Walking

Walking:  Of all the forms of locomotion, walking has to be the most mystical and intriguing of varieties.  Unlike the seemingly robust yet considerably cantankerous and mechanical jet propulsion, which requires high-test, high-quality and high-priced jet fuel, the fuel for walking is something simple like bananas or potatoes.  Unlike the pouncing of a tree frog or leopard, which is erratic and excessively quantized, walking is quite fluid and seamless and directional shifts are much more low-impact.  Swimming is poetic, in a sense, in that one both uses the buoyancy of the water to stay afloat and simultaneously pushes it out of the way to be propelled.  But in walking, one is far more immersed in the fluid of the air, in that it surrounds us and even flows through us and in it we have our being, and in walking, one must not just push a small quantity of water aside but must actually push the entire earth away a tiny fraction in order to propel themselves forward.  Escalators may be mesmerizing upon first glance, yet the real mysticism comes in walking up plain stairs and these same stairs do not remove the ominous quality of being able to translate thought and will into physical movement.  Yes, electrical impulses via electrolyte differentials run through these sinewy muscles of ours, and so, in a sense we are like the escalator, translating electrical energy to mechanical energy; but it is the curious case of decisiveness and will that generates these movements in the first place and can translate to any kind of natural phenomenon and action in the physical realm – and when we can drill down to this reality we will have discovered what makes us distinct from birds and fish and escalators.