Walking Assignment 5-15

Fr the first walking assignment I chose to walk the route that I take twice a day to walk my dogs around the neighborhood in which I live. The first sense I decided to map was the sound. I chose to walk the neighborhood at night in order to be able to concentrate on what I was hearing more than what I was seeing. During this first trip around the route I observed many sounds. 1. The sound of air conditioners and swamp coolers humming and occasionally clicking coming from many different houses along the way. 2. Barking dogs. The sound of barking followed me wherever I went. Many of the houses had dogs that upon noticing my present outside their house would begin barking. Sometimes the barking was muffled as it came from inside the house and other times it was loudly coming from behind gates and fences. The approximate size of the dogs were easy to determine due to the volume and pitch of the barking. 3. Outside of one house a man that was drinking on his porch stopped me to have a conversation about my dog. He kept repeating the phrase "I'm colorblind but not night blind" with a slight slur to his speech. 4. The last noticeable sound was the sound of someone sobbing on their front porch between indistinguishable sentences to the person they were talking to. The volume of the voice was what caught me off guard since I treat displays of such emotion as a private thing, not something to be carried out in the view of strangers passing by. The next sense I focused on was my sense of sight. I decided to take photos of details of my walk that I had not previously noticed despite my familiarity with the route and the frequency in which I walk it. The first thing that I noticed was the way that the aloe vera of one yard was growing pushed against the chain link fence. The patterns of the plant against the fence was what caught my eye.

 The next thing that caught my eye was a high chair that was left outside of a fence, half hidden in a bush alongside the road.  I almost didn't see it until I was almost completely past it.  My first response was to wonder why someone had left it there and what was their intention of leaving it in that specific spot.  Was it just to get rid of it?  To hope the trash person would pick it up on a bulk trash day?  Why hide it inside the branches instead of out further on the street?

 The last thing that I noticed was that along one particular block there was a lot of graffiti that had been very shoddily covered up.  It is now indistinguishable as to what was originally spray painted but it is still obvious that the fence was vandalized.  I feel like I understand why someone would want to cover the original graffiti but I wonder why they only half way covered it up instead of doing a better job of it.

 The last sense I focused on was the sense of touch.  I realized as I was completing these walks that I went out of my way not to touch anything (such as plants that were in my path).  The only thing that I physically interacted with was the ground.  My thoughts then turned to how little I notice the surface upon which I'm walking on unless it creates some difficulty, such as a hole in the ground, that interferes with the act of walking.  So I decided to pay close attention to all the types of surfaces, and what was on the surfaces as I walked.  They are cataloged below.