In a Place Without Cameras

Presence Rediscovered

Just one shot from the distance. Charles R. Wolfe photo

As with many things in my experiential laboratory in New Mexico, I realize I’ve been here at a different place and time. However, during the latter experiences, I was not fully present—those were lands of constructs, measures, expectations, and critical evaluation.

Things seem different now.

Take the process of immersing in a lively built environment—but without the crutch of a camera or even the opportunity to make simple sketches or jot down contemporaneous impressions. “Make mental notes,” said my friend as she watched me struggle with the fear that I would forget a place where Pueblo regulations explicitly ban documentary practices.

After all, I wanted to record in some form the fantastic experience of an annual feast at a New Mexico Pueblo. I was so afraid I would lose sight of what I saw. But, ironically, the restrictions—designed to preserve or limit the corruption of traditions—helped create even stronger memories.

Mental notes include mental captions: walking past market stalls; entering homes; sitting at long tables; seeing lines of dancers—hundreds of them of all ages amid color and paint; shaking hands with the governors and council while meeting them in a counter-clockwise motion around a large rectangular tent at the end of a plaza; and the plaza itself, descendant of the Laws of the Indies.

I had to relearn how to understand what I saw and heard without the benefits of technology, which I now define more clearly as tools of tried-and-true distraction.

Yesterday, I saw a plaza that, from the perspective of standing at one end, was geometrically imperfect, with slight curves in the building lines, balconies, and ladders. I saw the remarkable tendency of the dancers’ paths to weave and align with those imperfections: no straight or parallel lines, no absolute right angles, accompanied by irregular drum beats and body motions askew.

It didn’t matter—because for someone (me) who recently wrote of the haunting word “authenticity” (which might mean next to nothing), this was among the most authentic experiences ever.

Seeing and tasting remarkable mergers of indigenous and Hispanic traditions—and the overlap of an adapted European square upon native lands—reminds me again of why I’m here: seeking actual organic irregularity and the ability to communicate without interference from that structured inner critic from whom I’m running.

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When and how, as suggested above, have I been here before?

In my second book, Seeing the Better City: How to Explore, Observe, and Improve Urban Space (Island Press, 2016), I advocated photography as the best tool to compel understanding of a place, referencing several established traditions (pp. 33-51).

Mind you, I did champion Charles Dickens’s pure, unassisted writing as so captivating that it anticipated cinema with narratives that barrage the senses.

However, I also suggested that photo-centric “urban diaries” could have enhanced my experiences as a lawyer with federally required Native American permit consultations with a tribal council in the Pacific Northwest.

Yet those council members patiently explained how to understand the significance of a uniquely shaped hill along a planned transit line and the mouth of a creek adjacent to a slated professional football team practice facility.

Like the relatedness of yesterday, I remember how they stood and sensed more than any camera I did not have.