15 January 2008
Habit (The Romantic Movement)
)Published on January 15th, 2008 @ 10:46:30 am, using 222 words, 277 views
Looking is always supplemented, some would say even superseded, by knowing or wishing. We rarely rely on what is in front of our eyes, proceeding instead with quick glances overshadowed by images already imbibed. Take Alice’s journey to work: she knew it so well, she rarely noticed it was happening, she sometimes arrived at the office without recollection of having crossed half of London to get to her desk. All she needed was a quick bleary-eyed gaze at the basic shapes of the station platforms, and the rest would follow: she knew how many Underground stops she had to pass, which direction the escalators operated, and which tunnels the crowds avoided. She had no will to register the colour of the carriages, the shape of the clouds as they floated above the London skyline or the texture of the clothes around her. Though charming and no doubt poetic, these were luxuries in the overall design of her journey to work.
If Alice was a lazy Underground traveller, the poverty of her perception stemmed from a reliance on habit. She saw what she had grown used to seeing rather than what might have unfolded to an innocent gaze.
(The Romantic Movement)
This post is the creative work of Iris Watts Hirideyo and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
The Romantic Movement, Allain de Botton, habit, London, Alice, Underground, perception, routine, looking, knowing, wishing, journey
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