On a sidewalk filled with tables and chairs and waiters and street vendors, who owns the land? On the other side of a steel door, land in an alley claimed by a fence, what is the land used for? Walking home to the hotel I experience for the first time in a long time being in a space free from the rigid designations of property, the crisp delineations and clear sectors of function that break up the American city. Last time I felt this way I was looking at a cheap quick mart at the base of a fancy corporate building in downtown Vancouver. I couldn’t figure out how the mart could pay the rent, how the owners would allow such an aesthetic abnormality. The land we normally walk sits under a blanket of comfort, expectation is never violated, and not one inch sticks out as asking questions of me, of begging curiosity. But does this entirely explain the feeling in I had Athens? Perhaps not. I think that over in Greece the private property boundaries are looser, and functions really are more ambiguous. My simulation of the environment isn’t just worse because its a novel area, but perhaps there really is more ambiguity imbued in the land of the city. But I know if I walked the streets for months, the ambiguity would disappear.
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Athens, Greece. August 2019.
Written September 6th that same year, in Cambridge, Ma.