No Walk in the Park

I was just reading a review of a couple of books about walking. The theme of both books was the idea of walking as a boost to creativity—literary creativity in particular.

Maybe I need to walk more.

I used to walk a lot, really. When I lived in New York, I followed a principle of only walking—as opposed to hopping the bus or subway—when traveling within a borough. Of course, I couldn’t follow this rule exclusively: Time was often a consideration, as was company. While I might not have thought much about walking from, say, Jackson Heights to Forest Hills, my dinner companions might look askance.

Still, when time was not of the essence, I wouldn’t think twice about employing feet as mode of transportation. When I was working at Hunter College (68th and Lexington) and rehearsing in Alphabet City, I walked every evening, rain or shine. When I was living in Jackson Heights and working at LaGuardia Community College, I would walk to and fro, five days a week. 

I’m not claiming these as examples of great physical exertion. In both cases, we’re talking about walks of three to five miles. But, still, good for the heart, good for the legs, and ostensibly generative of all kinds of creative output. 

Still, the great American novel remains unwritten.

I think the problem might be that, while I’ve never minded—and frequently enjoyed—walking, I’ve never really cared for going for a walk. Whenever someone invites me to go for a walk, my first question is, “To where?” Walking is not an end in itself. I need a destination—even a completely arbitrary one—before setting off.

And maybe that’s what’s blocking the creative juices. Because I suspect that those Romantic poets and Parisian flaneurs were far more comfortable with the idea of letting their minds wander along with their feet. If you’re not concentrating on a destination, with its attendant choices about pathways and street surfaces, you have more mental space for creative contemplation.

Maybe someday I’ll learn to just enjoy the journey and thereby find myself at a strange and wondrous endpoint.