“When the whole world is running headlong towards the precipice, one who walks in the opposite direction is looked at as being crazy.”
~ T. S. Eliot
Joel Bowman, with another Note From the End of the World...
“Who is your favorite flâneur?”
The question was put to us recently by a friend, a fellow walker. We ran into our able ambler along our morning stroll and decided, without so much as saying so, to take a turn around the neighborhood for an unhurried spell.
“Oscar Wilde is surely up there,” one of us ventured, after having procured a pair of cafés para llevar. “What was it he said about happiness? Some cause it wherever they go... others whenever they go.”
“Good one,” replied the other. “And you know what he said about quotations?”
“That they are a serviceable substitute for wit?”
“Indeed.”
Blind Footsteps
Along Libertador we sauntered, with its umbrageous trees – gomero, tipa, jacaranda – past Dandy and Café Tabac, where Einstein and Russell conversed in another of our Notes, down Colonel Diaz, tracing the limit between Palermo and Recoleta.
“What about Borges?” said one, after a time. “Now there’s a great walker.”
“And blind, to boot!” enthused the other. “Must’ve been a veritable labyrinth.”
Left on Cabello we turned.
“Then there was Nietszche... human, all too human.”
“Can’t forget Kant,” reasoned the other, a little further along. “They say the sleepy denizens of Königsberg set their watches by his morning constitutional.”
“Something of an imperative,” came the wry reply.
We rambled a little further, past La Dorita on Bulnes, with its aroma of fatty chorizo sausage and papas a la provençal, past the beauty salons, where the pretty Jewish princesses gather to lacquer and kvetch, past the swings and seesaws of Plaza Alférez José María Sobral, full of children’s laughter and scraped knees and parents beyond overtired.
At last we came to our own manzana, the belle epoch block we call home.
“See you around, amigo,” bade our fellow flâneur. “I’m off to meet a friend for coffee...”
“Got a few Notes to pen,” replied your editor.
Which brings us neatly to this week’s musings, archived for your consideration, below…
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World next week…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. As always, a special thanks to our paying Notes members, who kindly support our work with their dues. (Paying for a good or service voluntarily… without the compulsion of The State. Imagine that!)
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Walk of Life