For many authors who write about walking, Nature seems to be their go to walking route/spot. Two specific writers that discuss the beauty of Nature in retrospect to walking are Wordsworth and Thoreau. Wordsworth explains his ability to get lost in nature and find himself while Thoreau explains how nature is a key to one’s happiness/sanity. I personally am not a big fan of Nature. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the beauty of trees and plants along with open fields and birds chirping through the air. There is definitely something serene about sitting in Nature and taking everything around you in. Literally breathing in the Natural air and having a crisp feeling inside your lungs. In order for me to fully maintain some sort of happiness or sanity, though, I must take a walk down a city street. I need to be alone yet surrounded by people. Seeing a flower blossom is not nearly as rewarding or helpful to me as noticing a piece of graffiti on a familiar street for the first time.
Walking through Nature, I feel alone. Most of the time, I am physically alone. But that aside, the quietness and peacefulness of Nature has an ability to make me feel alone in every aspect of my life. There’s something about complete and utter quietness that makes me feel uncomfortable. There’s something about perfection and cleanliness that makes me troubled. You see, I’m a city kid. I grew up in Brooklyn and have spent most of my time in either Prospect or Central Parks. These parks are dirty. They are tarnished and filled with people. Their grasses are far from perfect and their fields are filled with people. Walking through one of these parks is pretty much like walking anywhere in the city itself. You’ll find some pigeons flying around, maybe a duck if you’re lucky. There will be garbage cans filled to the top, and garbage all over the grass or little cement walkways. There will be a few homeless people asleep on benches and a few teenagers smoking weed or drinking beer. There will be cigarette butts and picnickers. You will never be alone.
Thoreau states, “When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods; what would become of us if we walked only in a garden or a mall?”. This statement just isn’t true for me. If I need to go on a walk and do some intense thinking, I’ll hit Clinton or Henry Street — naturally. The thought of finding a field or some woods to walk through has never crossed my mind and I doubt it will. As I walk down a city street, I find comfort in the people around me. I find comfort in the sound of the cars driving down the street and comfort in the filth that makes up the sidewalk. Sometimes, if you’re in a really busy and popular area, you’ll get a whiff of garbage or body odor, and I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I like it. Well, maybe I don’t like it, but when I’m away from it for too long I begin to miss it.
Here in Paris, a street where I have done some walking and some thinking is in Le Marais. We had to take a walk down this street for one of our blog posts, and I didn’t realize which street it was until I got there. I never knew the name of it before I did the walk for class. Anyway, for this walk, we had to keep an eye out for street art and discuss it in our posts. This assignment brought me a lot of inspiration and a lot of knowledge. It was here that I rediscovered the beauty of taking a walk down a busy street. It was here that I became inspired to write once again. And it was here that I did my best thinking since my arrival in Paris.
Rue Vieille du Temple was no Clinton Street, that’s for sure. It is kind of a mix between Clinton and Mercer Street. Parts of Rue Vieille du Temple are emptier than others, and parts are more aesthetically pleasing than others. I have always said that Le Marais is the Soho of Paris, so Mercer street is a great comparison. Before taking the walk down this street for my assignment, I had never really paid attention to or noticed any street art. While I was looking for it, however, I found numerous pieces on each block. Not all equivalent with beauty but, in my opinion, equivalent in importance. What I realized as I saw more and more graffiti is that there have been so many people that have walked down this street and marked it with their art. And, there have been even more people that have walked down this street and have not noticed the art that it has. I was one of those people…I hadn’t noticed a majority of this artwork until I was actually looking for it.
These discoveries brought me to think about invisibility. The invisibility of the history of the people who have walked down a street before you. The invisibility of art and the invisibility of things in general. I like how when there’s cement, or some surface that you can write or draw on, you can mark your territory. You can mark it any way that you like so that everyone and anyone knows that you were there. But they don't know exactly who you are. They don't know your name or anything about you. They just know that someone walked the same route that they are walking and drew something to show it. I know that if you’re walking through Nature and you see a tree, you can carve your initials into it or something and mark your territory. But with carving something into a tree, it’s much harder to notice. I mean, if it’s hard for someone to notice graffiti in bright yellow spray paint on a dark blue door, how can someone discover a small carving in the trunk of a tree?
There’s a huge difference between people who need nature for sanity and those who don’t. A few of my friends find the need to get out of the city for a while because it seems to become too much for them. I have never felt this way. Except for when I decided to come to Paris, that is. But that wasn’t because I needed a break from a city in general…just a break from my own particular one. I needed to experience something new and unfamiliar for a while. And I guess I could have decided to experience something new and unfamiliar like Nature if I really wanted to, but that would have driven me crazy. Unlike Thoreau who needed to take a walk through Nature to get away from society and find his sanity, I need to be surrounded by society and remember who I am. Remember my contribution to the group and my own value.
I’m an invisible person and an invisible walker to the thousands of people who have walked before me and will walk after me. In Paris and in New York. But I, the invisible walker, and everyone else, the invisible walkers, have something in common. If you can’t guess what it is…it’s invisibility. We don’t know anything about each other and we don’t know if we would be friends or not. But thats what I like.
Walking through a city, you know people have walked the same exact route that you’re taking. Walking through Nature, you have no clue if anyone as even seen the same things that you’re seeing. The presence of others is uncertain. If you can’t be certain about their presence, you can’t feel their invisibility.
Revision notes: Having reread this, I'm trying to find the center to suggest how it could be revised. It begins with two tree-huggers, H.D. Thoreau and W. Wordsworth, but the real point here is that you don't care that much for nature or walking in nature. You say more about this, but some of it is really repeating that idea - you'd rather walk on Clinton Street, presumably in the 11231 zip code. The the Marais part and the invisible walker (you) and other invisible presences in the form of graffiti artists. One thing that's interesting here is the presence of two places - parks in Paris and Brooklyn (and the right bank in Paris). I wonder if, to give this a structure, it could be told as a walk down Clinton Street, which you can probably easily imagine. The idea of invisibility in the city, where people can see you, as opposed to the wilderness Thoreau considers ideal, is interesting. Maybe you can expand on this, but, of course, in the city you're just another person in a place where lots of people live, and therefore "alone in the crowd." Someone like Thoreau or WW walks in nature for a sense of connectedness to the spirit or soul which, for them, is contained in nature. As you walk down Clinton, passing Sackett and Carroll, you think of the parks in Paris and the Romantic view of nature. This sense of connectedness is also a kind of obliteration, since poets feel that they "lose themselves" in nature - or transcend the self. That's different from being alone and yet being yourself in a place with a lot of other selves. And the presence of invisible selves.. in your other post there was a big about the city and all the things that have happened to people there, the past which is now invisible. By strengthening this contrast and using a walk as a literary device, you could develop this interesting idea. Your paragraphs tend to wander a bit here; each one should make a single point. For instance, the first paragraph seems to change topics in the middle. You might bring a little more information or quotes from Thoreau or Wordsworth here, as well as proper names of places in Paris - to give it a sense of the public world. Good draft with a lot of potential.
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