the flaneur

back in amsterdam

reunited with my books

i broused through phil smith’s “on walking”

the latest edition of the dark mountain project

rousseau’s “the reveries of the solitary walker”

basho’s “the narrow road to the deep north”

and werner herzog’s “of walking on ice”

i checked rebecca solnit’s “wanderlust” on walter benjamin

and found the chapter “paris, or botanizing on the asphalt”

where she writes about him as a great wanderer of streets

and the flâneur, a concept he writes about often

i am here to gather my things, my walking thoughts

to prepare myself to walk from benjamin’s grave in portbou

to the arcades in paris

to talk with people on the road about slow and simple ways of being

about ecology, materialism, how to find the future in our history

i will walk to the climate conference

to meet a swedish activist & writer i once lived in the woods with

we built things there, we grew things

and in the room i lived in, in a lonely red house in the middle of nowhere

i found a suit one day, hidden in a closet

i wore it on a few occasions and i brought it home with me afterwards

i didn’t know what to do with it

but today i remembered its label

maybe it is time to wear it again