"Natural desire lines" and/or Culture*

Urban planners and landscape architects describe a phenomenon they call "natural desire lines" ;or simply "desire lines." ...... The park's planners had designed gracious curving paths, which walked the walkers around the borders of the newly planted lawns, through avenues of young shrubs and fledgling trees. The public were being instructed, guided on an improving and scenic detour. From the main road there was one path that led through the park to the entrance of a large supermarket. ...... The path was curved like a long archery bow, cutting a grey and gentle swathe through the young and vibrant glass, taking the public on a stroll on their way to and from the store, encouraging them to stop and smell the roses. Which of course we didn't. loaded with desire one way and bags the other, we chose expediency over prescribed detour. We voted with our feet. Gradually a line was worn through the grass, connecting the ends of the curve like the string of an archery bow. With use, this line gained definition, lost its green. Son it was a solid beaten path, a taut and muscular line inscribed by desire and necessity. .....

So desire can inscribe itself on the landscape, make a big mark. No one planned it and no one sanctioned it, but still this mark upon the world happened. Massed desire expressed itself. There is, in a way, nothing remarkable about this process. .........

What is at work here is a dialectic of force and form. The raw force of human compulsions, the lack and needs that make us move -- hunger, anger, sex, comfort, curiosity -- are translated into movements and actions. These movements and actions are not arbitrary -- some are more effective as satisfying our needs than others. ..... So certain movements and actions will be repeated more than others, and will in their repetition become established and routine. These routines, these rudimentary formation of desire, will begin to leave marks, expressing themselves as paths or even as storied about the best way to build them. These marks -- these semi permanent forms, these tangible manifestation of desire -- are what we call culture.