Walking Commentary
Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022
The Road Not Taken I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. ROBERT FROST[Read more…] about Uncertainties, Alright Jack?
I sat down to write about non-obviousness as a thought experiment. I’d cleared my desk of a litter of barely legible notes, making room for a Gedankenexperiment and a second cup of strong coffee. These notes were written in bed in the dark between 4 and 5 this morning. That’s a trick I learned from Lia though it’s taken me twenty years to put it into practice.
Then my phone almost saved me from myself. I was contacted, though not tasked, to see if there were any giraffes in my study. A safari of this kind required I reload an enormous back-catalogue of photos into Lightroom which left me with time and coffee-energy to write up a non-obvious journal entry.
You may have noticed the spine of Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist in a recent photo I posted. There’s a line in it that advises that ‘The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like.’ And with such confirmation I feel encouraged to meld it with an Anne Lamott aphorism that’s infected the web: ‘Every thing that happened to you is yours; people should have behaved better.’
Are these observations deserving of reflection and expression? They certainly contributed to my rereading an older walking commentary blog to see if I’m repeating themes close to my heart and of course, create an opportunity to steal from myself. Which led me down some old paths this morning and a return to a personal favourite theme which is that one’s point of view depends on the view point. Mountain tops become islands if you are looking down from a peak above a cloud filled valley.
[Read more…] about Future Imperfect1 Mar 2020 – noon GMT – 3°C Partly Cloudy – Co. Longford, Ireland
It’s March 1st. I’m reading ‘In Praise of Walking‘ by Shane O’Mara. A gift from my wife, I put off reading it until about a month before the next big walk.
In the first few pages he reminded me that French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote “I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop, I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs”.
Rousseau must have given up walking sometime before 1778, long after he’d famously written on inequality and social contracts. He was a big influencer. French Revolution big. The Terror.
[Read more…] about In Praise of Walking