October 25, 2015.

Paul Salopek will be walking now or lying on his back. In times without names Paul Salopek will be striding from Ethiopia to the tip of South America. Let's walk, he writes in National Geographic; wonder why Salopek ideas never pop in me; that's why me am me; a Sunday morning walk. Perhaps. an Ethiopian lady could have been the first walker in the world with her man and kids piled on her shoulders; they could have taken turns as they could have loved each other; they could have had no religion; sun, moon, many stars, earth; sufficient unto their lives and their living; lone walks not marathons; thinking came with the walking. Paul Salopek thinks and writes. In India, Buddha could have been the first walker; Way is Buddha. 'On the writing table,/ woodcuts of Buddha, women;/ Buddha, a haha buy by Ganesh from Ladakh;/ women, Bastar buys/ art of Chokin, gold and silver plated, framed Japanese miniature from Tokyo;/ a camel, Bikaneri miniature;/in their Ways/ never jumping traffic lights', me scribble of some times ago. They are all in a lone, sensible option: a Salopek walk and thought. Paul Salopek has electronic gadgets unlike the first Ethiopian; he could be rescued in trouble; the first Ethiopian had no policeman. In a death rite in Brahmin families, the priest offers a diya, a dhoti, a walking stick to the soul on its after-death walk to where the priest and gods do not know; a ploy of the priest to pocket a fresh dhoti; yet, me will not deny the poetry in the gesture. Soul is on a walk, alone or in company, not a triathon or any thons.. Surprising. Paul Salopek does not talk of runs. Previewing the end in South America, he writes of an 84-year old woman, Cristina Caderon: 'She sat at her window, knotting her fingers, peering out at the inkey chop, enunciating objects, and animals in a dying language that sounded more like lapping waters than something human -- words that are sinuous and supple and sheer. She was trying to remember.' Me poking memory, of the Big Bang and 600 million years after when the first stars got spotted in the skies recently by Hubble and an Ethiopian looking up at them alone in the first walk... Paul Salopek is in search of time... when me spotted two lady koels on a dry tree in the LIC Colony... they could have also belonged to the first Ethiopian...maybe me grandma and grandpa raised to infinity.