On the Burden of Racism

Peripatetic writing, national conversations, and a walk around the tennis courts

“La marche a quelque chose qui anime et avive mes idées : je ne puis presque penser quand je reste en place ; il faut que mon corps soit en branle pour y mettre mon esprit.”

---

In plain English: words come more easily to us when we are walking. This truth is evident even to a room-temperature IQ like Rousseau, and the idea has been expressed with superior language by the English Romantics. But neither Rousseau nor Coleridge nor Wordsworth can be said to have fully executed the concept. Though entirely correct in their assertion, they would write only after having gone for a walk, at which point their creative powers, first sharpened by their perambulations, would have undoubtedly begun to wane.