The Artist's Way

of us must rely on our feet for transportation and for
recreation. Like Jenny, we can take up running. Or we
might make walking our sport. As an artist, walking offers
the added benefit of sensory saturation. Things do not whiz
by. We really see them. In a sense, insight follows from
sight. We fill the well and later tap it more easily.
Gerry is a confirmed city dweller. His country walks are
limited to perusing window boxes and pocket gardens.
Gerry has learned that “in cities, people are the scenery.” He
has also learned to look up, not down, and to admire the
frippery and friezes that often grace buildings that look
quite, well, pedestrian at street level. As he roves the city
canyons, Gerry has found a whole panoply of scenic
attractions. There is the orange-marmalade cat that sits in the
window above the window box with both pink and red
geraniums. There is the copper church roof gone murky
green that glistens silver in rain-storms. An ornately inlaid
marble foyer can be glimpsed through the doors of one mid-
town office building. On another block, someone has sunk a
lucky horseshoe in civic concrete. A miniature Statue of
Liberty soars unexpectedly atop a dignified brick facade.
Gerry feels at liberty himself, roaming the city streets on
tireless feet. This courtyard, that cobbled walkway—Gerry
gathers urban visual delights the same way his primordial
ancestors gathered this nut, that berry. They gathered food.
He gathers food for thought. Exercise, much maligned as
mindless activity among certain intellectuals, turns out to be
thought-provoking instead.