WALKING THROUGH STREET FORESHORTENINGS

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The concrete proposal is to walk in any street, which we have previously selected for some aspects that we wish to observe and enjoy directly and personally.

Ortega y Gasset used a lot the concept of “FORESHORTEN” and because of his special inclination towards philosophy he generally referred -I consider it- to the intellectual or intellectualized foreshortening that things presented in their aesthetic, metaphysical and doctrinal forms.

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Ortega y Gasset writes something about this, although he does not exactly call it INTELLECTUAL FORESHORTENING. The concept of foreshortening was an ideal means for a model of perspective in which the Spanish philosopher tried to highlight a certain detail (or several of them) in his analysis of some subject, even using it to contrast some element (or several) of it, and he stated: “foreshortening is the organ of visual depth; in it we find a borderline case where simple vision is fused with a purely intellectual act”. (Ortega y Gasset, Meditaciones del Quijote). I very much agree that it occurs in the sensitive intellectual limit, senses and mind of the plastic creator.

With this I only wish to emphasize that we can make some walks with the purpose of observing, during them, some elements that conform the streets. That is to say, to put into practice that orteguian foreshortening when we are walking within the perspective of a street. To obtain several positions, during our walk, to observe different perspectives by which we will be able to have other (dissimilar) “city-planning, artistic and aesthetic expressions”, and thus to capture different impressions and sensations from a same street by which we have decided to transit.

Once we have selected the street, let’s get ready to walk on either of its two sidewalks, being aware of its cardinal directions. According to its orientation we will know, at the time we make the tour, which of them will be sunny or shady. Let’s choose the one that interests us on that day (Future Post WALKING AND THE CARDINAL POINTS).

The fundamental purpose is to recommend an inter-environmental “Metaphoric dialogue” with the elements that call our attention to the passage of our walk, in the street, the sidewalk, the sense, as well as all the environment that has been chosen to develop the walk; same that will be endorsed by other specific sub-objectives such as the artistic motive (plastic, urban, etc.), or that of aesthetics: beauty, ugliness, attraction or repugnance.

For example, through one of the streets within the city: the units that make up the urban equipment: a fountain, a monument, a streetlamp; all of which could awaken or stimulate the imagination; or the natural elements that it finds in its path. In any of these cases, it will always be possible to initiate a dialogue -in figurative language- with them. Asking yourself what you might be questioning and/or answering; a window with the curtains in the air, or that winding staircase, or the slabs (tiles) on the floor.

What you perceive in this imaginative (fictitious) dialogue could give way to a certain type of literary narrative. If it is not your intention to write it, in any case, the exercise will be orienting you to awaken and develop your sensibility, by granting -imaginatively- communication or fictitious life to the inanimate material elements -which of course do not have it- and to perceive the possible responses of those organisms that do have it, both from the vegetable and animal kingdom, which are found in its path.

With this, besides benefiting your imagination, awakening it or increasing it, you will be favoring your degree of consciousness regarding those things, which in general, we subtract or do not give importance to.

These advances in the levels of consciousness will lead you to a clearer and greater knowledge of yourself and your socio-natural environment, which will lead you to continue walking.

If you are walking in some streets of the city, then you will be able to notice their respective names and this could impel you to develop a dialogue – again of the fictitious type – with the character or with the concept that gives the name to the path of your walk on that day, involving concepts (such as Freedom, Spring, Canyon) or individuals (such as Washington, Lincoln, Bolivar, Gandhi, etc. ), all of them as characters within a novelized scheme that can lead us to know new psychological profiles and literary styles (Future post ANACRONIC DIALOGUE WITH LITERARY CHARACTERS WHILE WALKING).

In the following days you will be able to make the characters and concepts that name the streets talk, with the purpose of writing those allegorical dialogues (fictitious) that will arise in your imagination, every time you walk through them and you want to do it, which could constitute, why not! a small creative story, of literary type.

When I mention “Dialogue” I do not mean specifically that we should start talking to the objects, animals or plants, but that we should make an effort to think about what they mean to us, what we have thought they are or whether they have influenced our lives.

For example, we find the name of a street: Freedom; think or imagine what this concept has meant or represents for us; that “dialogue” will be done with ourselves, not with the street name tag. If, for example, we encounter a great silence, to question why this part of the street will be so silent; in itself, we can conjecture what the silence represents: Is it the absence of sound? or the presence of a void? Will the noises and silences walk together?

In an instant we look at some corner of any street: Which colors are dominant? Could colors explain our state of mind?

Can we hear the wind? This is another element that we usually overlook; let us look for its presence.

If it is raining: Does it bother us? We might question whether it is pleasant to have water falling on our faces. (Post WALKING IN THE RAIN. PART I).

We could walk on the sidewalk without shoes, but … then we’d say that’s not right; or maybe our feet would answer: You’ve never done that before! Will we feel uncomfortable or will we feel good about doing it? (Post WALKING BAREFOOT. PART I).

Any element that we observe could invite us to reflect on it or on aspects that can be related. For example: cars, bicycles, clouds, churches, parishes, taverns, canteens, street vendors of all kinds, water pipes, sewers, buttresses of light, parks, dogs, cats, any animal that we see during our walk through the streets. In my book Pueblo Quieto. Las caídas de la Libertad (Quiet Town. The falls of Liberty), I try certain metaphorical dialogues, in which several streets participate, within the literary development of the novel.

The important thing is that we enjoy our walks on the streets and do not feel that we are bored and that the next day we are encouraged to go out on a walk because we will find something else that will encourage us to put our feet, shoes or no shoes, on the pavement of the sidewalks and the streets.

Now, it is different to walk the streets of a city during the day than at night. It goes without saying that we must take certain extra care when we walk at night. Urban configurations are different when viewed with natural daylight than those that are generated with artificial light. Many times the shadows of the night show living forms that by day appear dead to our eyes.

Let’s make a foreshortening of the urban-walker type, that allows us to have several aesthetic-urbanistic positions, during our walks by (in) the streets, (Future Post WALKING IN A NEW URBANISTIC PERSPECTIVE) and let’s enjoy the creation of those individual and unrepeatable perspectives, that for the same reason are original expressions of our interiority.

Loya Lopategui, Carlos, Pueblo Quieto. Las Caídas de la Libertad, EMULISA, Mexico, 2015.

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