Geography of Motion

Once I read that highways have a special aesthetic, required because they are places transforming themselves into other places. They need to be insulated from the normal, non-transforming places, the ones that just stay still and be themselves, because if viewed in terms of a non-moving aesthetic, highways are ugly, and if viewed in terms of the moving aesthetic, "normal" places are a confusing jumble that makes no sense. That seemed true.

For several days, I found myself living in a different kind of place transforming itself into different place, the complex hotels, restaurants, car rental facilities, and parking services that surrounds the Sea-Tac airport outside Seattle. I was there because I had things to do to the north and to the south, plus I was coming from the east, wanted a place I could find easily, and wanted easy access to the airport when it came time to leave. But there I was for several days, long enough to experience the place as itself.

There's this blob of activity in buildings and parking lots just outside the airport, which makes sense only in terms of coming and going. The hotels are clearly mostly places where people come in after a flight on their way to wherever they are "really" going, or where people come to pause for the night before getting on the plane. All of them are surrounded by extra parking lots for people who are leaving their cars during their absence. The hotels are interspersed with "park and fly" places and car rental agencies. The "better" hotels have their own restaurants, so the traveler need not leave the premises; hotels like the one where I stayed are content to offer an efficient shuttle service. Food facilities outside hotels seemed oriented more to the employees of the many travel-related operations than to travelers.

But here's what I found: I was on the edge of airport-related service activity, so by going out on foot, I could be strolling in a residential neighborhood, complete with a little lake and a lovely park, participating in a place that makes sense as place. By car, I visited the library and the Post Office, even the supermarket, and there they were, solid and fixed, belonging only to the place they inhabit, even though minutes away, there was this other place that made sense only in terms of the logic of air travel. To heighten the contrast, it was spring in the places that were not in motion, with green grass, daffodils, cherry trees, and other Northwestern things I don't recognize in bloom, while the traveling place was dominated by concrete and electric light, knowing no season.

Since I was there for a few days, I was grateful to be able to access the place that stays put. Since I was leaving on the plane, I was grateful to be able to access the place tranforming into other places. The transforming place is ugly in terms of the ways of the place that does not move. The stationary place makes no sense to the people who are engaged with the processes of the transforming place. They know no season, only movement. They need no library or post office or park. They might as well be two different worlds.