Of Unseen Element

I love tasting cities. They're like people, you haven't got two that are really the same. It's what they call Genius Loci (or spirit of place). It goes from obvious things like cultural elements to the the spice of local nature. There's also the set of streets and the arrangements of buildings and stores, which is one of the things that makes moving out to a different city being so exciting, at least for me. There's the learning the ways of the city, getting to know the shortcuts and all logistics that can't possibly be imitated, no matter how much you want to plan everything out before building up the city. It's something about nature throwing its random dices, I guess.

But the true spice that make them stand ultimately unique is something that cannot be seen. Say, geographical location, sense of place. It may be subtle and most of the time we don't even realize it, but we feel a city differently by knowing it's located far down south in the country or near the state's capital city. If there's a big city northwards, that'll interfere with the way you feel this city. It's pretty much a feeling of this being close to that. A city close to a river, close to the sea, close to the mountains. You have that feeling right now in a smaller scale. The room you are in, you unconsciously feel it in relation to the other places. Maybe you live in an apartment and across the street there's a public square with a fountain. The apartment room above yours, up to the whatever store, will be felt differently for it's goddamn higher in relation to the ground.

When thinking of geography, I always think of cardinal directions. They are clear examples of unseen elements. They affect me in subtle ways. It's something about spices, I think. I go east to go to the college in the capital, so if I'm going around sunset time the sun is going down behind me and subtleties like that. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference, but through contrasting we can realize it. When I was a kid, I remember I once kept watching the neighborhood reflected on the window. The mirrored world seemed to feel like a totally different place. The sunset was on the other side of the world, and that alone made it feel just weird, a whole new world to taste.

Anyways, this unseen feeling is sometimes visible. Not hard to find its hints. I really like paying attention to these signs showing the distance to nearby cities. Perhaps that's why I feel they give me some sense of reality. They make the unseen element tangible. It's like when you're gonna be traveling to London, the realization will strike you better when you've got physical proof you're going to England, like the sign in your bagage showing a LON code or something. When I see a palm tree, the feeling I'm near the coast has a reason to be. If I see portuguese language written all over the place, I'm constantly being told I'm in Brazil (eh, could be Portugal). The sun setting in west gives me orientation for the rest of the cardinal directions. I'll call those signs Hints.

This unseen element can be manipulated though, but you have to be free from Hints. If there's daylight pouring in your room, you can't pretend it's night, after all it's not unseen. But if the outside world lies out of your senses, you probably still knows what lies beyond the walls. Yet it's all in your mind, the memories telling you that (no, I won't philosophically question reality here). If you've got reality in your mind, you can twist it to change the perception of the room you're in.

I have several hobbies regarding that. When I have no proof there's the lawn just outside, so there's nothing preventing me from picturing, I don't know, a beach (we're on the internet, we're two clicks away from filling our ears with the sounds of the sea).

I also like twisting cardinal directions in my mind. As the sun is usually a hint of cardinal directions, this is a game that can only be played during midday. Or at night. Or in a room with no hint of the sun. As I said before, a recardinated world feels like a whole new place to taste.

And my favorite one is pretending to be in another place, but this time it's using Hints, not ignoring them. By looking at something in my reality that resembles elements I've seen from Tokyo (while avoiding things that hint me away from that, like pretty much everything), I can elaborate and focus on hints for the feeling of being in the japanese capital city, though that's tough. Hard to have visual hints with enough strength on their own, but they are strengthened with the help of, really, japanese food or japanese music (I'll call these Exportable Hints).
And then one asks the fundamental question "how the hell can you possibly feel places you don't know?". Yeah, I had to have experienced Tokyo to know what are key elements of feeling like being in the japanese capital city, so I'll have to try feeling it with what my perception of Tokyo is, which can really be frustratingly limitating. I have to work with something that end up being quite stereotypical perceptions, but that's what I have. It's not, by really far, a complete experience, but it's a goddamn interesting exercise.

(Part 2 is to follow, regarding time and nature)