walking is hiding, homecoming. walking is healing
date. 2022 april 16
city. oxford
Walk my girl. Walk till your legs give up.
Walk till you can feel your heart beating. Walk till your walking syncs with that beating.
Walk till your feet feels numb.
Walk till your worries are behind you. Walk till they give up following you and then walk some more.
Walk till you cannot remember your own name and then walk until you can.
Walk till you want to called. Walk till you want to be called home. Walk till you call yourself home. There’s a sort of walking, a sort of fleeing that is actually a sort of longing, longing to be called. Longing to be lost. Longing to be found. Longing to know that you cannot be lost. You will always be found. You won’t be left behind. A longing to be in the midst of foreignness without the fear of being forgotten.
There’s a sort of stillness, a sort of contentment when the sun sets, the air gets chilly, the breeze raises goosebumps on your arm. You are outside, you are a little cold, but you know you don’t have more clothes to put on. There’s no hurry, there’s no mitigating, no need of fixing anything because you have nothing to fix with, nothing to mitigate with, nowhere to hurry to. The air is fresh, like spring water in March. It’s awakening. My body feels like how the moon looks on a cloudy night. Its edges blurred, without definition, without sharpness, but its presence undeniable and its brightness illuminating.
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This sort of walking is a sort of finding. Finding yourself when you’re not sure where you are. I am called to somewhere. My heart calls elsewhere. Maybe anywhere except here? No, there’s somewhere I am called. I walk towards the south. It’s not there. I stop. I turn. I walk eastwards. This feels more right. Not the well sculpted and planned park though. I need the wilderness, the messy wilderness, so my heart can feel more orderly, so I can accept that I am also messy, so I can see where my messy heart came from and belongs.
Write. Write till you find what got you started. Write till you forget it. Then write some more till you remember again. Hold it out. Examine it. See the joke in it. See the joy in it. If you can, laugh at it and if you are willing, have others laugh at it too.
There’s a privilege to walking and writing like this. It’s a privilege of freedom and security. The privilege of knowing that you are held, you won’t be abandoned, that your being here is not because you are tied here, that in walking you are not walking away, that in walking away you won’t be homeless, that even if you are homeless, it will only be temporary. For no one would dare walk if that risks being homeless forever. No one trades freedom to be lost forever.. Sure, when we walk, when we hide, we sometimes don’t want to be found, sometimes we never want to be found again. But that isn’t to say we don’t want anyone, any one, to find us.
Finding is essential in our motivation for hiding. Walking is essential to being still. Loving is essential to feeling alive.