For the Unvehicularly Minded

I do not really care much for cars. I'm sure other people enjoy waxing them in earnest, rubbing down their doors and wheelwells as though they were sides and legs of celebrated race horses, or watering them with a hose as though they were a plant at sunset. Who knows, maybe that Opal or goose-throated Vauxhall will grow. But cars do seem, by even the briefest of societal observations, the ideal contraption for distressed and impatient humans. To prove this, one only need see a hairy-fisted truck driver who looks like he (or possibly she) hasn't had a bowel movement this century, yelling at the unturning clunker impeding their progress. Or witness a harried mother carting her sugar-frenzied kiddikins to so and so's birthday bash in a reckless rush, spewing the ghost of fossil fuels all over the quivering daffodils in the traffic island she jolts over. It seems few are the drivers with ungnashing jaws and many are the cursing looks one receives from them, whether they are in a car or not...looks that warn: Dear humble pedestrian, take note, you are merely the inconvenient thud in my undercarriage should the maniacal driver be stricken by the slight whim to make it so.

The Spanish had a wise saying: No man is sane on horseback. The same is remarkably true for the post-Ford world and dis-horsed era of transport. No driver is sane in a car.

I realise that my impressions will not curry favour with the in-crowd of the super-popular car show Top Gear, hosted by the holy trinity; the one with the face of a grumpy bulldog topped by a balding afro, the second, the doe-eyed whippet with the barnet of a psychotic woodpecker, and the third, whom I can only describe as the marshmallow-faced Sir Plonk-drop. I'm sure you can find a photo of them somewhere on the internet and then you can assess whether I am inaccurate with my description.

I also do not wish to get around town riding a rickety wagon pulled by a team of a thousand obedient squirrels. Although I do enjoy the image I can't imagine what the insurance would be as squirrels can occasionally turn fiesty and unpredictable. Honestly though, I just don't fathom the hype and four-wheeled temple worship for vehicles that are absolutely equal in ubiquitous traffic jams and shape-wise only look like bars of soap in various degress of erosion. And these are the model beasts that slide one's guts continually around a county or state whilst one is encased in the car smells and sounds. Is this not a particular version of sensorial hell? This new car smell...how wonderfully synthetic! And to think, you can buy it in a can!

This could be a wayward paean to public transportation – that method of travel by which one may fold their arms and gaze dreamily at the city that one floats through on the bus or train that dissects it – but rather, on the whole, I fear people have forgotten that they have legs and what legs can do for them. Legs: we all can run from housefires with them. They also can bring us to unknown flowers and what a new unfolding world of thoughts can we encounter when they are most in use.

To know the land one must walk the land.

Walking purifies the senses.

Without money in one's pocket and without a need to be anywhere, a walk becomes a pure celebration of being.

I discovered these ideas whilst walking...and I don't refer to merely walking across a car park on the way to buy something vitally important like a coconut or a pair of socks. I mean walking far for the sake of walking, for the sake of non-thinking; that state in which ideas and notions often are born in and briefly reside before leaving the mental canvas clear as air. It is then possible for one, in a new or differently perspicacious way, to see and know the momentary world that surrounds – the smells, the way the light hits a certain flying bird, the feel of the air on your hands, the sounds of a tree or a student practising a guitar in some passed unknown room. It is just possible for that student to be the genius that one day has a song blaring from a car radio that speeds past. But perhaps you heard something more magical first.