I am making my second turn onto Hill Street following Captain Raymon Holt’s recipe for speed walking – heel, ball, toe; heel ball, toe. The Langhornian sun monster is beating down upon me, getting in its licks. I believe the Langhornian sun monster knows when its own go away and exact extra punishment upon them when they return to see family or to bring their kids to Sesame Place. It’s sort of like Pennywise, but with less marketing potential.
And why might I be walking so stridently under such a vengeful sun? Because cheesesteaks, pizza, baked potatoes, Italian hoagies, diners, a freewheeling attitude towards butter, home fries, Aunt Angela’s baked ziti, Aunt Angela’s meatballs, Aunt Angela’s sausage, Kohrs brothers ice cream, and, well, the list goes on and doesn’t make me look any better than the gluttonous slob you are currently picturing, so you can fill in the rest.
In sum: I need to walk off a few calories.
Walking is also one of my favorite activities. I get the same benefits from walking as I do from running, except without the daydreams about throwing myself into traffic every 40 seconds. Walking clears my mind; it relaxes me. With the mind clear, I brainstorm ideas without even trying – they just come from the automatic nature of the activity. Passing houses, people, and things makes me appreciate things more than sitting on my couch, where, say, a barbershop might escape my notice unless Jessica Fletcher is catching a murderer there.
In Langhorne, I am void of pets. Well, I am in charge of feeding Rosie, my sister’s fish, but I have no doggy. To be more precise: I have no shih tzu, whose legs are four inches long and whose approach to walking is Zenlike, Buddhist, and as dynamic as kickboxing with a hermit crab. To paraphrase a long-lost sage: walking with a shih tzu involves long periods of boredom punctuated by seconds of sheer moseying.
I.e. not a great workout.
A loop around our local part of the park takes about fifteen minutes with the dog. This is if she’s motivated by the need to pee at her favorite spot near bench #3, cast a look into the metro station, take a pellet or two of hare poop as an appetizer, and then have an ecstatic roll around in the grass before going inside for breakfast. Add five minutes if she urges us to spend a while contemplating life and its draperies on her favorite bench (bench #6).
On this walk, she really enjoys her surroundings. She snuffles into grass, deep sniffs dog poop, and explores the urine-soaked landscape. She finds trees and bushes endlessly fascinating, slowly moving from one to the other. Sometimes she tilts her head and gazes as if she’s contemplating or processing what she’s just noticed or sniffed – cause that’s what she’s doing. According to studies, that quick whiff of pee or poop tells my dog who was there, when they were there, and what their mood was. I don’t know that I’d like to have the same skills (or I might never again enter a public bathroom) but the implications of such skills are clear:
My dog is Tonto.
Still, when I first got a shih tzu, I was a firm holder of the vision of a classic ‘dog walk’. You know, a high(ish) energy walk-trot that would benefit my physical health. When it became clear I wasn’t getting that with my shih tzu, it took some time to relent. And it took a while. If I moved too fast, she’d play her one card and hunch into the ground. It’s her one card because my shih tzu weighs eleven pounds and if I don’t want to stop then she can become a loaf of bread under my arm. In the beginning, I did this more often. But after I realized how much she seemed to get from these slow, languid walks, I finally relented and since then I’ve just gone along with things.
When she stops and explores, I let my brain slip into some weird idea I have or delve into a piece I’m currently working on. When ideas or points come, I count them out on my fingers so I know how many I have to write out when I get home. It’s usually only one or two, but they sometimes have attached points. Idea 1, point A, point B, point B2, point B3. You get the idea. In my living room, I’ll hold up my fingers and write out the points. Sometimes the mental exercise of recalling the points helps expand them. I do this sometimes to poke the dog, who spends this period staring at me in expectation of her post-walk treat, mouth dripping with her post-walk water.
I finish my speedy walk today and feel exhausted. I am sweating. The Langhornian Sun Monster got me extra good. I drop into my chair at my desk and fetch my notebook and start jotting. I have had a few promising ideas, I think. Until they take the form of words, I won’t know if I have an ‘Ooh, look at that!’ idea or a ‘That’s it?’ idea.
Today I am a bit disappointed at the four piddly words in a quasi-coherent phrase and a half. I try reaching into my head to remember more, but I’m tired and the ideas are jumbled. I try one last time counting on my fingers to recall more. Nope that was it. I miss my shih-tzu walks. I head upstairs to shower and feed Rosie the fish, maybe the sprinkling of her pellets will conjure more ideas. Plus, maybe if I got up the steps slowly enough, I’ll get some better ideas.
