Zines.

[bluebellrock]

I've just read The Long Walk Back to Myself by Jessica Stein, a zine about her 50-mile walk from Brooklyn to the Clearwater Folk Festival. It was a great read and made me think two things:

1. I want to go for a long walk.
2. I want to pull my psych hospital zine out of hiding and get it ship-shape for printing. Never mind that I've finished a whole other

Comments

[vidaliasparkle]

this was a beautiful zine!

[bluebellrock]

Wasn't it? I wanted to walk the aqueduct trail too.

[wanderingaengus]

My brother hiked the Appalachian Trail a few years ago. That's an ambitious walk, to be sure.

Have you ever heard of the dérive? (Here's an essay on it.) Sort of a philosophy of wandering.

[bluebellrock]

I hadn't heard of the derive, non. I will read that essay with interest (already started it).

It's interesting that there are so many words for long walks. Americans seem to favour the word 'wandering'; Brits 'rambling' and Aussies 'walkabout'. All very similar concepts yet each uniquely different.

[wanderingaengus]

I can't vouch for the essay -- I don't know if it's any good, since I haven't read it. I learned the term in Greil Marcus' book Lipstick Traces.

[infanttyrone]

The thing that's done the best job of keeping the darkness at bay for me is forced daily walks. 98 days out of 100 it's a struggle for me to leave the house at all, but once I'm out and about, it goes a long way towards keeping me out of the depths. And when I get home I'm invigorated, whether I want to be or not. Since it's not a job I can call in sick for, I have to get up and be presentable and talk with folks, even though all I really want to do is lay on the couch.
And someday I'll get my kit together enough to take a good, looooong walk.

[bluebellrock]

Yeah, I've been trying to go on daily walks, as much for Kenji's sake as my own, but for the last two days I just haven't been able to do it. The walk the day before these past two days was really, really difficult and it scared me a bit how hard it was to keep going. (Fortunately Todd took Kenji out today.) Getting home invigorated is definitely a great pay-off but I have to be well enough to do it at all. My brain chemistry seems to be ebbing and flowing with no rhyme or reason. It's really frustrating, not to mention frightening.

[infanttyrone]

Brains suck ass. Just when I think I've got mine tamed, the season changes or my diet does or some weird little factor throws everything up into the air again.

[bluebellrock]

You're speaking my history, man. Same here, dammitalltohellandback.

[quuf]

I highly recommend this, if you haven't already read it.

[bluebellrock]

I haven't read that, no, and it looks fantastic. I've added it to my Amazon wish list, which means I'll probably never buy it. That wish list is a black hole of excellent reading matter!