That’s what they tell me. Walking is good for you. I do a lot of walking nowadays. It helps you think. It gives you time to think. It allows you to think. There’s something about walking that does that. Part of it is the fact that it takes longer to get anywhere than any other mode of transportation. And that’s just the idea. Driving is too quick. The only time driving is good for thinking is when you’re on a twelve hour road trip by yourself through Wisconsin. Otherwise you’re fighting traffic and focusing on staying on the road and what the other nut case drivers are doing. But when you’re walking it’s just putting one foot in front of the other and it really shouldn’t require that much of your attention.

So I walk. I walk to the bus stop every day. It gives me time to think, think about a lot of the things I like to think about. Somehow I’m better able to work through things when I can think them over while I’m moving my feet. Maybe it’s the change of atmosphere, maybe it’s the exercise that gets my blood flowing. It just does something that makes my brain work a little better, my imagination work a little harder. I imagine novelists walk several hours a day.

Wouldn’t it be great if everyone walked? If we stopped driving our cars and we just walked instead. People would think a lot more. Driving tends to deaden your senses. You listen to the radio, the atmosphere is controlled, you follow the lines on the road. Walking changes all that. People would see things, smell things, feel things, hear things, taste things. And they’d actually process that because they wouldn’t have anything else to do. Driving is kind of like the doldrums. Don’t get me wrong, I like driving. It’s just when that’s what you do every day to get anywhere it becomes more of a chore. Maybe I just don’t have the right car. But I don’t think so. Maybe we’d see a real enlightenment if people started walking. I bet that’s why there was an enlightenment in the first place–there weren’t any cars so people walked. Maybe I should think about that one a little more.

One more thing. Don’t watch a Quinton Tarentino film before going to bed.