when the road ends annie han and daniel milhayo , lead pencil studio
lead pencil studio
ROADS You who have made the ancient road of turf, That my feet might pass over it Into the level evening— Make now the ancient road of tears
If a path grows in width or depth through frequent use, and is accompanied with signs or symbols suggesting direction or destination, then this path has begun the transformation into a road. A road, whether paved or not, is something of real consequence and suggests an unequivocal intentionality and route between two points. A road represents the collective will of hundreds or millions who have travelled the same direction. Latent is the collective time it is has taken to construct a road even if only through the invisible investment of footfalls and willful travel along its length. Through repetition, the motion in-aggregate is far more than just a way out of the woods. A road and a corresponding intentionality is nothing short of the defining characteristic of civilisation. We may call it simply a piece of infrastructure, but no physical destination or constructed ambition can follow without a road – the same cannot be said of any other piece of infrastructure, whether it be a dam, pipeline, bridge, town, grain silo, railroad, airport runway or launchpad. All of these begin with a path that becomes a road. Roads are foundational to human activity, difficult to comprehend — a diffuse object that is beyond vision. If a road was short enough to see both the beginning and end simultaneously, from a single
That my song may pass over it; Make the ancient road of song That my ghost may pass over it, Coming with the new earth.
Sarah Unna 1
If you have ever found yourself in the woods and more or less lost at dusk, you may know the comfort of coming across a linear depression of worn foliage suggesting another creature has passed this way with regularity. The only decision is whether to follow the path or not. If you take the path, you stand a good chance of coming across a sign leading toward civilisation, but even if you don’t, the travel will at the very least be easier and most likely lead to somewhere other than oblivion. Of course, some paths lead intentionally to ruin in one direction or another and this possibility should not be ignored. Caution must always be taken as any unmarked path might just as well lead to a cliff, boxed canyon, predator’s den or further afield.
1 Sarah Unna. 'Roads', Poetry, Vol XIX, No VI, March 1922
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on site review 41 :: infrastructure
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