A (mostly nonsensical) statement you’ll hear from me quite often, is that living in a city feels weird because objects have low permanence here.
The idea is that if you leave a coin on the ground, there’s a pretty low chance it’ll still be there tomorrow. Meanwhile, leave a coin in the middle of nowhere and it very well could be there a week later.
This applies to a lot of things. Litter from yourself, or others. Maybe a kind soul clears it up, maybe it gets hidden by more litter. Fly-tipped items might be salvaged, they might be removed. Businesses close. Businesses open.
Most importantly: you notice a person walking down the road one day, you might never see them again.
I noticed this as a side effect of moving to a city. Not that I’m noticing “not seeing the same people multiple times”, but more that I don’t expect to see someone I’ve seen before. I don’t leave the house with the realistic expectation I’ll recognise a stranger.
Over time this creates a feeling of anonymity, but also a feeling of impermanence. What I see on one day has little impact on what I see on any other day.
Now that I am no longer a student and I’m working full time, I’ve settled into a nice walking commute. 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, walking through a nice park, down some nice-ish roads. Couldn’t ask for much more. This commute brought another change into my life: the return of permanence.
Now, every morning, I walk past – and alongside – quite a few people, and there is significant overlap between these people on each day. Mostly parents taking children to school, teenagers walking to school, university students heading to university. I live near a lot of schools.
There are subtle things I notice day-to-day.
The father who cycles with his daughter is no longer holding onto her bike: she’s cycling on her own.
The woman with the pixie cut has bleached her hair.
The father and son who seem to always be talking about things far too philosophical for the son’s age are later along the route than usual. Maybe rigorous discussion slowed their pace.
The teenager who somehow wears the same Kenzo hoodie almost every day isn’t with the three other teenagers he ususally walks with. Maybe he took the day off.
The man with the brown leather satchel has an expensive camera with him, taking photos of the morning haze. Great day for it.
The woman who looks like her dog – not that she looks like a dog, but you know the way owners can look like their pets – is away off in the distance, walking along a different path than normal. Good to get some variety.
I also walk along an alternative path sometimes. There’s a 3 minute detour which is quite nice, though not nice enough to give up 3 minutes of every morning. This exposes me to big differences: other people, other scenes, other things to see. Mostly parents cycling towards schools with their children. The kids getting more confident in cycling; their parents getting more confident that their kid is going to cycle into someone.
Sometimes I wonder if the people on my commute stop to question where I’ve gone.