I’ve been thinking about Yoko, who turned 90 on February 18th. Towards the end of January, when she was just 89, she Tweeted
I learned about this from the New York Post which isn’t the most universally reliable news source, but in this case the information seems accurate enough – the Tweet is right there on Yoko’s feed.
And I do happen to think Yoko’s walking cure for depression is a very good one, though by no means every walk in New York gives you a high. And how far was she claiming to walk? Well that’s tricky. There are about 20 blocks to a mile running north-south, but east-west there are about 7 to a mile. You do the math; but Yoko couldn’t be doing less than 4 miles, which would be good for any 89 year old. Here she was walking in New York in 2015.
The Post then pointed out, and again this seems accurate, that Yoko’s in poor health, and has mobility issues. In 2017, her son Sean Lennon pushed her in a wheelchair to receive the National Music Publishers’ Association’s Centennial Song Award (whatever that is).
In her acceptance speech she said, “I’ve learned so much from having this illness,” though she didn’t say what the illness was, and personally I’m rather opposed to the notion of illness as a ‘learning experience,’ but that’s just me.
Other sources say she has round-the-clock care and rarely leaves her apartment in the Dakota. So maybe she goes walking in her mind.
I was especially thinking about the song ‘Walking On Thin Ice,’ which apparently she and Lennon were working on at the time of his murder.
The song contains the lyrics
I knew a girl
That tried to walk across the lake
'Course it was winter when all this was ice
That's a hell of a thing to do, you know
They say this lake is as big as the ocean
I wonder if she knew about it?
That’s is indeed a hell of a thing, a hell of lake, one helluva walk.
