5 Mar 2020 – noon GMT – 4°C Light Rain – Co. Dublin, Ireland
“A man who does not move with pain, but moves
With thought”
By Wordsworth, word sketching an Old Man Travelling and on a journey that perhaps“led to peace so perfect”.
I think Wordsworth got it right. Walking alone allows me relax, brings me peace, expands my horizons and makes me want to do it again.
Thank you CdF for “Ten Poems about Walking” (Candlestick Press), a great gift to be read before we set out towards Rome.
Here’s the more famous Wordsworth title and line:
“I wandered lonely as a cloud”
And only today did I get a new insight into this line. Sure I know my feet wander under command of my brain. Of course I understand the brain to be an organic control device. And there’s the rub – understanding is a virtual concept – loneliness too. All because of consciousness. My consciousness is what causes my brain to make my feet wander towards Rome. My consciousness has no physical expression; dimensionless and without dimension; you can’t quantify consciousness nor can you see or lick or tickle it. I put it to you that Wordsworth used this simile because ‘cloud’ could also be a metaphor for that wonderful heightened consciousness and clarity that keeps walkers walking regularly.
I’m not a scholar of literature so maybe I’ve missed what others have realised many times in the near 200 years since he described what I could not. Thanks again William Wordsworth.
And would someone please work out what consciousness is. And while we’re at it, fix voice-to-text so it recognises my voice.
“Out of your shower
As of earshot
Out of your shot
Out of your shop
I am sure.”
This unintentional poetry of immature technology underlines a dilemma. What would be the point of a written record if the act of recording it distorted it? There are enough histories that intentionally recast reality to suit the purposes of the storyteller. So why clutter lives with more random inaccuracies authored by dictation to unlearned machines?
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