you must walk

the events of the past week have made me heartsick.  like a lot of people.  holding it together becomes a full-time job.  information becomes our new currency.  who controls it can control the world.  the future was imagined to be a world made for energy systems, space craft, brute force.  but hardly any speculative stories were about the flow & control of information.  but of course truth will want out.  nothing is hidden anymore.  but our own belief systems can lead us astray.  powerful algorithms feed us information only we want to hear.  yet, truth, with a capital T, may be obfuscated by the brokers of information & yet truthful information is right at our fingertips too.

at any rate, i went for a long walk this evening.  i try to get in at least five miles two or three times a week.  i am officially an old dude now.  my BP is on the higher side now, for example.  but walking is more than just an exercise.  it rejiggers the mind & imagination.  it elevates the mood.  i've been walking to & from the office for over 20 years.  someone said to me recently why don't you get an e-bike to get to work.  it would be faster.  but that's not walking, i counter.  i love walking.  i think i was a born flaneur.  

so i walked downtown at dusk.  thru midtown.  i put on my airpods & turn on deep house EDM.  the city is prettier at night.  especially a cold, clear night like this evening.  deep house EDM is perfect for it too.  my steps feel in time to the beat.  the cold arpeggios of the synths match the lyrical streets of traffic & pedestrians.  i pass dogs & their humans.  busy restaurants.  victorian homes & bungalows & the newly built townhouses constructed in a kind of modular style so common to new buildings of the 21st C.  these townhouses rise several stories too so it feels like i am walking in some sci-fi movie.  

located on 7th & R streets is Beers Books.  i brought my backpack because i knew i would stop in.  i find a collection of poems by richard jackson.  a poet unknown to me but his book is a series of poems based on petrarch.  i read a couple & say yep!  besides, i am attracted to the poet's name, richard jackson.  plain, good & antipoetical.  like mine, i think.  i also bought a book for my brother in rhyme, jonathan hayes, that i'll send him, along with a couple of books that i long promised him too.  just don't tell jonathan about this new book.  i want it be a surprise, okay.  i also find a book on balthus that i almost bought.  & a monograph on the early 20th C painter george bellows.  i discovered bellows in the early '90s at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  one of his boxing paintings.  that was a wild weekend in LA.  but i decide to save balthus & bellows for another walk to Beers.

onward.  i go deeper into downtown.  to 2nd st.  end of the line.  for beyond it is I-80.  i turn around on T st.  i vary my routes when i walk.  tonight is the first walk down T st.  i like to look at the signage.  the names of the neighborhoods.  names like Poverty Ridge & Alkali Flats.  lots of people out this saturday night. i walk by a restaurant.  i look inside.  packed.  outside is an elderly asian woman who looks at me & says, hi hi hi!  laid out on the sidewalk is her merchandise.  produce from either her farm or garden.  i wonder if she gets any sales.  

my mood is lifting.  the EDM beats just right.  my city is an ordinary city but also looks like it could be a set from the film blade runner.  people seem genuinely kind.  perhaps it is merely my mood.  but i do get a lot of smiles in return to mine.  perhaps it is because i look like a non-threatening older gent.  i am wearing black.  i have a backpack.  & airpods.  & white hair.  whatever it be i'll take it.  walking cures the soul.  it helps with the body too.  i hope.  

below is an excerpt from the notebooks of the norwegian poet olav h. hauge.  i post it here for his entry on walking.  hauge is something of a hero of mine.  perhaps it is because of shared affections.  perhaps it is because i too am half norwegian.  from my mother's side.  grandma was born & bred in bergen, norway.  at any how, after my walk i become, again, halfway human.  you must walk!