I walk where I want

As well as the documentation of and updates on the whereabouts of Her Shadow, this blog will also include a series of entries about the artist’s experience while traveling in Boston and New York. The following entry is a reflection on the artist’s first two weeks in the United States.

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I step out of the door of the small apartment in Jamaica Plain in Boston. There is a short walk on the footpath that I take alongside the ‘T’, the train that runs through Boston, in order to get to the T station. I catch the orange line to Massachusetts Ave and from there I have a half an hour walk to the site of the mural I am working on as a volunteer.

On the first day traveling to the mural site, I was supposed to take a bus. I stood at the bus stop for about five minutes studying the map, at which point I decided I could just walk all the way down ‘Mass Ave’ to the mural site on the esplanade.

Walking is a freedom we often forget to fight for. In public space we are governed by social conventions. Not all public spaces are for everyone; this is not written into law but rather kept in place through fear and oppression. In Johannesburg for instance, unspoken rules govern many of our streets; women should not walk alone, white people should not walk through Alexandra or Hillbrow, Black people should not walk through gated communities, Foreigners should not walk through Jeppestown... “You should be careful, you might be mugged, raped, necklaced, shot, arrested, abducted”. Not everyone abides by these rules, and not everyone has the choice as to whether or not they can travel safely through a public space. The politics that surround walking and occupying space in South Africa is complicated and really cannot be described as I have, in a few sentences. Never the less I think many of us are aware of the invisible restrictions we traverse.

I came to forget about the freedom of walking, forget that I had even lost it at all, until I stepped out of the apartment in Jamaica Plain. In taking my first few steps I could feel the freedom rush into me like a deep breath of cold air and on the exhale I could feel the fear leave my lungs and chest. For the last week I have taken up walking everywhere. I’ll take the train to save time, which then leaves me an hour or so to walk down Mass Ave. The walk to the mural site is a 15 minute walk so this leaves me with time to walk around the esplanade that circles the Charles river. Walking has become a kind of therapy. I walk until my feet feel as though rocks are embedded in them. This week I walked about 12 kilometers just commuting to and from the mural site.

With this newfound freedom I am able to provoke the spaces I walk through. If a man catcalls me I can stare him down, empowered by the strength I find in rightfully occupying a space. If I see someone with a great pair of shoes I can call out to them and tell them that I love their rad shoes. All over Boston people heckle each other in public spaces. Sometimes it’s aggressive, and sometimes it’s playful. During my week painting the mural which runs alongside a cycling and walking path people have shouted many things at me like; “I love what you are doing, thank you!” and “Don’t you think you should be using a bigger brush!”. I see the same freedom that I feel here permitting other people to express themselves. I see people walking with loud speakers booming out their song of the moment or someone stopping to laugh at a joke a passerby has made. People stop mid-jog to dance to the music we are painting to while another person tells us to “use more yellow!”. The atmosphere is jolting, vibrant and progressive because we are all taking part in creating a public space we believe should exist. It is a community and society that is able to curate and govern itself.

It is a powerful feeling to know that I can exist in a space, contribute to it, travel through it, not encased by a car or protected by another person or any other kind of barrier. My body can physically move me through a space and my mind is free to wonder. I am not governed by fear or invisible boundaries. I walk where I want.