Getting lost: some notes: part 3

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Log

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9. Worst places for getting lost (not in order): Marrakesh, Venice, London, Tunis, Lecce and Istanbul. The souk in Aleppo deserves special mention.. You could go completely insane there. Flatness, high walls a lack of reference points, and an absence of straight roads are common factors.

Excessive sameness is confusing, as in the endless whiteness of Lecce or when I once tried to find a friend's  house in Wandsworth while only having a general notion of where it was, to wonder up and down God knows how many streets of 1930s semi-detached houses.  

But disharmony can be as confusing as sameness. The visual cacophony of Sao Paolo makes it utterly baffling, such that it can give you a headache, and is rarely alleviated by nature (usually  Brazil's aesthetic savior).  London is hard because there are so many streets which appear to be straight but which, in fact, bend so that you walk under the impression that you are, say, going north, but really are curving a constant but subtle northwest. This can drive you a bit crazy.

10. Grid plan. Yes it's easy, but there is that very strange thing where you get out of the metro and you walk a few blocks in the wrong direction...

10. Relief. But one is never lost forever. At least not in the city. In the woods, however, I did at moments feverishly imagine that I might be lost forever, my emaciated corpse discovered by dogs in in a bush only 20 metres from the path as the newspaper headline breathlessly exclaims. But to find the path, to become unlost,  is as mysterious for me at least as being lost, akin to picking the right key from a ring of keys and silly me....then! Hey presto the door opens. Relief is conditioned with amazement. 

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