Walking

Today I got there. I was walking in the cold air in the parking lot of our apartmen complex and lost complete sense of time. I am usually tense about time and keep track of its passage rather consciously. I have been trying to walk regularly for at least 20 minutes every evening. My TaeKwonDo is on hold as we move from one house to another, and I want to keep my body moving in the interim. I have also been following Julia Cameron's advice about walking. In her new book "The Writing Diet: Write yourself right-size" she extolls the virtues of walking.

We tend to think of creativity as an intellectual construct, something rather disembodied and vaguely "spiritual". This notion is nonsense. Creativity is not something ethereal. It is something very real, an energy that best serves us when it is grounded. And we ground our creativity through our bodies, most easily and most sensibly through walking.

And so I have been walking and watching my mind take off in all different directions. I am re-realizing how much I enjoy walking and how it floods my brain with ideas and free associations. It is a truly wonder drug for me.

And now Patsy Cline's Walking after midnight is going to be stuck in my head the rest of the day.