Both boys funked out on me Saturday night. Neither one of them performed in or even attended the fellowship talent show. That put me into a deep funk that I won't revisit here.

Instead, I'll move on to another funk, the walking funk or, more properly, the walkless funk that has afflicted me for the past two weeks, maybe closer to three weeks. Three weeks ago I stopped walking for exercise for the first time in many months; I did not, however, stop my walks to the kitchen for a mug of Oreos (sometimes a bowl) drenched in milk, or a handful of cashews (sometimes a bowl) chased by a Coke. Until then I had been obsessive about completing the daily walk, skipping it on only the coldest days of winter because I'm not yet willing to join the mall walkers on their wall-hugging cow path, thankyouverymuch. I prefer the outdoor geometry and distractions of neighborhoods. In our neighborhood, which is located in a part of town platted before the invention of the curve and the cul-de-sac, the roundabout and the turning circle, a two by four -- a route two blocks wide by four blocks long (all times two) -- equals a mile, and I usually walk two miles.

I had plenty of excuses for limiting the walks: The ankle that I broke a few years ago acted up after too many bounces and a badly landed flip on the trampoline; I felt some tendonitis creeping in; I was carrying the camera, the walk had become a stroll, and therefore non-aerobic, so why bother anyway; the sky was too blue and the flowers (those poppies, for instance) too abundant -- no excuse was too trivial or vacuous.

Recognizing the triviality of my excuses, I decided to sophisticate and complicate them by attributing my inertia and malaise to the fact that with spring's fresh burst almost past, I should prepare for my winter-long funk. After the Masters Tournament, spring is over, no? Get prepared for winter, right? Just six months from now the urchins will sift through the sparse remains of their Halloween candy, we'll be raking leaves again forgodssake, teachers will look forward to the upcoming Thanksgiving break, the enlarged garden sections in the stores will shrink to a few shelves of rubber plants and cacti, and Christmas geegaws will reappear on sales racks.

Now if I wanted to complicate this further, I could attribute my malaise to regret at impermanence, change and loss -- the passing of spring, for instance, just to keep it simple (but oblique, as ever). The last Oreo gets snarfed, my fingertips scratch the oily tin bottom and sides of the cashew can, and the last strumpet poppy loses its petals.

Although I realize that without impermanence, change and loss, we might have been stuck forever with the draft, "Starsky and Hutch," and baby teeth, I nevertheless would prefer that some things last forever, things that you shouldn't have to deserve -- spring, for instance (compare Frost, "Death of the Hired Man," where a similar comment refers to home.)

I've got to get over anticipating spring's passing and attend more to its passage, but saying so comes more easily than doing so.

The I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can method works only so often, but it'll have to do.

And I think that this entry might drift even further from the topic of walking and my sloth if I continue, so I'll stop it abruptly here (but maybe not soon enough) and take a walk.

A Salon review of Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit (Viking, $24.95) caught my eye. When I don't feel like writing, I read about it; so when I don't feel like walking, I should read about it? Well, maybe it's not entirely about walking.

On the way to work, I caught a glimpse of a solo wild turkey grazing in the field across the road from the territorial capitol building. There might have been young'uns with it, but if there were, the tall grasses concealed them.

The roadside memorial on K-18 has yet to be replaced. Whenever I pass it, I check it, although I don't always note it here. Memorial Day, maybe?

On Sunday I resumed the walks, starting with a one-mile stroll.

Yet another -- noon Tuesday, 60F, clear, 14:30. Near normal. Another mile tomorrow, then two on Thursday. I can remember when a layoff like the one of last three weeks wouldn't have bothered me. No, that's a lie -- a lie of the "the older I get, the better I was" variety.

Last night I began reading Graham Greene's The Quiet American. What better way to relieve personal funk than to read someone else's equally overripe, but more fluent and considered description of malaise.