Writes Lydia Polgreen, in "No, We Shouldn’t Make This Meeting a Walk" (NYT).
September 20, 2023
"Fans of walks love to point out that Virginia Woolf dreamed up 'To the Lighthouse' on a walk around Tavistock Square."
"Insomniac walks through London powered Dickens’s novels. Bathtubs and apple trees get all the attention, but many more scientists have had their eureka moments while on long, solitary ambles. Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote that 'only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.'... The writer Teju Cole often gets invited to take walks....But he usually demurs.
'Really, what I love more than walking itself is getting lost,' he said in an email. 'And getting lost with someone else in tow is difficult. This might be why my favorite walks have been in solitude and in cities with which I am unfamiliar....’… Walking is a rare moment in our modern life where you can just let your mind wander. Aimless walking is a lost art in our ever-optimizing society. So let’s meet for coffee. I’m sure I’ll come up with lots of fun things to talk about on the walk over.”
Writes Lydia Polgreen, in "No, We Shouldn’t Make This Meeting a Walk" (NYT).
Writes Lydia Polgreen, in "No, We Shouldn’t Make This Meeting a Walk" (NYT).
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35 comments:
Brahms and Beethoven were habitual walkers, spinning musical ideas in their heads they’d later write down.
The deficits of multitasking and the myth of multiprocessing.
Walking is great, I do it all the time.
But some people should avoid chewing gum while doing so...
?ivory tower seclusion = detachemnt from reality?
!foot on dirt = contact with reality!
[aristoteles was ambulatory / peripatetic] and father of science
"Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”
Let us go and make our visit."
If walking is good for the mind, then Lydia Polgreen owes her brain about forty years of deferred strolls and ambles.
"To The Lighthouse" rivals Henry James' "Portrait of a Lady" for Dullest Novel Ever.
Walking (or running) alone is my greatest pleasure in life. I can’t imagine wearing headphones while out and about. How could I let my mind wander?
When I was a young man taking a long run after a crappy day at work was great for clearing a lot of stress out. I highly recommend it if you’re able.
Aimless walking is a lost art in our ever-optimizing society. So let’s meet for coffee.
Is walking to get coffee the same as "aimless" walking? Seems like you have an aim, and that aim it get to the coffee shop to meet someone, likely at a specific time. When I walk, primarily for the point of good exercise, I try to take alternate paths and not care when or where I need to be as much as deciding if at the next split in the path, do I take the longer or shorter direction to where/how I want to end. That's what I consider aimless.
Henry James said that hegot the idea for his novel The Princess Casamassima on his walks around London, and that it was the “ripe, round fruit of perambulation.”
I got turned around, not actually lost, in Florence, Italy. It was night. My wife was back at the hotel. It was one of those times when fear starts to take over, and then I focus. I’ve gotten turned around in the woods, too. That kind of walk is memorable.
For three years from about 1989-93 I went for a walk outside nearly every single night because of a sleep issue. It sucked, but it was also kind of pleasant to experience the change of seasons, from hot and nearly light through rain and to snow and cold.
Spousal Unit and I walk for anywhere between 15 minutes and an hour after dinner nearly every evening. Wonderful way to "walk off dinner" and have a nice, calm period before the rest of the evening wind-down.
The Great Thing, about walking aimlessly in today's cities.. If that you'll PROBABLY be killed.
NOTHING stimulates Great Thoughts., Like being beaten and robbed and raped and murdered!
I encourage ALL scientists (ESPECIALLY Social Scientists!) to try walking by yourself in Chicago south of Stony Island Avenue..
I Guarantee it WILL BE an Educational Experience!!
I forget what movie it was, but I remember a scene where a corporate upper management type comes up to a person, wraps their arm around their shoulders and says loudly, "Walk with me. Talk with me."
"Insomniac walks through London powered Dickens’s novels. Bathtubs and apple trees get all the attention, but many more scientists have had their eureka moments while on long, solitary ambles. Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote that 'only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.'..."
Stephen Hawking might disagree.
There are lots of good things to be said about long walks, but we have the testimony of Virginia Woolf to prove that it's not a sure fire cure for depression....I go for long walks. I don't often get sublime thoughts or work out Fermat's Theorem while out walking. It's a pleasant enough activity and it dependably burns calories and puts you in a positive frame of mind, but don't oversell it.
"Ain’t talkin’, just walkin’"
Once we learn to pay attention, the natural world, and life, become miraculous, and the seemingly ordinary turns transcendent.
Walking truly is the best medicine in the world… and the price is right.
Portnoy video link
I read a biography of Andrew Mellon (business magnate and Treasury Secretary under Harding/Coolidge) some years back; he was a dedicated walker and often wandered around Pittsburg - and later Washington - for hours on end thinking about work, his businesses, and public policy.
Althouse serving walking papers.
She walked to a sale on ‘o’ s…
gilbar said...
The Great Thing, about walking aimlessly in today's cities.. If that you'll PROBABLY be killed.
NOTHING stimulates Great Thoughts., Like being beaten and robbed and raped and murdered!
-------------
You are nuts. In the last 2 dozen years I have walked the downtown streets of scores of American cities, from New York, Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, St. Louis, Memphis, Boston, Atlanta, Madison, (but not San Francisco, so I will give you that one). You will be safe and secure if you are just careful like you would be in any big city that you are not familiar with. Don't live your life in fear like gilbar wants you to. That's loser think, as Scott Adams would say.
To walk or not to walk is the binary question answered by NYT.
I was going to post about Beethoven and Brahms earlier but scrubbed it. Now I see Lyle Sanford spoke for me.
Now I'll just add that Bach, Handel, and Haydn were probably too busy most days.
LOL, Lonejackass. I invite you to overcome your fear and wander away from "downtown" for your walks. Try walking around in the West Woodlawn area of Chicago in the daytime or nighttime, then get back to us after you get out of the hospital, or at least tell us which cemetery to send the flowers to. By your own admission, you don't "walk around aimlessly today's cities"- you stick to the downtowns and you do so to be safe, again by your own fucking admission.
Of course, you would be the kind of idiot to criticize someone for being afraid to wander around aimlessly on the South Side of Chicago because you felt really, really safe walking around Hyde Park.
Sometimes perambulating about can get the ideas to flow. Best to have that done before meeting with others.
Lonejustice, kudos if you're a woman and you've walked alone in those cities at night.
Otherwise, meh.
If you are sick of London, you are sick of life, Samuel Johnson,I believe. a great city still.
hey? lonejustice? WHERE did you walk in Chicago? Do you EVEN Know Where Stony Island Avenue IS?
I realize, that You're a Liar, and Full of 'it.. But SERIOUSLY.. Do you think people think that
"walked the downtown streets" TWENTY Years ago. has ANYTHING to do with walking alone, in the Inner City?
Again, I Realize, that You're a Liar, and Full of 'it
Stephen Hawking might disagree.
=====
why - he may be jockeying his chair around in deep thoughts?
First he needed crutches and walking sticks, but eventually he required the use of a wheelchair in order to get around. Over time, Hawking lost all mobility until he was completely paralyzed.
Walking has advantages for creative people. Stephen King credits long walks for how he wrote quite a few books. On the other hand, Stephen King suffered horrible injuries while walking.
Good place to note the great Youtuber Hans-Georg Moeller @carefreewandering who is a philosophy professor in China. I walk a lot but unlike the greats like Nietzsche I've always got the headphones on. Often listening to @carefreewandering
LoneJackass probably only walks around the area where he can still see the cops around.
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