Last week I was walking through the streets of Antwerp with
a friend who has a very strong penchant and deep knowledge of gemstones. Now
that sounds innocuous enough, but what it led to was a very eye-opening
experience for me.
Why?
Because I thought I knew Antwerp rather well and am aware of
many of the shops, boutiques, restaurants, art galleries, etc. But, what
happened was that because of listening to someone else’s interest, we ended up
going to a whole different Antwerp than I had been to, but all the while being
exactly in the same Antwerp that I have always walked through.
In essence, I had been walking by some very fascinating
shops for years and never going in, sometimes perhaps out of just habit of
knowing my favorite places, or sometimes just not recognizing what is right in
front of your eyes. It is the cliché of driving down a road and suddenly
realizing you have gone a mile and don’t remember any of it because you always
drive down that road and your “subconscious” driver takes over.
As such, throughout the day, little cairns of memories were
placed along familiar routes, marking new places and points of interest that I
will be sure to view next time and more importantly gave me the awareness to
keep my eyes open for new ones.
Every city has multiple dimensions, layers upon layers, like
a sedimentary rock, and as with Foucault’s Archaeology of Knowledge, it is for
us to dig through and find the layers and be aware of the rifts. Many of us,
myself included, merely walk along the surface each day, and yet, just below,
there are new worlds to be discovered, or like the theoretical pocket universes
that could be all around us, but we must be willing to look for them.
