Exploring the city as an autoethnographer
There are so many aspects of slowness that I intend to capture in my autoethnographic work. I've written about slowness from the very beginning of my autoethnography, but I used to do it in a more fragmented way. These days, my study of slowness in everyday life is more systematic and intentional.
Writing about slowness means contemplating every day, every activity, every practice. Focusing on the ones that I or we (my partner and I) do differently to what is the norm. Though our life feels normal to us, we were wondering how fellow humans would feel if they visited us for a week or a month. Would they find our life too slow, uneventful, boring, local? Or would they feel liberated, refreshed and regenerated? In any case, they would probably notice a very different pace of life.
In my new autoethnography, I pay attention to things like food, clothing, everyday activities such as cleaning and cooking, relating with fellow humans, nature, rest and work. I talk about transportation and relating with the city where I live (Copenhagen).
I came across this text recently, and it resonated with me:
"Following a map or using a GPS will help you get from point A to point B, but by itself it will never teach you your way around. To do that, Wittgenstein says, you must actually walk around the city. You must get lost a bit. You must meander, apparently directionless. You must transverse the same paths multiple times, while noticing something different about them each time you take them. You must suddenly approach a familiar spot from an entirely unexpected direction. After a while, he says, you will have come to know your way around." (Burbules, 2020, p. 1450).
Reference
Burbules, N. C. (2020) Slowness as a virtue. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(5), 1443-1452.