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  The Pleasures of Walking
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ContributorBob 
Last EditedBob  Mar 22, 2008 05:41pm
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News DateSaturday, March 22, 2008 11:40:00 PM UTC0:0
DescriptionIn a Times article this past summer, Alex Marshall discussed a resurgence of walking in New York, which he credits, in part, to the city's becoming "cleaner, safer and more prosperous." In the same issue, novelist Nicole Krauss sang the praises of walking in our city. She wrote, "I like to walk to be alone with the world, not to be alone. In this way, walking is a lot like writing. Both writing and walking (as I know it) are fueled by a desire to put oneself in relation to others. Not in direct contact — some aloneness wishes to be preserved — but contact through the mediation of language or shared atmosphere of a city street."

I echo Ms. Krauss' sentiments, but wish I could live in whatever city she is walking in. It sounds like New York circa 1990.

Throughout my first several years in New York, I loved nothing more than to walk the streets. Like Ms. Krauss, I enjoyed the sensation of being alone with the world, engaged in a "freewheeling thoughtfulness" or free association, one idea leading to another, blossoming and unfolding. When I felt like writing, I would go out hunting and gathering. The cobbler standing in his doorway with black-stained apron, the talcum powder smells coming out of barbershops, the old ladies leaning with elbows on windowsills. All of it fed my work--the way it did for city writers and artists like Frank O'Hara and Edward Hopper.

But the streets have changed. The little shops and the people who were once so emblematic of the city are vanishing. And the pleasures of walking are vanishing, too.
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