It occurred to me that I never actually defined Urban Exploration when I talked about it before. And since I'm a lawyer and not a philosopher, I think definitions are really important, and while I understand the expression I used in the title of this post, I think that it is almost an "ivory tower" sort of concern. Of course, I guess it depends on *how* someone or something is defined. Plus, I think "Negate" is--perhaps--an overly strong word for this context. I think "limit" may be better. Or it may even be better to say that when you attempt to define a person or thing, you necessarily do that person or thing an unintended injustice by the things you don't say and also by the inherent limitations of human language. (Of course, when you say it my way it sounds a lot less quote-worthy, doesn't it?). But let's get real. In everyday life we need definitions to get anything done. Otherwise we'd all just be sitting around in Birkenstocks, smoking a bowl and letting life pass us by.
As a side note, in discussing this I cannot help but think of the TV show "Code Monkeys" (which I loved and have on DVD if any friends are interested). I recall that there was an African-American programmer who worked for the company who everyone called "Black Steve"--even though there were no other employees named "Steve." I think that's a decent, if lowbrow, example of a way in which this expression does hold some truth.
Anyway, that tangent aside, Urban Exploration is basically just curious/adventurous folks who seek out places in urban environments that are typically unused, abandoned, off-limits, etc. They go behind the velvet ropes, if you will. They want to see what isn't supposed to be seen or what is no longer being used. They go to places that may have quite a history, but--for whatever reason--are now abandoned to the slow decay of time. Places that once were important to someone--often, a lot of people--that now sit eerily empty--dust-filled and cobwebbed destinations, long since forgotten by nearly everyone else.
This often involves at least minor infractions of the law for trespassing, but they deem it worth it. Some Urban Explorers actually feel entitled to enter such places. That is where my own values differ. But I do sometimes yearn to visit these "secret" places and see what mysteries they hold. And the photographs are sometimes quite evocative. Sometimes they make you really think about how everything but time is an illusion and how all the things we do and work so hard to accomplish now are really just fleeting moments that will be completely forgotten in perhaps just a few decades. Imagine your own office or workspace. Imagine traveling through time to the future and returning to find your office completely abandoned. Everything in disarray, covered in a thick layer of dust--evidence that no one has been there for a long, long time. What small trinkets might still remain? How unimportant would they seem? Think of the papers on your desk. What if you return to find them wrinkled and yellow-brown due to the passage of time? Maybe they pertained to events that were long since made irrelevant by Time.
This is partly why I find UE so interesting. It is like a type of temporal voyeurism to see the remains of what once was so important to someone whose name you will never know and who passed away, perhaps before you were even born. What mundane drudgery filled their lives? How insignificant were the tasks on their calendars--especially the ones that went undone once the person had passed on from this world? What about the date circled in RED? The date that this person never lived to see. What lessons can we take away from this, if any? Am I just being pretentious or pedantic to even write about this? Am I simply dwelling on things that are obvious to others and yet mysterious to me? I can't say.
On a "lighter" note, UE often makes me think of an apocalyptic future, where many, many people were taken before their time and all that remains are the places they used to frequent. As someone with an interest in the Zombie Apocalypse genre, this has something of a morbid or frightening appeal to me.
Anyway, hopefully this gives some explanation of what UE is and why it fascinates me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_exploration
Kelvar
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