WALKING MOVEMENTS

by Hugh M. Lewis

When the way prevails in the empire,

fleet-footed horses are relegated to plowing the fields;

when the way does not prevail in the empire,

war-horses breed on the border

There is no crime greater than having too many desires;

There is no disaster greater than not being content;

There is no misfortune greater than begin covetous.

Hence in being content, one will always have enough

(XLVI, Tao Te Ching, trans. C. D. Lau, 1963 :107)

Humans were designed by several million years of evolution for walking bipedal in a slow, steady upright gait. That we should so eschew in the modern world what has been so natural and basic about our identity during the entire length of our evolution comes as something of a grand and tragic paradox.

The walking pace is one at which we are especially attuned for the relation to our world. In an age of jets, fast cars and bullet trains, it remains the most human speed we can seek to travel in. It seems that living a lifestyle adapted to the fast lane of the freeway is particularly unsuitable to the way which must be walked to be best appreciated.

I prefer to walk over taking a car whenever I have the opportunity. I never cease to enjoy looking at the trees or listening to the birds, and never become bored with the slowly moving scenery as I walk. On the other hand, I have become sleepy behind the wheel of a car on many occasions. Walking sets the world within human proportions. If something is so far that it cannot be easily reached by foot, it is probably too far away from home anyways.

After several years of hassling the freeways and congestion of Los Angeles during rush hours, I do not miss not driving a car at all. When livelihoods, groceries, necessities and pleasures become so far away that one cannot reach there by walking, then a basic formula of human evolution is being violated. There is no saying that this is a necessary reality--that it cannot be any other way.

While I walk, my sense of being in the world is often heightened. When I'm in a car it is my sense of detachment from the world, of enclosure and separation within a speeding, glass and steel bubble, that I most strongly feel. It is easy to drive by many things without being affected by them, or even bothering to look at them.

It is a shame that modern industrialized societies attach so much status to the kind of car one drives, and derogates the position and status of the pedestrian to that of a third or fourth class pariah or street person. People spend the greater part of their lives working for, paying for and driving in cars that are virtually designed to be outdated within a decade. This preoccupation with cars, their status and mobility, is the antithesis of earth being.

We may state for the cultivation of greater earth being the following order of preference of modes of transportation: 1. by foot; 2, bicycle or horse, sail boat 3 bus or public transportation; 4. car or motorcycle, large ship or motorboat; 5. airplane. That this is precisely the opposite of the "normal" order of things in terms of power, energy expended, speed, so-called "efficiency," and the level of associated status, suggests the radical, revolutionary character of earth being in very fundamental ways. It is not to say never to fly a plane, but whenever possible to ride a bus instead. It is not to say never to drive a car, but if possible use a bicycle or go by foot.

We can use a similar scale of earth being when it comes to other aspects of our lives. For instance it is always better to eat at a lower rung of the food chain rather than higher up. Americans consume mostly beef as the principle part of their protein diet. An earth being diet would suggest substituting chicken and fish for beef and pork whenever possible, and substituting bean curd and cereal grains for chicken and fish whenever possible. It also suggests that if we insist on eating the cow, then at least to eat the "whole" cow in the way that the Vietnamese chronically do, so that little of its protein goes to waste.

Cultivating an earth being way means that we do not have to totally sacrifice our love of steaks and ham, but to just eat it less often and savor it more when we do eat it. These are relatively easy principles to put into practice.

the lightning came today

the thunder rolled and rolled across the land from far away

it never seemed to want to stop

the gray clouds darkened on the western horizon

the winds blew in from this direction

and the rain soon followed

a few drops at first

and then a heavy cascade of water

falling from the broken rain gutter

flooding the streets and gutters like streambeds

then tapering off to a long, steady rain

I watched the entire event unfold

from the closed window

the raindrops splashing against the panes

the lightning flashes lighting the dark room

no matter how many times it has come and gone

its always as if its the first and last time

Sing in sadness

A Nadene song

a few short syllables

emptied of content

bereft of context

sing of a people

lost past

sing of children

lost heritage

an anthropologist's recordings

an old woman's silence

with her passing

a culture vanishing

better to take with her

the little that's left

the few remaining

bits and pieces

some simple songs

of a stressed memory

promising only a skeleton

a threadbare reconstruction

better to let it crumble away

to dust blown by the wind

than to let it sit

collecting dust

in some file cabinet

or upon some bookshelf

or in a glass case

of some museum

young man

whistling loudly

along the trail

without concern or are

a poor rendition of a popular tune

paying no attention to who is noticing or not

he could as well be in the Philharmonic

he cannot hear what he sounds like

intently listening to his own musical production

it makes no matter and no never mind

it is enough that it flows forth

through the tree along the way

lost in the sonorous rhythm

and the surrounding silence

his own melody of moment

walking down the trail

how ironic

to be a child

so contemptuously upsetting

every sense of possible order

in childish chaos

so anti-intellectual

disturbing continuously

my linear train of thought

derailing my mind

disheveling my world of words

interrupting my interior sense of order

how ironic

your empty head and blank mind

so innocently empty

yet free of lies and illusions of life

without even an awareness of death

and yet like a sponge

soaking up everything and anything

a brain knowing nothing

that can't stop learning everything

if only I could exchange

a lot of my knowledge

for a little of your boundless potential

your messy movements

making a foolish mockery

of my well ordered world.

Will the real London please stand up?

Not just any old London

Not Thatcher's or Churchill's

or Cromwell's or Shakespeare's

or Dickens or King Henry VIII's

we do not want the tourist's bird's eye view

nor the Indian's or the Black's or the White's

It is not just a spot on a map

nor a line drawn around its outskirt's

not an empty city filled with empty buildings and empty streets

nor the one that the German's blitzed and rocketed

we do not want just the common working class view

nor the received Royal view

we want the real thing--lock, stock and barrel.

bridge and all the burned up buildings

more than just an archaeological excavation

but less than the sum of every person whose ever been there

or even just seen or heard about it on a map

will the real London please stand up?

Beside the real Rome, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, Manila, New York, etc.