Walking and Talking

           I love to talk to a man who loves to talk.

            Sydney Greenstreet in the Maltese Falcon

 

One of my favorite lines though I can’t remember what it has to do with the plot in this iconic noir movie. I also like a conversation with someone who likes to talk as long as they also like to listen.

Conversation is an art form, an improvisational wonder; sometimes a form of love between souls, a reciprocal union. It is a flowing stream with tributaries. Monologues are a killer; competing monologues are serial killers. Questions need to be asked and answers heard. It takes on a certain music of its own ranging from a bluesy sax to a cello. Two people, present for each other, is a kind of creation. Live deliberately, Thoreau wrote. Yet to be fully met spontaneously is a conjunction to be devoutly cherished.     

With all the verbiage accosting our ears on cable news there is rarely any room for an authentic conversation. Minds are seldom changed. It is assumed that there’s no audience for pauses and pondering. Talking heads say their piece and then a word from the sponsor. I would love to see two people open to an exchange and witness an imaginary light bulb going on overhead. 

In my sheltered ninety-one years I cannot recall ever being part of a duplicitous exchange like my imagined one between heads-of-state at Yalta or at a used-car lot. I don’t dare shop for a rug in the Kasbah. I have no guile in my bloodstream and no haggle.

As for walking these days I prefer winding paths probing my inscape. Roaming is what I do from the woods and dunes of my mind. Whitman’s open road allows for the unexpected, a wild orchid here and a stump there. Wallace Stevens lived about a mile from his job at Hartford Indemnity. He composed his poems as he walked. One rainy day he was offered a lift and accepted only on the condition that the driver did not speak. The inner voice needs to listen to itself.   

Metaphorically, walking the walk stands in opposition to talking the talk. Action vs. lip-service. In my sense, the two are complementary and each can be transformational. We live our convictions as we make art. Walking can be an interrogation  into shuttered regions just as the river of discourse leads to a discovery of an elsewhere of unimaginable visions.