Surely, you must work?

Yes, but I prefer to walk.

Eight years ago, during the period that I lived in Prague, people would sometimes ask me: Jeremy, what do you do? Oh I walk around a lot. Surely, you must work? Oh yes, as people must, but I much prefer to walk.

Typically my response was met with suspicion and some concern: Fucking Bohemians… This one probably sells wild mushrooms on the highwayside and dances down the sidewalk in broad daylight, his arms raised above his head, eyes closed, projecting a self-satisfied smirk. Doesn’t he realized he could trip off the curb behaving recklessly like that!

There never was much money in gathering wild mushrooms, but I wore a new coat, ate plenty of pork knee and pizza, and occasionally rode the train to Berlin and Venice. The only thing I was missing was a community to nurture and refine my predilections. Who knows? Given a simple twist of fate I might have been welcomed into a surrealist upheaval, like Miró as he protested politely “Down with the Mediterranean”