“The path is made by walking"

 A couple of days ago I again started reading Thoreau’s Walking. (I prefer his content to his writing style.) While sitting in the dentist’s waiting area yesterday, I made it as far as a section that I found extremely helpful, especially in today’s world.

...Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to the political world, follow the great road, follow that market-man, keep his dust in your eyes, and it willl lead you straight to it; for it, too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it as from a bean field into the forest, and it is forgotten....

will you follow a path or make your own?

Photo by J. Harrington

Even though, in some sense, everything is political, between spam and robot calls and social media and news, I often feel enveloped by politics and I don’t like it. Plus, there doesn’t seem to be much of a break between election seasons any more. To accompany Meadows’ Dancing with Systems [see yesterday’s posting], I need to learn from Henry David how to walk away from politics by spending more time physically walking. Does such a course have any appeal to you?

True confession: this was written minutes after installing a couple of yard signs for local candidates for Congress and the Minnesota House. “Do as I post, not as I do”?

Walking on Tiptoe

By Ted Kooser

Long ago we quit lifting our heels

like the others—horse, dog, and tiger—

though we thrill to their speed

as they flee. Even the mouse

bearing the great weight of a nugget

of dog food is enviably graceful.

There is little spring to our walk,

we are so burdened with responsibility,

all of the disciplinary actions

that have fallen to us, the punishments,

the killings, and all with our feet

bound stiff in the skins of the conquered.

But sometimes, in the early hours,

we can feel what it must have been like

to be one of them, up on our toes,

stealing past doors where others are sleeping,

and suddenly able to see in the dark.

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