After a meal, a walk helps aid digestion, at least, that’s what I’ve been told repeatingly, and as Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin writes,
‘Man lives not on what he eats, but on what he digests,’ says an old proverb. We must therefore digest to live: rich and poor, king and shepherd are equal in the face of this ineluctable law.
After a dinner of meats, stews, vegetables, desserts and coffee with the monks of St Bernard, Brillat-Savarin ambulates.
For my part, I preferred to go for a walk; and collecting some of my friends, went out to tread that soft, firm turf which is worth all the carpets made in the Savonnerie, and to breathe that pure mountain air which refreshes a man’s soul and turns his thoughts to meditation and romanticism.
After my breakfast which is last night’s goulash reheated and topped with a fried egg, and an English-lesson with a client in Södermalm, I walk up the the streets leading higher into the now apartment and business clad skin of island mountains rising above Lake Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. Posters face me on either side, with one fetching my particular notice.
Blackpink. I did not know. Now I do. I press “YouTube” on my iPhone, search, and here we go.
Let’s kill this love!
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
Rum, pum, pum, pum, pum, pum, pum
Let’s kill this love!
Rum, pum, pum, pum, pum, pum, pum
My walk takes me through Stockholm’s neighborhoods, South Korean girl groups, and into American voices still singing neuron to neuron in my head. Ah, Uncle Walt.
Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune, I myself am good-fortune,
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing,
Done with indoor complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms,
Strong and content I travel the open road.
With the advent of Spring, tulips abound in dirt bordered by concrete throughout the city. I think of Tomas Tranströmer’s collection of poems Sorgegondolen (The Sorrowful Gondola) and its opening verse.
Våren ligger öde.
Det sammetsmörka diket
krälar vid min sida
utan spegelbilder.
Det enda som lyser
är gula blommor.
(Spring lies in the wastes.
The velvet-dark ditch
curls by my side
without reflections.
The only thing that shines
is yellow flowers.)
A dockside and boats are never far from any walk through Stockholm. Ever a reminder of how the sea has shaped land and people; ever a reminder of walking becoming sailing with further cities and forests found.
And above, unfurling over the Stadshuset built over twelve years at the beginning of the 20th century, a now more present Spring blue sky streams an armada of white clouds. The goulash with all its paprika and dill, butter and pepper, cabbage and onions, potatoes and sauerkraut has settled well into my belly. Brillat-Savarin would be pleased. I have some more walking to do. Bon Appétit!
Empires, Cannibals, and Magic Fish Bones 