5cense INT.0 the alphanumerics of DC's microcosmic psychogeography (1st st N/W/S/E + A st NE)

post
781

30 Aug 2020> Not onely did we travel from 0 (point-land) to 1-dimension (line-land) in our 1-of-a-kind art book series, but we embarked on the alphanumeric stage of our Microcosmic Psychogeography of DC project (which perhaps we shd now call the Alphanumeric Microcosmic Psychogeography of DC), tackling letter + number named streets. At the tail end of our last state-named (Massachusetts) avenue we did A st SE, so on this walk we went down 1st st NW/SW, slingshotted around the baseball stadium (after sitting in the sun by the Anacostia river for a while) then came up 1st SE then cut over on Independence (really where B st SE should be) + then back on A st NE to 1st st NE + home... about 14 miles in all (guess that means our heal is officially heeled!):

DC is roughly mapped in a diamond-shaped quadrant w/ letter-named streets running east-west + numbered streets running north-south, so, for example, there are 4 x 1st streets (pain in the ass for mail carriers for sure): 1st st NW, 1st NE, 1st SW + 1st SE (tho the southern portions are quite short). The Capitol building is @ the origin of this grid, which wd of bin convenient when we lived in a few blocks from the Capitol in 2016 (we passed our old house on this walk, near the corner of Independence + 5th) but since we now live at 15th + Swann (between S + T), we'll use our home as the center of the grid. Here's a rough version we drew to map out our plan of attack:

... not onely is this obviously rough (not to mention inaccurate) but DC is not always on a perfect grid, sometimes the streets disappear + reappear + the state-named streets (almost always diagonal to the above grid) throw a lot of kinks into it + the mall, rivers + parks also induce a lot of weirdness (not nearly as perfect as the grid of NYC (north of 14th st anyway) which we walked on our Maphattan Project). We were originally thinking of doing just the letter-named streets, but then realized in walking to them that we may as well knock off as many number-named streets as possible. So today we did 1streets E + W (except for the portions north of us) + A st NE (A st NW dont exist cuz of the mall) + next week we night do 2nd st E + W + B st S + E, or 2nd + 3rd streets W + B + C streets. Anyways, this is the rough plan, but seams there are always exceptions or obstacles, or we might just choose to go to a diffrent part of town on a whim. We shd also note that there's still 54 embassies (of 175) that we haven't seen yet, that undoubtedly we'll cover hitting all the numbered + letter-named streets.

"1st Walk SW" (this pedestrian path is actually called this on the map)

 

 

 

888 1st st NE

 

 

31Aug> Big booky haul on yesterday's walk (above—in exchange for Calamari or books less appropriate to our one liebury boox) + even sum frames left out on the sidewalk for free (Capitol Hill is always good for such things, trombones even). These walks are becoming a great way to curate our boox, but the 1s we're holding onto to possibly read are piling up faster than we can read 'em! Hear's a stack we'll release into our liebury boox today to ease the burden:

  • The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories by Amos Tutuola—(we read most of these stories) while not as good as his other books these are still worthwhile... seems they were mined from traditional Yoruba folk tales
  • Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant—this seemed intresting + we started to read it but it's heavy + we found another Kant book (on Moral Autonomy) that we'd rather read
  • Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter by Mario Vargas Llosa—we got over 50 pages into this before abandoning it... not that we didn't like it, it's just long + we've never read Llosa + we're wondering if we shd start w/ something else + voila, we found The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta on today's walk
  • The Laughing Monster by Denis Johnson—didn't get that far into this... seems silly to read a book about an African written by a white dude
  • The Narrows by Ann Petry—again, abandoned this 50 pages in not cuz it wasn't good, just wasn't our type of book, but she can definitely write... astonishing for it's time (1953), evidently the 1st African-American woman to sell a million copies of a book
  • A Confederate General from Big Sur by Richard Brautigan—Brautigan is hit or miss w/ us, sometimes his shtick wears thin or in a modern context feels creepy/sexist

780 <(current)> 782> Our 1st 5.11 + 1st 1st ascent up Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places w/ Wile E. Coyote (9/93)
[  (ɔ)om.Postd 2020  anon I'm us  |  calamari archive   ]