Travelling on Foot

A Wayfarer’s Notes has changed its motto again. Farewell “not-doing”; back to Werner Herzog and his dictum: “The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot.” To be sure what he means, I check context.

Patrick House: You once walked from Munich to Paris to visit your dying friend, and in your film “Wheel of Time” someone told you that by walking thousands of miles they learned the true size of Earth. Do you think that, with V.R. [virtual reality], it will be possible to learn the size of Earth without ever taking a real step?

Werner Herzog: No. No further explanation. I can say it only in a dictum: the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot. It is hard to explain to anyone who has not travelled on foot. And I mean travelling on foot, not backpacking or hiking or ambling along. I mean as we were made as humans to travel on foot, and sometimes very large distances, or as nomadic people. Strangely enough, the only time I got the feeling I was not caught in a virtual reality is when I travelled on foot. (From the New Yorker, Jan. 2016)

Or there is this:

Herzog has two suggestions for how aspiring filmmakers can hone that intensity and appreciation for beauty.

The first: “Read, read, read. There’s hardly anyone reading anymore,” Herzog says frustratedly. “The second thing is travel on foot. The world will reveal itself to those who travel on foot. But that’s advice that no one follows. But it does matter. You have to be in a situation where you understand the heart of man. And if you do, then you will be able to understand difficult situations and catastrophes on your shoot. You will know how to handle an actor, adversities.” (From Vanity Fair, July 2016)

“Virtual reality” is not just 3-D, but comprises a broad vista of illusions made possible by technology. And then we can extend it metaphorically, so that we end up seeing nothing outside the bubble of our “preferences”—those things set up with the touch of a screen or click of a mouse. And so we become alienated.

When your feet touch the ground and your strides cover distance, then you are back to being human—homo sapiens Mk I. And as Herzog suggests, it may take us very large distances sometimes to leave that virtual reality behind, and be caught in the rhythmic progress of feet on path. Then we experience directly what life is: a trajectory of branching routes, an horizon that swivels as we go, extending 360 degrees; the distant landmarks keeping pace with our steps, the ground before us swiftly passed and left behind. Then we feel our body from the inside, seeing directly that it is more real than our thoughts. Then we feel the weather, the time of day and the season, seeing that they are more real than nagging emotions and reported news. If we are fortunate, we can smell fresh air; perhaps it has a tang that stirs unbidden memories. For our now is dimensioned in time; our true looking is ever backwards, to the known. There is no reality to be found in the future. It hasn’t come into being; only in some virtual dream-factory of nightmare versus longing, the two combatants locked in futile combat. Only by seeing what is before our eyes can we wake from those anxious dreams, into the beauty of the given.

—–

And after I’d written the above, I wanted to set out on foot, defying the red and white blood cells, harassed as they are by careful doses of mustard gas, trimmed and tamed into little brown pills of chlorambucil. By the time I reached the end of Ledborough Road, nearly at the market square, those cells felt a little edgy. A bench to rest before going back? Too cold and drizzly. The Falcon pub was the civilized solution, a general restorative. Besides, I wanted to get a feeling of people’s response to the attacks in London, and the General Election coming up this Thursday. Neither topic was mentioned inside: quite right too. What is a pub but somewhere to escape from  virtual reality? Here you can find England’s underlying continuity and essence, in mild words and good fellowship.

I sat near the hearth at the back, sipping a pint of Shipyard, a chilled draught made with American hops, surrounded by murmured conversations between friends and acquaintances. One fellow, it’s true, mentioned the Brexit Referendum, and whether its most-feared effects could be somehow softened; but there was no acrimony in his tone. It was just a topic for cheerful discussion.

It was a good time and place to muse on how the world can reveal itself, and whether there’s any other way but travelling on foot. All you have to do, I saw, is embrace what is. Which is simply done when you can free yourself from hope, fear and the impulse to defend every cherished notion. Then, as I gazed at a soon-to-be-empty glass, Karleen rang. She too had business in town. We arranged to meet at Western Union. From there we crossed to Sainsbury’s supermarket, where I waited on a chair near the checkout. I used to cherish an ideological dislike for this place, on the basis of its perceived middle-class hypocritical leftwingery, and the loud safety instructions on its moving walkway to the gallery upstairs. I’ve seen the light now of course. The incident I narrated in Eye-Witness helped a lot; that’s when I began to see it as a shop for everyone, even for a young man desperate to get back into jail. Learning to love the liberal middle class, disregarding ideology, political correctness and safety instructions, helps me be a happier man: which is justification enough.

While I sat and observed all human life near the checkout, I would normally have wondered what could be taking Karleen so long to buy a few items. Instead of that, I rejoiced to see how this supermarket deploys staff with a range of disabilities; how gracefully they perform their duties. It’s no bad thing to be an observer, instead of an over-active participant; and if my entire life till now led to nothing else but sitting here, indefinitely waiting for Karleen, who was nowhere in sight, it would have been well spent. Thus I entered a timeless zone, where the shop was a stage, the customers and staff  a troupe of improvising players. I felt thankful for the existence of Shipyard, the Falcon, Borough Market, London Bridge; the return to these shores of Ariana Grande with a teeny-pop entourage of Miley Cyrus and

Britain’s current favourite girl band Little Mix [who] blasted through their anthem Wings in tights and leather boots, demonstrating a fierce spirit of positivity none the less potent for its cheesy sauciness. (Neil McCormick, Daily Telegraph, June 4th)

No to virtual reality, yes to joy and One Love.