Digression during a site analysis in which pedestrians traversed the site frequently.
Until this point I have been concerned with the actual physical paths that visitors and locals create across sites. I neglected to think about the parallels from the physical paths that we walk every day and the mental and life-long paths we travel. Mental paths are a direction of thought. One is focused on a single item and thinking, say a math problem or even concentration on music, anything really. Then something interrupts you. You may or may not know what that is that has interrupted, but your mind is now instantly either identifying with the interruption or wondering where the interruption came from. Physical paths are the same, but on a much slower time table.You walk in a direction and for some reason something (or someone, an obstacle regardless) causes your path to either violently change direction or shift slightly, causing a new path to be made. Actual constructed paths do this and we follow dutifully, even with a change in material being the only type of path change. Our lives are a compilation of all these physical and mental paths, on an almost infinitely slower time table than the physical path and the mental path. Your mind changes possible a thousand times over a minute, a physical path may change twice or so in that span, and the life changes almost un-noticeably in that time frame.It seems natural that it works this way, our mind changing rapidly changes our paths slowly and our lives even slower. I was having a troubling time running these three parallel “paths” in my mind until it reached me that it was obvious that they are parallel but on different time tables. They, rather, we, are created in that way. Our minds should direct our physical lives and they should combine to direct our lives.Another idea is interrupted thought, path, or life. Once an obstacle, either perceived or real, is introduced; do paths change to avoid it or gain momentum to crash into it, either willingly or unconsciously in each case? The questions that arose from interruption were twofold: first being if the obstacle is removed, is the path the same; and secondly can the introduction of an obstacle into either the physical path or the mental path introduce change into the lifelong path?Once an obstacle is introduced, such as you are telling me a story and there is some distraction that happens that causes you to pause for a brief instant. Will that path of thought be the same after the obstacle is removed? Is it possible to go back to a path once you’ve been “enlightened” by knowledge of the obstacle that once was there? Is the path different or are you now different? Or is the actual path and you different because of the obstacle?The second train of thought following an introduction and/or removal of an obstacle, whether perceived or actual, is that can it be done in such a way to accelerate the lifelong change or even the physical change? For example, is supposedly takes 21 days or “instances” of a new habit to be logged into long term memory and become part of a daily routine. This is an extremely powerful possibility for change in my opinion when looked through the lens of a lifelong change. Every three weeks I can introduce small, tiny habits that compiled over many years can ultimately cause drastic changes in my final life. For instance, if I introduce an obstacle into the path of pedestrians, such as the entrance of a building, I have caused their physical paths to change to either go through my building if I let them or go around my building.Now if I use an outdoor gallery on a building obstacle and it changes every so often, I have now changed what the old obstacle that becomes part of my new path into an ever-changing perceived obstacle that causes me to pay attention to new obstacles every time they change. And if the art is such that it causes a pedestrian to pause and reflect, or it even touches someone who does not notice the art normally or doesn’t bother to go inside the obstacle building, I have now changed their physical path and possibly their mental path if the art is such that inspires thought or growth or reflection.My question is for this instance: do I now have an accelerated opportunity to change their life now that I am affecting two of the three paths that I’ve observed? Is this why something that “makes you stop and think” is so much more profound than the best billboard that I walk by and keep walking?
