by Amanda Dodson Jastrzembski leafandscreen@gm - a = THE COURSE OF CONSIDERATION OF VARYING MEDIA EMPLOYED To Begin in General Terms: i A PARTICULAR TRAFFIC ISLAND | It was a spring day here in Brooklyn, and I made my way toa | tangled corner of blocks near down near the waterfront, where strips of highways run above knobby cobblestones and the dust clouds of construction. | set down my backpack on the top of a low a cement and brick wall, freeing my arms to heave myself up onto it. ‘The wall was retaining a green slope that dropped down off the side of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in a graceful s-curve, like a flared skirt. I climbed the little hill; it was clean, the grass neatly mowed. At the top the highway was directed and held back by white lines and guard rails. Lines of traffic steered northward, cars spacing themselves out i like beads, ticking along under bridges, bending in on-ramps and off, || gaining and losing inches of clevation in inclines so slight the drivers | would never detect them. It only took me a few steps along the expressway, against the traffic, to reach a beach of grass even more stranded than the slope. This one hovered at the height of the highway, above surface streets of the neighborhood. If you had happened to be exiting the B.Q.E. via exit 28B that day you may have glimpsed me there, squinting. | | I I | i | I first went there months ago, and since then I've taken a little time to think about that particular traffic area, its indeterminate | location, its lack of use, or purpose, the sites around it and the views |! of it and from it. There are similar spaces all over the place and we all sort of know them, after staring at them out the car window or through the boiled air of a summer parking lot. I have watched from the back seat of a car the acres and miles of traffic islands and pillows Ht ‘" | of land bounding the highway blur into soft green and grey and yellow i a = Bi}bands. With this I’d hoped to look for just a bit of meaning in the triangle I noticed here in Brooklyn, and the others around. Beside this leaflet, I invite you to visit a website I made where you can see video, film and photomontages of the near-triangle (it curves a bit on one side) and its neighborhood ~ the bridges and the traffic. httpy/trigonometry.tumblr.com/ : i Considerations Philosophic WRONG INTERPRETATIONS - SIGNIFICANCE LEVEL ge» P = number of ways a situation can be interpreted total number of interpretations If you stand on this triangular traffic island, it's a platform from which to engage in nothing but observation. It’s generally unpleasant enough (bright, loud and in a cloud of exhaust) that you wouldn’t want to spread out a picnic blanket, set up an casel or pose for a photo. There’s no logical reason to visit - it doesn't border a rest stop and it doesn’t connect to anything. There’s nothing to lean on other than a couple twisted guardrails, and no shade. You could think of it as an accidental space, a punch-out of natural material, like a wedge of moss in a sidewalk, formed by the chance requirements of the surrounding buildings and roadways, poured and pounded into shape over the years. What you see and experience from that point is one-of-a-kind on earth - its particular elevation, and the wide panoramic view. It’s past by but never seen | Is it wasted space? Do freeways create wasted space because | they’re so fast and in such discord with their environment that they require buffer zones to regulate speed, to protect property, to protect passengers? {te ; ae Analysis and Complementary Notions (49 Standing on the triangle, you're at almost the same elevation ("as the pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge: tourists, commuters, bikers, runners, and in the summer - water sellers ($1 a bottle). I can't think of any other view (except inside of some of the private by most people in the neighborhood. | condo buildings) where you can spy those pedestrians from that level It's like looking at people standing on the other side of a canyon. The land drops and rises in between for highways, strects, rooftops. Right of Way If you look carefully, the triangle is visible from both the Manhattan Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge, where pedestrians encounter bikers in the tight lane that’s supposed to accommodate both. Signs and human-like white silhouettes pasted to the ground are supposed to demonstrate the rules. All pedestrians on the wooden walkway of the Brooklyn Bridge, moving in either direction, are supposed to restrict themselves to one side, the pedestrian side, and all bikers, moving in either direction, should stay on the other half (the north side) of the walkway. However, tourists like to demonstrate their knowledge of American right-handed traffic flow, so they switch sides deliberately, moving into the right-hand side, the bikers’ side, as they change directions. This infuriates the bikers, who shout at them and tweet their whistles. On the pedestrian walkway of the Manhattan Bridge, the rules are the opposite, all types, bikers and walkers, should always stay to the right-hand side, no matter their direction of motion. (The Williamsburg bridge, not in the neighborhood of the triangle, but still worth noting, has yet a third system, requiring walkers to share the lane with bikers, but against them in both directions, leading to almost total confusion for all parties).The triangle is no shade from sound - beside the lanes around and below it, the close-by Manhattan Bridge has two levels of traffic, carrying four sets of train tracks and several traffic lanes. The trains rattling over the bridge spray the neighborhood below, the fresh glass condos, with a crushing reflective shower of tones. Witnesses The reason the grass was trimmed and clean on the slope which leads to the triangle is thanks to the Jehovah's Witnesses, who own the large complex of nearby buildings, all painted beige with slim green trim around the windows. On the building nearest to the triangle is a sign that reads "The Watchtower, Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom." (Another building has a sign which reads "Read the Watchtower and Awake!" Is that grammatically correct?). This complex, who's main building is on Sands Street, is the administrative center of the Jehovah's Witnesses. Part of the surface traffic below the triangle is private buses that take the Witnesses to various sites around Brooklyn Heights. From the triangle you can also see the red, digital Watchtower clock, just to the south of the Brooklyn Bridge, which displays, in a flashing serics, the time and temperature in Fahrenheit and in Celsius. Versification AND POETIC FORMS Streets in the near area of the traffic triangle: Prospect | 40 Water Plymouth Front Main Poplar = , \ High 20 Nassau : / York Pearl | \ Chapel vay Bridge Cadence and Harmony i