THE OBELISK MAN

Funny things, obsessions.  Some of them last so much longer than others.  Some wear off and are gone quite quickly.  Some come and then go away for a while and then return. And in some cases it seems that the obsession is  pursuing you, rather than the other way round.

And so I return to my mild, yet ongoing and very possibly expanding, interest in obelisks.  I’ve written about them a couple of times before on this blog but I keep seeing them as a walk through the world, and this seems in some oblique way significant. 

On the one hand obelisks may be seen light coming down from heaven and being focused rather precisely.  On the other it’s seen a phallic symbol of male power.   I really have no dog in that fight – although as phallic symbols go it seems a bit hard-edged.  And when I see them on my travels I’m not sure I think of them as either.  For me it’s more about  variations within a definite form, as with the martini.

Towards the end of last year I was in Chicago.  I didn’t go there looking for obelisks, I didn’t expect to see them, and yet Chicago seems to be Obelisk Central.  

They’re all over the place. It has a lot to do with Frederick Law Olmsted who designed large chunks of the city, including parts of what’s apparently known as the "emerald necklace.”  But it’s not restricted to that area.

And taphophile that I am, I went to the cemetery named Graceland (no Elvis connection) which I’d read about on Atlas Obscura, and which I think they rather over-sold as featuring  “magnificent opulence.”  I’ve seen opulenter.  But for me it was just the biggest cluster of obelisks I’d ever seen.

And then once I arrived in London I went to Brompton cemetery and there are lots of obelisks there too, though not nearly as many in Chicago:

And then in the deer park in Richmond

And on display in the British museum, which wasn’t really all that surprising

But there are also a couple tucked into corners in the Museum’s Great Court, which doesn’t seem very respectful.

And there were some in a shop window opposite the British Museum – I guess if you can’t sell an obelisk there, you probably can’t sell one anywhere.  That's the image at the top of this post.  I bought one, naturally.

And then in Battersea Park at the weekend I saw a set of them by children’s zoo, unnoticed by the passing afternoon strollers. 

This is by no means a complete list of recent sightings.   But here’s a thing; as I walked in the cemetery in Chicago I saw this:

And as I walked in the Brompton I saw this:

Walkers get everywhere, and most of us know a memento mori when we see one.

PRAYER WALKS

After the best part of two days on the train to Chicago I decided to walk the mile or so from the station to the hotel – I was carrying very little luggage, as is my way.

I was trying to get to Congress Avenue. The map made it look easy to find, which was just as well because I didn’t want to have to say to somebody, “Excuse me, I’m looking for Congress.”  

As I walked I saw plenty of “street people” on the streets.  In LA we’re used to seeing tents and improvised shelters on the sidewalks, and I couldn’t tell you if these guys hanging out were homeless or not.  Some were certainly what we used to call panhandlers, but some of these guys seemed more interested in talking to each other that approaching passersby.  But as I passed a small group of men at a corner one of then said very loudly, “Motherfucker!” I couldn’t tell whether he was addressing me or the universe in general.  I chose to believe the latter, but I speeded up in any case.

That was not my best walking moment in Chicago, but this was, at the Art  Chicago Institute there was this, an installation by James Webb titled Prayer:

It involves a long broad stretch of carpet with loudspeakers embedded in it, and you experienced the work by taking your shoes off and walking among the speakers each of which is broadcasting a prayer from a different faiths. As you walk you can stop and concentrate on one message or listen simultaneously to two or to many of them in a cacophony.

Apparently some people kneel or even lie on the carpet, but I didn't see any of that, and for quite a bit of the time I was the only one in the time I was there I was the only there, at least until these gals arrived.

WALKING BY TRAIN

I went by train from LA to Chicago: it took 45 hours or so on the Southwest Chief.  I knew I’d do plenty of walking when I got to Chicago but on the train the walking opportunities (obviously) are strictly limited.  

You can walk to the toilet, to the observation car, to the cafe or the dining car but this isn’t real walking, (again obviously).  The train conductor also made many doom-laden announcements about the dangers of walking around the train without shoes.
      And very occasionally you can look out the window and see somebody walking alongside the tracks or along the station platform, but that doesn’t seem very real either. 

However there's lots of opportunity for reading, and I had a copy of the New York Review of Books with me, and in 45 hours you can read every single word of it, including the slightly sniffy review by Ian Jack of Iain Sinclair’s The Last London.  I have only ever seen Ian Jack from a distance and frankly he didn’t look like much of a walker, which may explain something:

In the review he writes, 

“As a playful way of exploring and interpreting urban environments, psychogeography has a history in both England and France that goes back to the 1950s and the Situationism of Guy Debord, but it was Sinclair who resurrected it as a popular, or at least a fashionable, idea. Like ley lines (discovered or invented in 1921), psychogeography wasn’t designed to survive rational scrutiny …”

I think that’s pretty good, especially in a review that is essentially positive, and especially since it echoes my own prejudices about psychogeography and ley lines.