It was a windy and cloudy Saturday. I called up my friend, S. We have just moved to The Hague. Both wanting to save money we decided that we would meet up for a walk. Me being an experimenter, and sometimes plain-old pretentious, decided that I want to do the walk without internet. I would, for example, try to print out a map. A feat that in the end was not accomplished because my printer ended up eating the paper. I had a tablet thankfully. And I put the map on pdf for us to consult. My friend chuckled at this as she saw me pull it out when we met. She reminded me of how much I made fun of a certain professor who pulled out a physical map on one of my study trips. It’s not funny how education changes you to someone you’re not… or who am i?
I declared that we should use our brains. And if we get hungry we should explore, like where is the bakery? Where is the Albert Heijn? Where do we want to go? etc. As destinations go, we are drawn to greeneries, and decided to go to the nearest one to the church near center of the Hague. I guessed it to be Paleistuin. We just followed the signages, turns out, its quite easy. I’m quite a natural with direction (if i do say so myself, arrogant).
Well, my friend said, In case of disagreements, you are right.
About directions you mean?
Ugh. Of course. You’re not ALWAYS right. She added.
On our way back I accidentally led her to three right turns. Soon after this my friend got tired of my little experiment.
We finally made it towards the parliament and got ourselves a seat at the benches where we ate our sandwiches. The seagulls preyed on us. We lamented that these days we don’t have so much nature to take walks on, and we don’t have any dangerous animals to keep us alert. Instead we have those rodents, pointing at the birds. We then read excerpts from Henry David Thoreau’s Journals:
“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”
“We must go out and re-ally ourselves to Nature every day. We must make root, send out some little fibre at least, even every winter day. I am sensible that I am imbibing health when I open my mouth to the wind. Staying in the house breeds a sort of insanity always. Every house is in this sense a hospital. A night and a forenoon is as much confinement to those wards as I can stand. I am aware that I recover some sanity which I had lost almost the instant that I come outdoors”
Thoreau, H. D., & Stilgoe, J. R. (2009). The journal, 1837-1861. New York, NY: New York Review of Books.
We explored the city some more until we grew tired, and walked back home. Us having thought that perhaps our little methodical outing is just a little bit pretentious.
Is it though?
Though not a perfect method, and certainly not the oddest one (try walking tied wrist to wrist around Rotterdam with around 15 Architecture students, it was nice), it certainly was removed from my normal walk. To be honest I haven’t been walking much lately, aside from catching the tram right on my doorstep and the walk to the university, or the walk from the bus stop to the workplace. The others were strolls I made in the city center at the Shopping Street or doing Groceries run. (It pains me that since I’ve moved here in The Hague how little I’ve biked). Half a year in, my life has become a series of location points, and tram-stops.
A flaneur. This is what Walter Benjamin would have called what I was being that day, or what I wish he would have called me. The twentieth century writer of The Arcades Project was interested in exploring the impact of the modern city to the human psyche especially in the city of Paris (Seal, 2013). He categorised two reaction to the world: Erlebnis, an overwhelming alienation experienced by a worker bound to his/her work routinities, and Erfahrung, a positive feeling that points to being mobile, and experiencing the city, the experiences of the flaneur.
The greater the share of the shock factor in particular impressions, the more constantly consciousness has to be alert as a screen against stimuli; the more efficiently it does so, the less do these impressions enter experience (Erfahrung), tending to remain in the sphere of a certain hour in one’s life (Erlebnis).
Walter Benjamin, ‘Illuminations’
The ‘battle’ between Erfahrung and Erlebnis is what interests Walter Benjamin as he looked at the Paris metropolis of the early 20th century. Benjamin especially likes cafes and bookshops as he likens it as an extension of the the street. Almost 100 years on, perhaps what alienates the common workers of the cities remains the same (and now most people in the world lives in cities). Furthermore, in most cities cafes has become an extension of not only the street but also your own living room. Now though, our consumption of social media and our reliance of our gadgets disrupts us from experiencing the calling of the city in its fullest (Erlebnis). Because the experience of the Flaneur in my understanding is not of its capitalistic offering. Or does this way of living make us all Flaneurs, each of us posting and tweeting and tiktok-ing as we go, reporting our experiences with the city? Who knows.
This of course is a very privileged issue to ruminate on. In many other cities including where yours truly came from, the safety of whole groups of walkers (women, transgenders, people with disability, minorities) are not guaranteed, not to mention the rights of pedestrians alone. I’d like to end with this, that walking and roaming, is a right and a privilege. And as Will Self had said in his seminal essay: a political act. As citizens of the city, I’d fight for that!
Seal, Bobby. Baudelaire, Benjamin and the Birth of the Flâneur. (2014, May 13). Retrieved from http://psychogeographicreview.com/baudelaire-benjamin-and-the-birth-of-the-flaneur/
Self, W. (2012, March 30). Will Self: Walking is political. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/30/will-self-walking-cities-foot
*needsmorecitation 