by LJ Frank

To be on foot is an inquisitive heart’s passion, an ancient stirring to know, bipedal evolved another beginning.

 Maps drawn in the sand, clay, stone, an aid to the shortest route for a trek. Courage when deciding to go beyond the confines of the place birthed in pain and swathed in nature’s harsh caress. To venture forth and walk a little further, breathing in the magic of existence even if it meant building a boat to get to the other side, to resume walking to satisfy the curious savage inside.

Earth’s soil existed with no artificial barriers. Boundaries manufactured through a choir of miserly voices – property had a private value. And walking was divided among tribes of wealth in sophisticated looking forms where limits were placed on walking for the greater good. Possession is a sibling of envy and fear and walking away can be a dangerous matter.

Being afoot expanded human knowledge as the poets of old bore witness to the naked fetish of the human gait – explicit, lewd and indecent at times in the sway of the hips with each step spreading the toes in the mud of existence. 

 And in the evening of life I walk for my health on a treadmill, or at times on a crowded hiking trail in the mountains, or on a beach, or down a busy city street or country road in the rain wearing leather as a covering developed among the ancestors while sharing the desire for liberty of movement – with an appreciation for the limited measuring of my foot prints and acknowledging that to be afoot today has become a legislative and financial matter for lobbyists,  politicians and the manufacturers of virtual walking software.