Upon a Sunday morning, then, my father was walking round the lake which he had caused to be created, regretting that he had not moved the old river bed further back, and thinking out possible fantasies in stone, torrents to fall through the hanging woods above, pavilions upon islands and decorative effects generally (a few years before, he had determined to have all the white cows in the park stenciled with a blue Chinese pattern, but the animals were so obdurate and perverse as in the end to oblige him to abandon the scheme). The lake is shaped like an hourglass or a figure-of-eight, and a bridge spans its waist. In this bridge my father met Arthur Waley advancing towards him. Each took his hat off ceremoniously and said to the other, ‘How much I wish we were going in the same direction!’ and passed on. Half an hour later they met again at the same place, having pursued their contrary courses as though they were planets whose goings and comings are immutably fixed by the sun, and repeated the salutation.
– Sir Osbert Sitwell,
(Left Hand, Right Hand!, p. 220)
In 1938 let us say, a bloke with small means wants the best of Europe. Once he cd. have done a great deal on foot. I dare say he still can. In 1911 there was an international currency (20 franc pieces) twenty such in jug-purse and no god-damned passports. (Hell rot Wilson AND the emperor, I think it was Decius.) If a man can’t afford to go by automobile, and if he is content with eating and architecture, the world’s best (as I have known it) is afoot from Poitiers, from Brives, from Périgord or Limoges. In every town a romanesque church or château. No place to stay for any time, but food every ten miles or fifteen or twenty. When I say food, I mean food. So, at any rate, was it. With fit track to walk on.
I do not say walk in Italy. The sane man will want his Italy by car. Even if it is public omnibus. The roads go over the Appenines, they go over the Bracca. They go over, where trains bore through. It is not a country to walk in because food is a FRENCH possession, when on foot one wants it. […] The dust on Italian roads, the geographic or geological formation of the peninsula all say go by car. Don’t try to walk it. You have enough foot work when you get to the towns. You have a concentration of treasures that will need all your calf muscles, all your ankle resistence.
– Ezra Pound,
Guide to Kulchur p. 111f.
I remember being told by a
teacher not to read Jane Eyre, because I would be reading it in her class in the fall. Of course I read it that summer. Propped in bed, or curled in a corner, but finally finishing peripatetic. That’s how I remember it, anyway. I walked the three miles from Vineyard Haven to Oak Bluffs in the summer swelter. I walked slowly and slowly read, turning the thin foxed pages in their sweating dark green cloth, gravel underfoot. I walked and read and didn’t stop except for water and a bookstore. I walked until the road ended in a beach and then I sat on a stone and finished the last few pages. I remember looking at the sunburnt people ruddy against the white sand, the gray concrete, the gray ocean, the gray sky and feeling empty and complete and tired. I sat for some time. I remember looking at my watch. Then I stood and walked back to the ferry, scuffing my feet in the gravel and sand and thinking.
After about two hours of reading or discussion, we would go for a walk and then have tea at Lyons, or in the restaurant above the Regal cinema. Sometimes he came to my house in Searle street for supper. Once after supper, Wittgenstein, my wife and I went for a walk on Midsummer Common. We talked about the movements of the bodies of the solar system. It occurred to Wittgenstein that the three of us should represent the movements of the sun, earth, and moon, relative to one another. My wife was the sun and maintained a steady pace across the meadow; I was the earth and circled her at a trot. Wittgenstein took the most strenuous part of all, the moon, and ran around me while I circled my wife. Wittgenstein entered into this game with great enthusiasm and seriousness, shouting instructions at us as he ran. He became quite breathless and dizzy with exhaustion.
– Norman Malcolm
Ludwig Wittgenstein: a Memoir
(p. 51f.)
The look of sunflowers bent in the streetlight.
Streets butting into dead ends and empty lots (still smelling of farmland), signposted ‘private property, trespassing, loitering forbidden’.
Circumspect distance maintained between pedestrians while waiting for the crosswalk signal in pseudo-suburbia: ca. eight feet.
Inconvenient end of the concrete sidewalk in molehills, broken glass,
blackberry brambles and dry grass, in a stretch of road without streetlights.
Effort required to see the narrow dirt track by the head- and tail-lights of rare passing cars; also, the effort necessary to walk in a straight line when the pavement resumes.
Reflexive averting of gaze when police car passes.
Realization that pyjamas are perhaps not the most appropriate apparel for these midnight strolls.
Wandered to the Villa Borghese, a rather large park containing such interesting things as the British School at Rome and the Galleria Nazionale d’ Arte Moderna. It being a sunny day, I didn’t much mind getting lost, and wandered past and around the Temple of Faustina with much amusement before finding the Viale delle Belle Arti, which leads – to a tourist’s eyes – to the Villa Giulia, home of the Museo Nazionale Etrusco, which – to extend the sentence further – was even open. I was a good child and saw the much-touted Chigi vase, with its early representation of hoplite armor. It was much smaller than I expected.
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ego hoc feci mm–mmx
© 2000–10 M.F.C.