figure 2.

figure 2: picture 1 (Calgary, AB)

Taking this picture made me feel sort of bittersweet in a way, because I myself, have never experienced riding those electric scooters with someone of the opposite gender. However, when I looked to capture the image, I got deja-vu from my own experience of riding the same scooters last summer with my cousins. It was particularly windy on the day that this picture was taken, and I wondered if the person on the left had felt chilly at all, or if they were too wrapped up in their conversation to even notice or attend to their own bodily troubles.

I remember when I rode the scooters, I felt slightly afraid of the cars on the road seeing me trip or do something embarrassing. But in this case, I think that (from the way that they are staring at each other) they are too entranced in their own connection and emotions to even notice the loudness of the cars on the streets, and the wind knocking through the trees. Is this what it is to feel emotions so deeply, and experience reality in such a way, that you lose sight of everything around you?

The human connection in this photo is not physical touch, but conversation. The exchanging of words between two people, as Marks writes in her passage on Translation and Connectivity, allows for a unique type of communication through the translation of audio. By taking this picture and observing the many conversations that were in progress on the sidewalk, I began to ponder over how incredibly fascinating and simultaneously scary it was, that everyone around me had their own lives and relationships. The people that we pass on our little walks lead their own individual lives and you may never see them again-- yet here they are. In the present. Conversing before your very eyes. This sort of thought creates a spectacle in and of itself-- and it is something that I realized as I took more and more pictures of people on this particular walk. It is a very jarring idea to mull over; it surely keeps many awake at night in deep contemplation.