City Conspiracy

In my spare moments in the city I have found myself becoming a bit of an amateur detective.

Two separate people have drawn my attention. Throughout the masses of the capital city, the bustle of every day life and the fast pace of the metropolis two people are recurring characters in my daily routine. The first is a somewhat elderly woman. My curiosity about her was aroused when I saw her trendy runners that were completely at odds with the rest of her austere clothes. She wears a dark coat and trousers and is invariably at my bus stop at 20:54, every day. I actually stumbled into her in a café at about 20:00 earlier in the week and subtly observed her from the other side of the room. An elderly man that she knew by name visited her and gave her newspapers, to which she said "I don't rely on anybody".

The second person I have seen less frequently. He is fairly heavy set and wears a dark jacket and jeans. His untamed hair and somewhat vacant stare draws the eye. He gets on my bus at various times in the evening and sits on the top floor of the bus in the second row from the front. One stop before his, he bows his head forward in a crouch while sitting and all of a sudden springs upright and marches straight off the bus. If I had to guess his mantra, it would be "I don't perceive anybody".

What has made me to make these bizarre observations? Am I simply deranged? Do I get some kind of sick pleasure from observing people? I would naturally be inclined to defend myself on these fronts and in any case I feel that there is something more systemic going on. The Panopticon society that we live in truly has begun to infect us all. We're Baudelaire's detective, as we walk the city streets not making any personal connection with people and thus, inventing one.

We observe all and are observed by all.

-The English Student

A Tremor of Contact

In The Metropolis and Modern Life, Georg Simmel compares the small towns which were based on “feelings and emotional relationships” and the “rational manner” of the metropolis.

Theorists like Simmel were obsessed with identifying the differences between rural and city life. These realms were divided by issues of subjectivity and objectivity, capital and money-economy. But the most striking and relevant trope in these writings relates to personal relationships. A conception of these relationships based in city life came to my mind recently during my commute.

I accidentally placed my hand upon the hand of another traveller while exiting a bus. This slight incident left a pronounced mark on my thoughts for the entire day. A prevailing tremor ran through my body and mind after this glancing contact. But why should such an event seem so important to me? We may be surrounded by thousands of people in the urban landscape but we truly are separated from them. We have replaced the need for physical space based in the rural with a mental division based in the urban.

My shock was based on the apparent contradiction between the densely populated city and our isolated position within it. Initially, this disconnection seems like an undesirable change in human interaction. But in actuality, the reserve we now keep for physical action makes contact more important. The use of action and even words has become more concentrated and a concise and this heightens the illustriousness of communication. We should not begrudge the change of human contact with the movement from the rural to the urban.

Instead, we should be grateful for the opportunity to create greater meaning with every word, look and touch.

-The English Student