I set out with the intention of getting lost; somehow, though, whenever I’ve passed through unfamiliar terrain, almost losing my orientation, I stumble back onto a familiar street or past a recognisable landmark. Usually I make my way through a wedge of neighbourhoods, bordered by the inner east train line and Parramatta Road, sometimes moving above and below these invisible lines, sometimes venturing through the cbd, forced onto footpaths by the relentless traffic. By now I know the quickest way to get home if it’s late or it’s raining, and the best way to avoid the hill towards home. Some things have already become habitual – if I leave or return through the lane behind the flat, I eat a few mulberries from a neighbour’s overhanging tree, and when I find myself riding through the park opposite the studio, I watch for the flashes of sunlight filtered through the green corridor between two building sites: fast flickers on the way down the hill, slower on the way back up. It’s interesting how much your mode of vision changes in an unfamiliar place. You are constantly on the alert for something with which to position yourself, a signpost or a landmark, at the same time being awake to the unfamiliarity of the surrounds, noticing the details that normally pass you by when you are in the habitual everyday.


Thursday




(missed Friday)
Saturday




Sunday




Monday