I'm Major Jackson and this is the slowdown.

And this is the slowdown. Slow down. It's a time of blooming. Outside my window, students make their way.

It's a time of blooming.

Outside my window, students make their way to classes. Cherry

blossom petals christened their walk. Almost my whole adult life has been spent on picturesque college campuses like this one,

well-manicured lawns, pop-up tulip gardens, and perfectly trimmed walkways with not a weed in sight.

The sense of order is allegorical. These expanse of green conveyed the illusory spirit of a rational and ordered world.

One where learning is an ideologically safe undertaking.

To learn is a preordained path to self-discovery

and functional knowledge.

A carefully fertilized landscape does not hint at the messiness of experimentation,

exploration, and even protests, though I know it exists.

Nor the context by which learning takes place.

Often the serene nature of such cultivated settings belies a planet full of conflict and in disarray.

To stroll on campus is to follow in the footsteps of generations of young people who also sought answers.

Back in the day, before the dominance of handheld tech, the walk between the halls of learning

and the library and a professor's office perhaps possessed grander symbolism.

It spoke to the monastic roots of being a student.

We were literally on the path.

Now it seems we are mostly in rabbit holes, matrices of mind data, which is why I love to encounter desire lines.

A term coined by landscape architects

for those unplanned footpaths that result out of need and will, those worn down patches of grass and dirt.

...