Walking faster is neither finesse nor force, but rather the skillful combination of opportunity and patience. Anyone can increase their stride, or move their hips, but it takes the true master to glide through a crowd like a boat cutting the waves. Remember your goal and your reward. You are one of a kind, of a special breed. If you do it right, you will always arrive alone as head of the pack!
People always stare at me, wherever I go. They know me from somewhere, but they can never place it. Out of the corner of their eye, I can see them racking their brains, plumbing their memory. I remind them of someone familiar. On the subway, on the streets, even in restaurants, as they stop mid-sentence, food half-way to their mouths. They lean over, whispering to their companion. I know that man… from somewhere. For a brief moment there is a shadow of connection, then it is gone, and I fade into the crowd. Once a man shot his hand out in greeting, as if I was an old friend. Just as quickly, he jammed it back into his pocket, too embarrassed to meet my eyes. It is something in my life I have learned to endure, and enjoy.
I wrote a book once. I thought it was quite a good combination of witty and useful. One of those modern cheeky ones. A smirking jump of the eyebrows at those too busy for layers in literature. The big joke would be that you got it, because you were so smart. A sort of pat on the back to those intellectual humbugs. The only thing was that no one ever got the joke. Its face value became its only value as it was the sort of book you picked up from the table and read in 10 minutes, smiled, and forgot. A publisher hesitantly decided to run with it, writing me letters filled with marvellously empty platitudes and cautious phrasing about how I was just the thing they needed. No doubt hoping to cash in on the genre of tongue in cheek instructional booklets, lumping me with How To Survive the Zombie Apocalypse and How to Become a Millionaire Without Even Trying, that sort of thing. They backed me because I looked good, but the faith certainly wasn’t there. I actually sold a lot of copies. For a week, I think I was one of the most popular authors in the country. Everyone had either read the book or had a conversation about it, generally pretending to have read it anyways.
But soon, from other bad book deals, the publisher went out of business. My burgeoning fame flashed away. As I had only been in it for a lark, I quickly moved on with my life. I see copies every once in a while, sitting in doctor’s offices, in racks in the coffee shop, lost among the plenitude. No doubt it sits on living room coffee tables covered in magazines, mostly forgotten until swept aside in a eager spring cleaning, perhaps destined for the rubbish bin or some larger, deeper pile in the corner of the household. I still own a well worn one, bought with my own money, which I page through every now and again on rainy afternoons. It never fails to make me smile. It was called, The Layman’s Guide to Walking Faster.
I’ve always said I move quicker in autumn, in the dreary days before winter and the biting cold. Not because of the wind, or the dropping temperatures, or even the malaise which overtakes you, taking you home faster to sanctuary and solitude. It’s always from the leaves floating from the branches. O what death, what mournful passing, what tragic beauty in the void, bemoan the poets and the artists. Rubbish. It falls from the tree and what a wonderful path it creates. Sometimes slipping through the breeze, soft and gentle. Sometimes falling straight down, hard and rough. Gone in an instant. No less a finale than the butterfly from its cocoon.
So I walk in the morning air, frost still glittering on leaf and roof alike, they drive me to copy their grave beauty.
I was in a coffee shop when she saw me. I was hunched over the paper, crinkled brow, trying to comprehend the latest incredulous act of those elected men and women who swung around their authority in the name of the people. This was how I spent many of my afternoons, finding it both liberating to be among the masses, and humbling to remember there was more to the world than my apartment. I often went to the same place, just around the corner, but would switch up my order to keep them guessing. I wasn’t quite a regular, but they recognized me as a quiet customer who wouldn’t leer at the underage staff. Today I had chosen a large coffee, black, enjoying the slowly building caffeine rush and the inevitable evening crash. Then I could safely lie in bed and allow my consciousness to linger precariously close to sleep as the TV droned on in the background.
“I know you,” she said from across the awkward aisle built from crookedly placed tables.
I looked up. She was younger, my broad sense of age put her in the 25-36 range. She had soft brown eyes and wavy short cropped blond hair. I don’t think she was that beautiful, but that may have had something to with her unblinking stare. I found it disquieting, moreso than the usual hard looks I would receive.
I shook my head, “Probably not. I get this a lot. I look like everyone I guess.” I smiled and focused back on my paper.
“You’re an author.”
“I’m afraid you have mistaken for someone else.” I said, more determinedly, this time. “I’m no writer.”
“You wrote a book, though.”
Her short sentences began to unnerve me. I left the not-quite-a-question hanging, and shrugged uncertainly.
“You wrote the guide; to walking faster.”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah, I did that years ago. Don’t really do any more. Wouldn’t really call me an author. I mean, I’ve never published again.”
“You’re like J. D. Salinger, then.” She crinkled her nose. I couldn’t tell if it was disgust or amusement. Her eyes told me nothing, still gleaming at me.
I blushed slightly. “I wouldn’t say I’m quite that good. He wrote a cornerstone of American literature. I just wrote a coffee table book. For a lark.”
She bobbed her head. Agreement?
“I really enjoyed it. It’s like, my favourite book. I think I’ve read it a hundred times.”
“Really.” I said.
“There’s a Facebook group about it. We have like 150 members.”
“I don’t have Facebook. Not much for social networks. 150 you say? You all really enjoyed it?” I asked, hesitantly.
“Greatest book ever written.”
I glanced downward, studying my coffee before taking a sip.
“I’m flattered really. But I can’t take much credit. It’s not that great, it’s just a silly little thing I barely got published. I mean, it’s just about fast walking. How can you take that seriously?”
She furrowed her brow.
“That’s all it’s suppose to be about?”
“I’m afraid so. I think you may be reading too much into it. Just something I thought of while on a stroll one day, really. You know, got annoyed waiting around people.”
“Yeah,” she said, bobbing her head, her hair floating lazily around her face. “It’s like a.. guide for getting through life faster.”
A silence I tried to let go on.
“’Cause you just want to get to the end.”
I start at her. Taking this as an opportunity to continue, she moved to sit across from me, uncaringly placing her own drink on my newspaper.
“It’s like… You’re standing there on the sidewalk, and there’s all these people between you and like, where you want to go, the end. And you keep getting stuck behind some slow guy or fat person, and you’re just thinking I gotta get out of here. But you can’t just step onto the street, y’know? So you gotta know how to get around, how to just get through, as fast as possible, and ignore all these other people who just don’t get it. Nobody gets it, right?”
The softness of her eyes gleamed. As she talked, her hands shifted on the table, as if she was resisting waving them about. She leaned forward, almost a conspirator in some plot, keeping her eyes on me, unblinking and thoughtful.
“The book is just fucking amazing.” She whispered, her voice slightly hoarse. She leaned back into the hard metal fram of her chair.
“It changed my life.”
“Hm. Well. That’s interesting.” I was afraid to break away from her eyes. “You’re wrong though.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“It’s not about that at all. Not at all, you’re completely off. Not even close. I thought maybe you had it. Doesn’t sound like it though.”
“What?”
“Do you want to know a secret?”
She looked uncertain. Her eyes flickered away, then back to me.
“About what?”
“The real meaning.”
She leaned in again, “Yes,” she breathed.
I moved forward. This time I stared for a moment of silence right back at her. I waited until I was certain that I had her. I forgot about my paper and my quickly cooling coffee. I gently put my hand over my notebook, grasping it as she drew in closer. Gone was the hustle of a coffee shop and the waning day. The underage servers faded away. I talked to her alone.
“Walking. It’s just about walking.”
I laughed cruelly. She looked disoriented. I got up, notebook in hand and walked away. I did not look back. I did not want to see betrayal, or confusion, or sadness, or anger. I left the shop and turned the corner and hurried safely home.
I don’t think I will go back to that coffee shop. I will have to go to another one, on another corner.
Walking faster is neither finesse nor force, but rather the skillful combination of opportunity and patience. Anyone can increase their stride, or move their hips, but it takes the true master to glide through a crowd like a boat cutting the waves. Remember your goal and your reward. You are one of a kind, of a special breed. If you do it right, you will always arrive alone as head of the pack!