Page 19 - The Irony Board

Into the Mind

Peripathetic

Not stopping to think
What’s walking about
You’ll kiss centipede
Legs that wave goodbye.

Worse than merely ineffective, consciousness can be disruptive of
behavior best left automatic. For this reason, traditional teachers of
wisdom (primarily Asian) have promoted the discipline of self-
abnegation as prerequisite to getting the body back in step with the
rest of the cosmos. The poem refers in its title to the Peripatetic
philosophers, who went walking as they did their talking; but
Gluckman has played with the word to include a tragic element. One
thing a walking thinker cannot think about is walking; what walking
is about cannot be learned by examining it on the hoof. This
resonates with the limitations of observation discovered by modern
physics: you can’t look at light with light without changing its
characteristics.
Beyond the scientific and philosophical content, the form itself is
intended to cause a stumble. Ambiguities in “what’s” and “kiss... legs
that wave goodbye” set up a somewhat repulsive image of insect
osculation: the reader should recoil from this interpretation into a
more cautious word-by-word analysis. More properly parsed, this
epigram proposes the centipede as the animal most likely to get
tangled up by interfering consciously in its walking reflexes; its
waving legs cannot be thought about without first stopping.
Otherwise, it can kiss them goodbye. And that’s pathetic.

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