The drift The Situationists were also practitioners of a special urban-analytic walking style, the dérive—the “drift”—which Debord described as “a technique of transient passage through varied ambiences. The dérive entails playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects; which completely distinguishes it from the classical notions of the journey and the stroll.” “In a dérive,” Debord deadpans, “one or more persons during a certain period drop their usual motives for movement and action, their relations, their work and leisure activities, and let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there." The dérive joins the free association of surrealism, the LSD of hippiedom, and cinematic montage as tactics for overcoming the fixity of received ideas of order and logic. By putting progress through the city into a state of constant indeterminacy, it represents a schooled “style” of being lost. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan PsychogeographyRaindrops leaving an erratic trail psychologymovement
The axis of movement Moving in the city means constantly changing the axis of movement. In general, lateral movement is confined to a single plane, what’s called grade, the ground level. Because circulation in multistory buildings is fundamentally one way—which is to say from the bottom up—the condition at the top is invariably different from that at the bottom. Rooftop circulation is the domain of Fantômas, of cat burglars and fleeing criminals, of lovers, and of those acrobatic enough to negotiate the gaps between buildings. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan A Burglar's Guide to the City movement
Imperfectly locked doors quietly waiting A Fragment by Geoff Manaugh davidmaisel.com “Without vitamin C,” Anthony writes, “we cannot produce collagen, an essential component of bones, cartilage, tendons and other connective tissues. Collagen binds our wounds, but that binding is replaced continually throughout our lives. Thus in advanced scurvy”—reached when the body has gone too long without vitamin C—“old wounds long thought healed will magically, painfully reappear.” In a sense, there is no such thing as healing. From paper cuts to surgical scars, our bodies are catalogues of wounds: imperfectly locked doors quietly waiting, sooner or later, to spring back open. painmelancholyrepairhealtheuphony