Pain Serves A Purpose. Without

Perhaps Walking Is Best Imagined As An 'indicator Species,' To Use An Ecologist's Term. An Indicator Species Signifies The Health Of An Ecosystem, And Its Endangerment Or Diminishment Can Be An Early Warning Sign Of Systemic Trouble. Walking Is An Indicator Species For Various Kinds Of Freedom And Pleasures: Free Time, Free And Alluring Space, And Unhindered Bodies.

Hope Is Not Like A Lottery Ticket You Can Sit On The Sofa And Clutch, Feeling Lucky.... Hope Is An Ax You Break Down Doors With In An Emergency.

When You Say 'mother' Or 'father' You Describe Three Different Phenomena. There Is The Giant Who Made You And Loomed Over Your Early Years; There Is Whatever More Human-scale Version Might Have Been Possible To Perceive Later And Maybe Even Befriend; And There Is The Internalized Version Of The Parent With Whom You Struggle- To Appease, To Escape, To Be Yourself, To Understand And Be Understood By- And They Make Up A Chaotic And Contradictory Trinity.

Language Is Like A Road, It Cannot Be Perceived All At Once Because It Unfolds In Time, Whether Heard Or Read. This Narrative Or Temporal Element Has Made Writing And Walking Resemble Each Other.

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.