Of all the post-drift musings, Fei's below captured more of the spirit of the walk than any others managed before or since. For more scathing Fei musings find her on letterbox'd.
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No walk, as far as I am concerned, is ever wasted. It is both means and end, travel and destination, physical and mental freedom. A way to bask in the view that changes with each step, faint human warmth of unmediated encounters, and overheard conversations.
An old man kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk begging; a few steps away, a beautiful woman leaning against a tree reading, and footballers shouting and running in the field; a man in a suit directing an invisible orchestra while crossing the street; strange iron ladders running up and down buildings with ugly greenish brown façades, so ugly and identical that they were beautiful; and next door, a group of construction workers sitting on the rim smoking. A walk is never the same twice, as the beauty of walking rests on an unintentional base. Incongruous things come together when walking, arising independently of the excessively strict and composed beauty of human design.
The operation of walking, wandering, the activity of passers-by, allows one to be both present and detached from the world around, more than an observer and less than a participant - walking assuages the imagined awkwardness of fragmented conversations. Walkers are neither bothered by continuity nor coherence when talking, as walking tolerates seemingly erratic excursions into off-track ideas: one is mildly disconnected with surroundings or conversations because one is walking, not because one is incapable of connecting.
——— everything is connected when walking: the relations between thinking and the body, the way one’s act can be an invitation to another’s imagination, the way every gesture can be imagined and captured as a brief sculpture, the way walking reshaped the world by mapping and treading paths into it; the way each act reflects and reinvents the culture in which it takes place…It is connections - between body, mind, and the world - that make it worthwhile.