i recently participated in a workshop titled 'writing about walking' as part of the o, miami poetry festival; nathan deuel led the workshop. nathan is a journalist who specializes in walk-writing (right?) and a former editor at rolling stone. as part of the workshop i wrote some words about walking, annd there they are! below the line.
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Well, OK. Walking.
Recently I bought a stationary bike trainer because I've been tripped by distractions and on one occasion a bus quite hard onto the ground. I've ridden my bicycle a lot and in different countries, so I have a pretty varied bank of moving scenery in memory. I place the trainer outside, close my eyes and pedal. The bike trainer feels mostly realistic, and if there is a breeze I can imagine quite convincingly that I'm on the road-- though the feeling has been broken by an occasional fly or mosquito landing on my shoulder. Despite this, I would suggest that I am moving, that my bike trainer is actually a dimension isolator and that I am taking my vigorous stroll through time (that shiny, sticky thing). Further, I'm sure that with a sufficiently funded project we could trick my body into believing it is bellowing through space.
So, why don't we take this walking tour to a gym and write poetry on the little towel trays on the treadmills? We could take turns fanning each other, lovingly making the experience as realistic as possible for all involved.
To date, my deepest walk trekked my body barefoot and balancing on generously smoothed rocks on the bank of a rising river-waterfall-river system in the Amazon. Here I realized how splendidly agile my feet are, quite content to negotiate whichever surface and keep me standing. In Oakland, California I learned that poorer people walk significantly slower than yuppie hipsters and as a passerby it's mostly a matter of slipping into local time. Once I walked by just listening (you know, vibin) and bought Mamey from a dude with a cart in Caracas and also talked to a guy in Oakland whom I thought was going to mug me but just wanted to talk. We walk-talked for a while and he said he had traveled the world and most recently to Japan, though I'm not sure he had ever walked outside of Oakland.
It's all about movement, really. Choosing which fibers to thread through your body, past your soul and into infinity as you casually buy a croqueta or something.