ABSTRACT
This riff or mini chapter opens with a general claim: wandering possesses a geometry that differs from the geometry of settled states. Whether psychogeographers are drifting along the streets of Paris or nomads are shifting their camps across a desert landscape, wanderers tend to share an aversion to a geometry of straight lines and right angles. Native Americans once inhabited a geometry of sacred circles. Although the ancient Anasazi builders at Chaco Canyon constructed multistoried stone structures with rectangular walls, they reserved the circular form for their sacred belowground kivas. Black Elk, a Lakota Sioux holy man, describes the Native American preference for circular forms as always encompassing a spiritual significance. Rectangular medieval cathedrals, by contrast, not only soar upwards in a vertical line suggesting spiritual aspirations but also convey a secular sense of permanence, like stone emblems of sedentary life. The oldest surviving structures in northwestern Europe are two early Neolithic rectangular stone buildings in Scotland: a farmhouse and an adjacent storage unit. Their straight sides answer the needs of farmers who plan to stay put. They have stayed put for over 5,000 years.
