"This anti-romantic mise-en-scene suggests the discredited idea of time and many other “out of date” things.  But the suburbs exist without a rational past and without the “big events” of history.  Oh, Maybe there are a few statues, a legend, a couple of curios, but no past-just what passes for a future."
  Robert Smithson.  A Tour of Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey  1967

A series of trips to specific places outside of Paris

“One’s mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion”    

Smithson
  A Sedimentation of the Mind: Earth Projects  68

It can be so natural to listen to the land and associate the time and place with one’s emotions. 

A thin line of string could connect one side and the other.  This is the sense of physicality I had with this search for monuments today.  Perhaps I was lucky to even visualize that much physical connection with the land.  That was what I came for; to find another system of marking which could, like at Montreuil, be like a flag for my triumphant finding. 

However, the island seems off limits.
(This, and the following, I began to write about half way through my tour realizing that I was upset and needed to stop and think.)  I thought of the “zero” connection between two sides and I felt fear.  I felt that the land was scary on this edge, and the island had no force drawing me nearer- all bridges were off limits.  But fear is better than anxiety.  I felt the land was scary.  The silent and eerie nature of the Island and its house boat residents in relation to the other side, unreachable, tempted me to take my pictures upside-down.  Once I came to civilization (this referring to a moment when the Quai along the island narrowed and forced me to cross, coming then upon a grand intersection where fathers pushed babies in strollers next to apartment complexes and the bridge was wide and modern), I felt entrapped; wishing my vision turned things upside down again,  but instead seeing plain people and living (with this word plain I do not mean ordinary, I mean actual and therefore hardening my imagination).

All I could want so far is a thin line of connection something tactile… but I stop here to ask what were Smithson’s emotions?  (Here my stream of consciousness becomes too unclear to anyone beside myself, so I will have to re-write it a bit)  Did he remember where he came from, the place he left before going on searches in unknown territories, and use the comfort in this knowing to suppress his anxiety?  Did he always feel the authenticity of a connection with the land?  Or did he lose control sometimes and feel lost and unsure and tired?  Perhaps he could always feel connected with Passaic NJ (the place he visits in his essay and also the place of his birth).  But me, on the Quais surrounding the Ile Senguin I felt fear and anxiety… and hunger. 

I believe what I felt was distress in the fact that the land was emotionally draining.  I could not feel grounded in it anymore. Maybe this was a culture and history deep and foreign and smething I did not ask to receive or expect.

I then will stop 10 minutes further after trying to turn down roads and turning back again. 
NOTE- this being one of my least favorite feelings about walking in unknown places; the feeling of not wanting to go on, having no clear instinct.  But...

10 minutes later, I see my monument!  It’s power and beauty and force were unexpected and came at the same time as a surprise and a gift.  A bolt of energy flew in me.  This bridge, like old Roman archways, stood tall in a rather narrow street of subjects, which were incomparable in relation to its immensity and materiality. 
And at once I knew where to walk and I was not ready to give up or feeling anxious anymore; so suddenly, like that. 
Then, I saw that this bridge was for a train; I heard the marvelous sound of the train and saw it fly quickly over the structure.  Almost immediately a second train came from a perpendicular direction, and with sighting this train-or perhaps I had noticed it before- I saw a second bridge. 
All of the sudden this pocket-this side of the island came alive, and so did I.  I write - after crossing under the bridge and studying the movement of the trains and the things and people around the bridges for some time-
“On a completely helpless note I continue and find my monument.  I believe I had completely forgotten the train tracks!”
Because as I remember, of course, I had looked at a map online before and seen that tracks were near my destination.  I had always wanted to walk in that direction- I had even thought earlier I would venture to find the tracks after my search of the island.  But how strange to have come about them in this way, with such a discouraged feeling, and never having set foot on the island. 
So I found things concrete on both sides of the Ile Senguin in the end; one being the fear of being on some edge and the other a sturdiness of train tracks.  Today I felt polar opposites and because of this I want to keep most of my pictures upside down. 
I guess I let the land play with my emotions-but how beautiful, how stressful and how calming.