Thoughts While Walking

I hate the travel logs that tell you more about the pain than the place, yet here I am again, narrating the same old story to myself time after time. The papers circling in an alley, watched by a hunchback, mimic my plans and their preventer; when an old man treats the drycleaner to a lengthy sermon on spotting, I collect it; bloated clouds spell messages that people stopped hearing long ago, and as for the hag who runs at me, arms open, mouth bleeding? She’s my future, my terrible double. Always I head out, hot for details, and always the details start revolving around brave ingénues who put their innocent hands in wicked bonfires. I could never go for ten minutes without seeing fissures as faces, and I confess a hopeless weakness for the types who come back from travels, gather their fans around and tell them stories of order or of wonder: seashores and meadows sometimes get so muffled and many-voiced that tourists storm in and do their talking for them— It’s addictive, magical, vital. But I’ve observed how, more and more, these promising outings are becoming meta-walks and mechanized phrases: “When I ventured into the outback, how it blared back echoes of me, my bright dreams and tragic uniqueness.” Meanwhile forces of good and evil squirm and flourish under the carpet, mocking the visionary moment’s sweeping appeal. I’ll go on going out for scenes of horror and pleasure, but I’ll start pursuing clues leading to the return of that enormous, fertile ground between shouting and silence.