Like the Flowing River

One day, I was in a sports shop, buying some archery equipment, when I saw some new poles for mountaineers. They were made of light aluminium and could be made shorter or longer like a telescopic photographic tripod. I remembered the Nordic walking - why not try it? I bought two pairs, one for me, and one for my wife. We adjusted the poles to a comfortable height and decided to use them the following day.

It was an amazing discovery! We walked up a mountain and back down again, and we really did feel as if our whole body was moving, plus our balance was better and we got less tired. We walked twice the distance we usually cover in an hour. I remembered wanting to explore the dried-up bed of a stream, but having to give up because of the difficulties I had in walking over the stones. With the poles, I thought, it would be much easier, and I was right.

My wife went on the internet and found that she was burning 46 per cent more calories than when doing normal walking. She got really excited about it, and Nordic walking became part of our daily lives.

One evening, just for amusement, I decided to see what else I could find out about it on the internet. I had a real shock. There were pages and pages, with federations, groups, discussions, models, and...rules.

I don't know what made me open the page on rules; but as I read it, I grew increasingly dismayed. I was doing everything wrong! My poles should be adjusted to a longer length; I should be keeping to a certain rhythm and holding the pole at a particular angle; there was some very complicated movement of the shoulder, and a different way of using your elbow. In short, everything had to conform to certain rigid, prescriptive techniques.

I printed out all the pages. The next day - and the days that followed - I tried to do exactly what the experts were telling me to do. The walk became less interesting; I stopped noticing all the marvels around me, and hardly spoke to my wife at all - the only thing I could think about were the rules. After a week, I asked myself: why am I learning all this?

My aim was not to do some sort of keep-fit exercise. I am sure that the people who started doing Nordic walking in the first place were merely thinking of the pleasure of walking, of improving their balance and moving their whole body. We knew intuitively what was the best length of pole for us, just as we could intuitively deduce that the closer we held the poles to our body, the better and easier the movement. But now, because of those rules, I had stopped concentrating on the things I loved and was more concerned about burning calories, moving my muscles, and using a particular part of my spine.

I decided to forget everything I had learned. Now we go walking with our poles, enjoying the world around us, and feeling our bodies being worked, moved and balanced. If I wanted to do a keep-fit workout rather than a kind of walking meditation, I would go to a gym. For the moment, I am happy with my relaxed, instinctive Nordic walking, even if I'm not burning off that 46 per cent of extra calories.

I don't know why we human beings are so obsessed with making rules about everything.

The Piece of Bread That Fell Wrong Side Up

We all have a tendency to believe in 'Murphy's Law': that everything we do will turn out wrong. Jean Claude Carriere has an interesting story about precisely that feeling.

A man was quietly eating his breakfast. Suddenly, the piece of bread that he had just spread with butter fell to the ground.

Imagine his surprise when he looked down and saw that it had landed buttered side up! The man thought he had witnessed a miracle. Excited, he went to tell his friends what had happened, and they were all amazed; because when a piece of bread falls on the floor, it nearly always lands buttered side down, making a mess of everything.

'Perhaps you're a saint,' one friend said. 'And this is a sign from God.'

Soon the whole village knew, and they all started animatedly discussing the incident: how was it that, against all expectations, the man's slice of bread had fallen on the floor buttered side up? Since no one could come up with a credible answer, they went to see a Teacher, who lived nearby and told him the story.

The Teacher requested that he be given one night to pray, reflect, and seek divine inspiration. The following day, they all returned, eager for an answer.

'It's quite simple really,' said the Teacher. 'The fact is, that the piece of bread fell exactly as it should have fallen, but the butter had been spread on the wrong side.'

Of Books and Libraries

I don't really own many books. A few years ago, driven by the idea of getting the maximum quality of life with the minimum number of possessions, I made certain choices. This doesn't mean that I opted for the life of a monk; on the contrary, divesting yourself of many of your possessions gives you enormous freedom. Some of my friends (male and female) complain that, because they have so many clothes, they waste hours of their life trying to decide what to wear. Now that I have reduced my wardrobe to 'basic black', I no longer have this problem.

However, I'm not here to talk about fashion, but about books. To return to my main point, I decided to keep only four hundred books in my library, some because they have sentimental value, others because I'm always re-reading them. I took this decision for various reasons, and one of them was the sadness I felt at seeing how libraries, which have been painstakingly acquired over a lifetime, are often simply sold off as a job lot once the collector is dead, with no respect shown for them at all. Also why keep

all these books at home? To prove to my friends how cultivated I am? To decorate the walls? The books I have bought would be of far more use in a public library than in my house.

I used to say that I needed my books in case I ever wanted to look something up in them. Now, however, when I want to find out something, I turn on my computer, type in the key word or words, and everything I need to know appears on the screen - courtesy of the internet, the biggest library on the planet.

Of course, I still continue to buy books - there's no electronic substitute for them; but as soon as I've finished a book, I let it go; I give it to someone else, or to the public library. My intention is not to save forests or to be generous. I simply believe that a book has its own journey to make, and should not be condemned to being stuck on a shelf.

Being a writer and living, as I do, on royalties, I might be working to my own detriment; after all, the more books that are bought, the more money I earn. However, that would be unfair on the reader, especially in countries where a large part of the government budget for buying books for libraries is clearly not based on the two main criteria for making a serious choice - the pleasure one gets from reading a book, plus the quality of the writing.

Let's leave our books free to travel, then, to be touched by other hands, and enjoyed by other eyes. As I'm writing this, I have a vague memory of a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, which speaks of books that will never again be opened.

Where am I now? Sitting in a cafe in a small Pyrenean town in France, enjoying the air-conditioning, because the heat outside is unbearable. I happen to have Borges' complete works in my house, which is a few kilometres from where I'm writing this - he's one of those authors I constantly read and re-read. But why not put my theory to the test?

I cross the street and make the five-minute walk to another cafe, one that is equipped with computers (an establishment known by the nice, but contradictory, name of 'cyber-cafe'). I greet the owner, order a glass of ice-cold mineral water, go to a search engine, and key in some of the words of the one line I do remember, along with the name of the author. In less than two minutes, I have the poem before me:

There is a line from Verlaine I'll never now recall,

There is a street nearby from which my footsteps are barred,

There is a mirror that has looked its last on my face,