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WALK:
How to Turn the Most Boring Thing in the World into Something Extraordinary
An absurdist adventure travelogue and self-help book for jaded cynics, WALK chronicles the antics of a movement fanatic who walks 1000 km after total hip replacement surgery.
Phase 1: denial
Phase 2: training to fall by skating on asphalt
Phase 3: learning to pee
Phase 4: walking 1000 kilometers
Left with no other options, the dancer/martial artist/adrenaline freak forces herself to walk and walk and walk and gradually discovers the virtues of slowing down. Along the way, the reluctant walker learns to see the world in super macro, think like Sherlock, and invents puzzle games while pacing.
She shares tales of bionic women, an 80 year old marathon runner, a crazy race horse and a missing pink sphinx and explores the nature of perseverance. Speed is not the goal. Seeing is. WALK shows how to turn the most boring thing in the world into something extraordinary.
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Rosa Mei: "This book started off as an idea after talking to my friend Dario about walking. We were both recovering from joint surgery and comparing war stories. I was complaining about how much I needed to walk to get better, how I always thought it was the most boring thing in the world to do. Dario, a professional ballet dancer, was adamantly on the other side of the fence. "I LOVE IT! It's my favorite thing in the world to do."
I thought he was joking, but he was 100% serious. I told him that since I started walking so, so much, my opinion of this mundane activity had taken a 180 degree turn. I laughed, "Man, I should write a book about that!!"
"Yes, you should!!" he said, and I did.
Originally my plan was to just spit it out and have it done at the same time I finished walking 1000 km, but that would only give me about 2 weeks to finish. In the end it took me three.
Dario said he felt like Bastian, the 10-year-old boy in The Never-Ending Story, who follows a young warrior Atreyu on his quest to find a cure to heal the child empress of Fantasia. The process of writing this book in many ways paralleled my journey of walking 1000 km in 80 days after total hip replacement surgery. I could have not anticipated the twists and turns along the way. So, thanks, Dario, and here's to whims transforming into epic sagas. His story is now chapter 32 of the book. He talks about walking the Camino de Santiago on a whim (of course).
While I was walking, I thought a lot about The Little Prince, Sherlock Holmes, the nature of seeing and creativity, the war in the Ukraine, living in exile, and felt real gratitude for what I have, my family and friends who have always supported me along the way. After I passed 1000 km... I kept walking and now have finished the first draft of a book I have been working on for 19 years... 19 years. To be continued."
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