Here’s something for everyone. There’s a new site going up called tgraffiti.com that features…well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? T-graffiti.

It’s not quite off the ground yet, but you heard it here first. So check it out. And if you’ve got a camera-phone and you see a graffito or two you think the rest of us need to see, too, snap a pic and pass it on.

I’m visiting my aunt and uncle on St. Armand’s Island outside Sarasota. There’s no one under sixty allowed unless you’re visiting a relative, here to pick up their ashes, or are a Mexican worker with custodial aspirations. But, as my aunt, bless her, is fond of saying: “it’s all good!”

I’ve just returned from my morning ambulation on the beach, and am preparing myself for my mid-morning swim. Not to rub it in, but it’s gonna be eighty here today. As for my walk on the beach, I had almost forgotten the pleasure of the stroll. I have always enjoyed walking, but in Boston I find I am always en route. There is always an ulterior motive. But walking for the pleasure of walking seems strange, and out of place in the hustle and bustle of the city these days.

When I lived in Budapest (about a five minute walk from Castle Hill in Buda) I did a lot of strolling around with no particular destination in mind. There is something to be said in this context for city squares (proper squares, not the Cambridgean kind). Squares give you someplace to stop, during epic ambulations, have a coffee at a proper cafe (not the Starschmucks kind), read the paper, and then continue on your way. Boston is a very walkable city, don’t get me wrong, but it could use a few more proper squares, in my opinion.

While I certainly don’t consider myself a philosopher, philosophers have always been ambulators. There is something about walking that lubricates the gears, so that the thoughts are free to stretch out from here to the horizon. There is something liberating in the rhythm that loosens the thoughts. Walkers’ thoughts wend and wind and take on a life of their own. Sedentary thinkers find it easier to domesticate their thoughts, while walkers’ thoughts are wild, and must be wrestled to submission. But I think it’s worth the struggle.

Man would not have philosophy without bipedal ambulation. If he could fly he would have no need of it. Likewise, if he had never left the sea. Socrates was forever walking on the beach trying out his method on the impressionabe youths of Athens. Kant’s neighbors could set their watches by his afternoon walks. Schopenhauer, one of my personal favorites, emulating Kant, never missed his two-hour afternoon stroll. Kierkegaard famously wrote: “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts.” Nietzsche went further: “All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.”

The Philosopher’s Walk in Kyoto, Japan, is thus named for philosopher Kitaro Nishida’s contemplative strolls along its magical, cherry-tree-lined paths . There are, of course, schools of Eastern thought devoted entirely to ambulation. Qigong, for example.

And when you think about it, walking is deserving of attention. It’s no small feat, walking as we do. It is, in fact, the single most defining feature of all human ancestry. There are very few other creatures on earth who can do it. Bipedal octopusses can, and do, although I don’t know what sort of philosophers they are. The problem with chimpanzees is that they can’t extend their knee-joints to produce a straight leg in the stance phase, which may be why, although they’re pretty smart, they have not produced many philosophers themselves.

The beach here on St. Armand’s Island is beautiful at any rate, and, hark, I think I hear it calling me…