They Are All Beasts Of Burden In

The Famous Zen Parable About The Master For Whom, Before His Studies, Mountains Were Only Mountains, But During His Studies Mountains Were No Longer Mountains, And Afterward Mountains Were Again Mountains Could Be Interpreted As An Alleory About [the Perpetual Paradox That When One Is Closest To A Destination One Is Also The Farthest).

I Was Fifteen, And When I Picture Myself Then, I See Flames Shooting Up, See Myself Falling Off The Edge Of The World, And Am Amazed I Survived Not The Outside World But The Inside One.

Walkers Are 'practitioners Of The City,' For The City Is Made To Be Walked. A City Is A Language, A Repository Of Possibilities, And Walking Is The Act Of Speaking That Language, Of Selecting From Those Possibilities. Just As Language Limits What Can Be Said, Architecture Limits Where One Can Walk, But The Walker Invents Other Ways To Go.

The Bigness Of The World Is Redemption. Despair Compresses You Into A Small Space, And A Depression Is Literally A Hollow In The Ground. To Dig Deeper Into The Self, To Go Underground, Is Sometimes Necessary, But So Is The Other Route Of Getting Out Of Yourself, Into The Larger World, Into The Openness In Which You Need Not Clutch Your Story And Your Troubles So Tightly To Your Chest.

I Think That Walking Down The Middle Of The Street With Several Thousand People Who Share Your Deepest Beliefs Is One Of The Best Ways To Take A Walk.