walking with joyce

I agree with other people who've already posted here and there that Michael Joyce's "Walking Mornings" is a very beautiful piece. I actually liked that he wrote less about the electronic lit world and more about his personal journey as a writer and human being. I was glad that he brought in his experiences as a hypertext author into the piece because it gave me some context to understand his sense of "walking," but I'm also grateful that he didn't solely focus on the hypertext world.

Joyce's lovely writings about sauntering in different cities around the world reminded me a lot of some transcendental writers and especially of Thoreau's Walden where a person takes a "break" from life and just walks and lives simply. I saw Joyce's leave of absence from academia and the electronic lit world as a parallel journey into the woods, where he contemplates the nature of a person's life "in the face of a horizon of infinity." (90) It also reminded me of the many newspapar articles and pieces that I've read over the years contemplating how overconnected and overstimulated the modern man or woman is, and how this endless proliferation of possibilites pressures us to keep up with the "next big thing" or "the prevailing cult of nextness."(95)

This idea of "choosing not to choose" definitely resonated with me as I'm thinking about what my next big decision is, after I graduate from college. On the one hand, I'm not just going to sit back and be indecisive, but I think Joyce's point is well-taken too.

Also, I really loved the line "Not the natural order but the order of nature, where birds die in secret, the sun and moon move their measured course in a long and ancient rhythm, the waters flow and return with the great breaths of oceans, and the walker moves through the morning unnoticed and often unnoticing." (95) Joyce is a great writer.