LandFlow

"My usual question, unanswered by these - by most - travel books, is, How did you get there? We have become used to life being a series of arrivals or departures, of triumphs and failures, with nothing noteworthy in between. Summits matter, but what of the lower slopes of Parnassus?...Meanwhile, what of the journey itself? ... What interest me is the waking in the morning, the progress from the familiar to the slightly odd, to the rather strange, to the totally foreign, and finally to the outlandish. The journey, not the arrival, matters; the voyage, not the landing. Feeling cheated that way by other travel books, and wondering what exactly it is I have been denied, I decided to experiment by making my way to travel-book country, as far south as trains run."
-Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas

Inspired by Theroux, I recorded pieces of my train journey from Los Angeles to San Diego, to see how the land changes, how the terrain slowly evolves, in an attempt to capture and explore the feelings of movement through different spaces, of train travel, of crossing the earth and noticing the spaces that shift along the way. Our train passed from one urban configuration (flat, diffuse, with small clusters of small buildings and a certain reputation of openness, possibility) to another urban configuration (walkable, not as extensive, with a more conservative reputation) through urban sprawl, small rural towns, and natural settings. I am intrigued by the meanings and sensory experiences of these different spaces in passing through them, and how they are woven together on the fabric of the land in a seamless way.