The fields and streets are waiting

I don't know what I am doing with my life, but I do know that I enjoy three things: the city, nature, and walking.

[mesogeios]

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”

— Andrew Wyeth

[walkinsolitude]

Heaven is a place on earth

[walkinsolitude]

It was raining lightly and because I don't like umbrellas (I find them antisocial - all that poking and shoving...) I walked along the streets with my head bowed down, focusing on the feet of my fellow pedestrians for directional clues. It almost worked.

Sharon Dodua Otoo - Synchronicity. The original story

[walkinsolitude]

[julesofnature]

“A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods.”

— Rachel Carson

[walkinsolitude]

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“It’s one of those evenings we all know from somewhere. It might be the last summery day– you feel called on to leave what you’re doing and go for a walk by yourself.”

— Franz Wright, from “Ending,” Earlier Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)

[walkinsolitude]

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“Since I was a child I have walked in nature to escape, to think, and ultimately to (day) dream.‘The creative writer,’ Freud wrote in 1908, ‘does the same thing as the child at play. He [or She] creates a world of phantasy which he [or she] takes very seriously.’ However, I do not consider my writing practise as an imitation of my childhood creativity but as building upon it. It was through the act of walking as a child, particularly walking in nature, that I first learnt to imagine worlds and narratives beyond my immediate reality.These imaginings in turn helped to lay the foundations for my adult creativity. On weekends and after school, I would climb through the barbed wire at the bottom of our garden and walk off across the maize fields and into the forests surrounding our rural home … Walking off into nature like this offered a shy, introverted child solace. But these physical walks also represented a symbolic and literal act of walking into my imagination … Walking those dense coniferous and deciduous forests with their winding paths and secretive shadows, I was able to re-imagine and reconfigure myself from a shy child with homework to do and a life dominated by rules and rituals (very few of which were of my own making), to an independent adventurer, intrepid explorer and brave story conjurer.”

— Meg Vandermerwe, from “The Ink Road: Walking the Writer’s Path.” Five Points (vol. 19, no. 1, May 2018)

[walkinsolitude]

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

“I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”

— Sylvia Plath

[walkinsolitude]

Bliesmühle, Sarreguemines, France

[soracities]

“I want everything quiet and simple. For me: walking barefoot, sitting still, reading, listening to stories and now and then telling some myself. Eating fruit, drinking milk, longing to create, but with patience and many insights.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from a letter to Lou Salomé witten c. March 1904 (via violentwavesofemotion)

[walkinsolitude]

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

“You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky.”

— Sandra Cisneros, from The House on Mango Street; “Darius & the Clouds,”

[walkinsolitude]

[walkinsolitude]

Sie war nicht wählerisch und nahm einfach den Erstbesten, einen Mann in einem grauen Flanellanzug. Er war wirklich nicht besonders elegant. Trotzdem eine gute Wahl. Zügig lief er Richtung Eastside, lotste sie durch das Gedrängel, gab ihr eine Richtung, einen Rhythmus. Das war schon mal was. Manchmal verschwand er in der Menge, doch sie holte ihn schnell wieder ein. Schließlich war sie eine versierte Fußgängerin. Es war die einzige Disziplin, in der sie es zu einer gewissen Meisterschaft gebracht hatte. Im Grunde war es ihre einzige Freude, ihre Religion. Auf ihre Calisthenics konnte sie notfalls verzichten, auf das Spazierengehen keinesfalls. Nicht auf das Schaufensterbummeln, das Herumstreunen, das Abkommen vom Kurs.