Square Shoulders

The squareness of the buildings makes shades – when they come with the sun – fall angularly, cutting the pavement and dicing the movement. People’s shoulders are similarly square-set in the raised, cautious ways that they guard the personal space of the body. They’re not heavy, the way they are where I come from. They’re just straight, angular on the ready. And the steps that propel them forward are similarly strict, precise. Not severe and not even necessarily purposeful but complete, directed. A place of progression. Progress to higher education. Don’t forget working-class history. Hold yourself in a way that honours both: move your shoulders intently whether their labour is industrial or intellectual, it takes the whole body. But dichotomies are constructed. Party, dance the same way but differently, with an abandon that is methodical. Go to the pub, sit with a pint. Hunch your shoulders over the glass as you hold it with your hand – protect your custom. Sip the beer and sit back – be the custom.

In these kinds of movements, conjoined and contextual, space is made and remade, unmade, and all over again. When we make it enough times in a similar way, it becomes routine. What was qualitative at first – a movement, an action, a score, a path – becomes quantitative – it takes so many minutes, I do it this so many times a week, I’ve done it for years – and then again qualitative in a new way: the little deviations that draw the lines between the layers of time like rain, holidays, new presences and absences. The sensory. Some things we incorporate, we put up our umbrellas and hoods to shield our routine all the while letting the interruption become part of it. And others we do not, we push them out, leaving them at the side of the road or yet further back, out of view, sound, touch. Sometimes, we allow them the sense of taste, we welcome “ethnic” cuisines. But otherwise, there is a sensory rigidity we do not own up to. We may change the route just to avoid that unwanted presence.

Is that what nuisance is? The kind of inconvenience that makes your arms itch in frustration. So is it in you? More than around you? Does it take up the space, inevitably shrinking you? And so, it shrinks your body? But you want to walk with shoulders broad, with steps precise, unveering. Like the buildings. Stay.

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