Damski and Enriquez would walk every Tuesday and Thursday and sometimes on Saturdays. They would meet on Tuesdays at Damski’s house and Thursdays at Enriquez’s house and if they met on Saturdays it could be at either of their houses. When they met at Damski’s house on Tuesdays then Damski would lead the way and they would walk in Damski’s preferred direction, and when they met at Enriquez’s house on Thursdays then Enriquez would lead the way and they would walk for several hours in Enriquez’s preferred direction, often into the hills, through trails and up winding roads, and they spoke to each other the way people who have known each other for decades speak. With an understanding of what did not need to be said, with a sense of care and intimacy but also a form of dismissiveness or brusqueness. They had the ability to tell each other to fuck off, for one of them to tell the other that they were being a stupid ass in ways not even their oldest relatives could do. Enriquez was like a character from a sanitorium novel. He walked because he needed to breathe and because he felt as if he was always being stifled by the world around him. He was miserable, to be sure, but his miserableness was a performance that gave him pleasure and which gave pleasure to those who witnessed it, given that he performed his miserableness with such warmth and comedy and love.
Daniel Borzutzky: »Walking (after Thomas Bernhard)«, in: The Hopkins Review 16/3 (2023), Nr. 3, S. 177-184, hier S. 177.