Journal 51

So the walk is now finished.

It was not much fun at all, but I didn't really expect it would be. Its main features were an alternation between physical pain and boredom, combined with the intensely minor pleasures (looking at a hill, a tree, a sky, and suddenly seeing them) which, when so combined, are the teaching experience. It's pretty hard to say what I've learned otherwise. For certain something about relaxation. I don't think I'm really capable of saying what I've gained; only of saying that something was gained, I have no regrets for the experience (nor, in truth, for any experience, since arriving in Asia 4 years ago.) Perhaps one sentence will best sum up what I learned. It's not easy to understand, but it was not easy to learn: it took a month's walking; and the sentence (which cost many hours of thought) is more interrelated than at first appears. Here it is: I learned the best medicine in the jungle is Vick's VapoRub, and the structure of freedom, like the structure of a hurricane lamp, lies outside itself, not internally.

As to the rest, I'm not in much of a writing mood these days, and will let it pass by.