Despair Is Easy, Or At Least Low

The Subject Of Walking Is, In Some Sense, About How We Invest Universal Acts With Particular Meanings. Like Eating Or Breathing, It Can Be Invested With Wildly Different Cultural Meanings, From The Erotic To The Spiritual, From The Revolutionary To The Artistic.

When Someone Doesn't Show Up, The People Who Wait Sometimes Tell Stories About What Might Have Happened And Come To Half Believe The Desertion, The Abduction, The Accident. Worry Is A Way To Pretend That You Have Knowledge Or Control Over What You Don't--and It Surprises Me, Even In Myself, How Much We Prefer Ugly Scenarios To The Pure Unknown. Perhaps Fantasy Is What You Fill Up Maps With Rather Than Saying That They Too Contain The Unknown.

Leave The Door Open For The Unknown, The Door Into The Dark. That’s Where The Most Important Things Come From, Where You Yourself Came From, And Where You Will Go.

I'm A Big Fan Of The Vigor Of Civil Society, Political Engagement, And Public Life In Many Parts Of Latin America.

Perhaps Walking Is Best Imagined As An 'indicator Species,' To Use An Ecologist's Term. An Indicator Species Signifies The Health Of An Ecosystem, And Its Endangerment Or Diminishment Can Be An Early Warning Sign Of Systemic Trouble. Walking Is An Indicator Species For Various Kinds Of Freedom And Pleasures: Free Time, Free And Alluring Space, And Unhindered Bodies.