Intersectional

Intersections are crossings. and maybe crissings. There is some sense of something --a running out-of and into, a through and through, where one's meeting another one too. If there is any convention recognized, let it be the names of not only the places, but moreso the paths, that we choose to christen in our particular avenuvial ways.

How can it be that the starting of something starts here and the ending ends there in a way that can be named? And I’m even speaking in a practical sense here. Take for example this T intersection in my neighborhood.


There is plenty going on here, a dissertation’s worth really, for the civil engineer and the critical theorist alike.

Why Chapel Hill Rd. runs perpendicular into Chapel Hill St. can only be considered as a cruel, cruel joke played by the Dept. of Public Works on anyone trying to find there way anywhere. Of course, I could just not be picking up of the obvious and important differences between a Road and a Street that would make my - and many drivers’- conflation just a silly one. And this is just one detail, for after all. it’s important to note that we have the situation that - where Chapel Hill Rd. hits Chapel Hill St. - the latter turns magically into Duke University Ave.!

I think there is a term for this in subatomic physics, where the very act of colliding with certain other types of particles turns you into something completely different. muon to gluon or something. But who needs a cloud chamber to understand such phenomena when you have the streets of Durham's west-end to see how true this is? likewise, if you are slapped by a friend or jilted lover, such a singular collision might also bring the point home, transforming you most elementally from Significant Other to Ex in a pico-second. gold to lead.

There are risks to be run. and what's more, stop signs and traffic lights. In making it possible to find something, let’s first take this opportunity to get truly lost. May I recommend somewhere at the corner of Chapel Hill Rd./St.