Have you ever noticed when you are driving in a town or city and listening to music in the car, people walking by seem to be walking to the beat?  Sometimes the music is fast paced and you can’t help but notice the hips sway, the arms doing their one-two,one-two movement.  Perhaps you have changed channel a few times to see who moves best or the most to the rhythm.  Maybe you are with a friend and he or she points some people out…heck, even dogs are walking to the beat!

Then you may be strolling through a park with your ear-buds, listening to your tunes and you cannot help but move to the movement in time with the music floating in your ears.  If it is upbeat, and you are walking on a city sidewalk, that could actually be a risk to the safety to you and others.  Better tone the music down to something more mellow and mosey along ready to stop, walk around or step off the sidewalk at times.  Yes, yes, you have met those friends who walk three and four in a row refusing to break their group of four.

Even if you do not have music to carry you when you go for a walk, you can certainly hear something that will have a beat that can carry you at a certain tempo.  The beeping at the red light for visually impaired to cross has a nice honk to it and even when it stops, it still echoes for a few blocks as you walk to that beat. The rattle of a three wheeler down the street, the repetitive clang of a loose hub cap or the click click of those nice pumps across the street.  I prefer the steady thump of my favourite boots when I’m in a good mood.

The best of all of course, is walking either just after dawn or before dusk, the conference of fowls who play, chatter, talk about their day, mother robin singing her bedtime stories to her nestling.  It is a cacophony of chirps of various intonations and if you close your eyes you can imagine you are in the woods somewhere alone just you and nature.  Your heart beats quicker at first until the tones simmer down and you watch the sun set…

silence dips
pools of magenta
hum of my breath

© Tournesol ’15

CDHK

FOLI (there is no movement without rhythm)
original version by Thomas Roebers and Floris Leeuwenberg