Paths taken

 

Length: 1:48

 

Jackie speaks:

 

Reorientation sometimes starts without our knowing it. When Jonathan trains in to visit and work with me, he’s already reorienting his body and mind to a different locale, a changed venue, an alternate situation—even if he thinks he’s only taking a train ride. I roll into the Riverside train station in my Mustang, ready to spirit him away to the Clay Pot, our current favorite Indian place. A long traffic-jammed ride up the 215 to the 10 to Hospitality Lane, and we’re there, ready for chicken makhani, onion bhaji, garlic chile naan. Sometimes Aurora joins us; sometimes she doesn’t. The owner, Mo, knows us, and knows how to make the curry hot. This is our routine, and in preparing for it, we orient our bodies for work and enjoyment, eating a little less during the day in order to prepare for the feast. Our work routine has emerged over the years to trace a set of paths and lines—not just of habit but trajectories of force. Friday night—Clay Pot and a trip to the bookstore. Saturday morning—early coffee and discussion, then drafting and reading, then lunch at Oscar’s, and then a wander around downtown Redlands. But that wander, consciously conceived of as a break for the body, follows a set path—first, a visit to the Redlands Art Association to look at bookmarks and handcrafted bowls and mugs, a trip to Comic Quest to check out the latest graphic novels and T-shirts, a check-in at the Italian tailor’s, coffee at Augie’s, and, finally, a detour through the Augie’s alley to check out the graffiti.

 

While Jackie talks, images and video shift and overlap on the screen: an image of the Riverside train station, including a bridge and train; then Jonathan with a backpack in front of a train; then Jackie’s shadow on the ground next to her car, while video taken from a moving car, showing passing trees, shimmers lightly in the background; then an image of a window front with a neon sign saying “Indian Cuisine” in red letters and painted signs saying “restaurant” and “entry” inside a red arrow; then a picture of onion bhaji; and then an image of Jonathan and Jackie photographing their reflections in a set of plate glass windows. The image then fades into a video of a projection screen showing Jackie’s face with Jonathan’s shadow in the background, while images flicker and flash to the side, also projected on the screen, and then Jonathan standing in front of and to the side of the projection screen, holding wires and trying to figure something out, possibly how to mount a speaker or a camera; we are unsure. Then we see a photo of the outside of Oscar’s Mexican restaurant in Redlands, California, and then an image of Redlands Art Association and the poster-strewn doorway to Comic Quest; then a sign advertising alterations outside a tailor’s shop; then the red brick two-story building with black awning of Augie’s coffee shop; and then Jonathan taking a photograph of graffiti in the alleyway next to Augie’s—all the while, video images flicker in the background and are superimposed on the photographs—buildings and trees passing by as they would be seen from inside a moving car driving down the street.