walking

A few Octobers ago, I finally summited the endless flight of rickety metal stairs on the Manhattan side of the High Bridge and discovered a shock of red as my reward. It blossomed up from an enormous, crisp blue swimming pool, empty but for so many crimson leaves that coursed out over the edges of the pit toward the line of trees that still held their kin. The walls, the bleachers, every inch of concrete was painted deep red as though stained with arbor blood. I whirled around expecting to meet some other wide eyes, but seeing none, I realized that it fell on me to audibly honor that autumn day. I hadn’t planned to end my walk by shouting.

I would not really consider myself a “walker.” For years, people have been recommending that I pick up a habit of mindless ventures around the city. New York is absolutely the place for this, and it could be cathartic.

“Harmony Hall,” Vampire Weekend’s new single, runs five minutes and nine seconds, the exact amount of time it takes for me to stroll from Harmony Hall, the Columbia dorm on West 110th Street, to Butler Library’s grand entrance. It’s Friday afternoon, and my pace aligns eerily well with the tune’s transitions: Just before the one-minute mark, the acoustic prelude yields to the soaring chorus, as if to fuel my traverse across 110th. “And the stone walls of Harmony Hall bear witness,” Ezra Koenig sings, as the dorm’s graceful facade recedes behind me.

After long days, I recommend long walks.

If you don't watch AMC's The Walking Dead, then you must be living under a rock. I'm surprised we haven't met because I, too, once lived there.

The commercial success of The Walking Dead has, up until this season, far outstripped its actual quality as a show. Prior to last season, the show was, for the most part, downright bad. That, of course, never stopped anyone from watching it, myself included. There is a certain draw to the apocalyptic.

"10 Hours of Walking in NYC as a Woman," created by anti-harassment movement Hollaback!, is supposed to be a depiction of what it's like to be a woman walking in public. The video has its flaws, of course—it's a video of a pretty white woman getting catcalled by a lot of men of color. That's a problem, to say the least, especially when the ad agency that helped create the video publicly admitted to editing white men out of the video.