You take walks to move old joints stiff from not moving and
you walk to make the heart glad. You walk to get from place to place and
you walk to run errands on the quiet, creating no pollution; but really you walk
to watch the movement of the mind so to notice its velocity and direction and
the various habits of storage and recollection in the brain.
Your walk soon becomes a trial in the courtroom of nature, for you seek truth,
nothing but, and you swear this oath, if to the self alone. Still, your walk is ritual,
sacrament, spiritual practice of a contemplative order so you need not walk nature only but as often your feet glide along asphalt or some suitably paved substitute and the mind notices truthful things in the town looking at human nature.
When the business of the mind has run its course and the mind comes
still and hushed and bare of own self-being so it has nothing more
to defend or to prove or to recall, you stand a chance to look without
judging: no greed, no grasping, and to notice the fragile sliver of
order running through life's blooming, buzzing confusion.
The song you heard last night, or precisely at four a.m. this very morning,
as you gave up the ghost in efforts to sleep, could have been, you wanted it to be,
that of the Nightingale with its varied melodic trills of inscrutable tranquility sheltering you from morning distractions and too much protein the night previous.
The song might well have been the Nighthawk's peent, or the Mocker mocking.
As you walk the town to watch, you listen to the silence alone and notice only
the bare empty buildings, various towers of commerce and communication transacting business, feeding various hungers and providing shade for sitting and talking to a friend as you will talk soon this day about books, poets and Santa Fe.
Throughout the silence, to keep its balance, the mind returns to Babel.
