walking

It's interesting indeed that the activity which quintessentially defines us as social beings has so often been conceived of as a quintessentially solitary, whimsical one. But perhaps it doesn't really make much sense to see both dimensions as opposed to each other. Nobody ever walks alone - or, as Thomas A. Clark put it "in the course of a walk, we usually find out something about our companion, and this is true even when we travel alone" (from "In Praise of Walking"*). Walking with someone is revealing about both our commonalities and our utter separateness. There's is no better way of getting to know someone, for sure.

Walking with a friend tonight, I realised how the act itself so shaped our conversation and simultaneously embodied it in our every pace and move. Our senses of time, what we take as choice and necessity, illusion and reality. Some overlapping lines, some diverging ones.

Our strides bifurcated for good at some point, leaving two forked paths in the labyrinth of the station, hers probably faster and more decisive than mine, or perhaps not. I wandered for a while, wishing to be lost, to prolong the sense of disorientation, savouring it to the full. All the other walkers walking forwards while I walked backwards - all the others standing still, silently suspended in time, while I moved through the white noise.


*in Thomas A. Clark, Distance & Proximity (Edinburgh: Pocketbooks, 2000), p. 17.