walking stick…

… sometime in our mid-70s, whilst we were making the transition from young-old into old-old, I ended up with a walking stick. A smooth brass head, handle, a dog’s head I think it was, with a brass ferrule on the tip. The tip traced the same trajectory as my left foot. By this time I walked, thought and talked more slowly, mostly walking though. My memory having tended towards the forgetful all my life. People, names, concepts, sign systems… always tended to be forgotten. The walking stick was something more than a merely useful object, for an old man like me it enabled me to to walk in a more balanced way. It is a utilitarian tool and also a luxury that enhances the act of walking — for the slightly infirm person I am becoming in my old age, an object as necessary as my glasses, sometimes my hip joints ache and only the stick enables me to climb the hill which feels like a mountain. The stick makes my movement more singular, more expressive as it extends the scope of my body. Those who use walking sticks, when unobserved often twirl their canes but usually we walk with more care and attention than the stickless. tap tap tap. Is that woman walking with measured steps up the long hill really presenting a divergent ethical stance? This walking stick is a supplement which offers the person extra support, tracing a path in the dust beyond the intention expressed by the walker’s footsteps, the end of the stick raised by hand suggests other directions that my body could be directed along. As it hits the ground the things it displaces move away from the brass tip, insects fly or run, people move aside, pollution is compressed. It has a multiplicity of facets, from the invisible substance touching the ground with a click, to the shaft of light, protons striking the stick and reflected into the watchers eyes not noticed by the person who uses it. Normally, shall I say idealistically, it is an object that is both at the same time, as solid as it is invisible. I walk along the road beside a row of trees, in the city, are these buildings inhabited or are they just representations of capital. The walking stick presses the layers of fallen london plane tree leaves against the pavement in time with my left foot. Yellow brown leaves on the ground. Sometimes though when it is leaning against the wall, in the tall porcelain pot by the window it listens to Lester Young or John Tchici, the polychromatic sounds of the saxophones filling the room from an old musical recording, running a line of sound through the day.