An exercise

Forcing my toes down into my shoe I am sorry for the tennis socks whose padded toes make this so difficult.  My big toe curls up in agony.  He says he feels like he is being branded, but I tell him just to wait, in a moment that will change.

That is the story of life: what is will change and what is not will change.  There is only change nothing stays the same forever. 

My most immediate change is that I am going to go walking.  I close the door to my apartment and fumble with the keys, my fingers reluctantly bend and the lock tumbles into place.  I jiggle the doorknob and assure myself that it is locked.  Then comes the descent!

Seven steps down, a jarring journey for the left leg as joints, muscles, tendons all threaten to abandon ship and leave me stranded, but the right leg picks up the slack and I eventually arrive at the bottom, ready to step out into this mad March weather.

One day it is in the eighties, another the forties and today it is sprinkling!  What an amazing thing this is!  Swishing in from the side, one drop after another flattens itself out as it collides with pavement or grass or even me!  I wonder does the rain have a preference?  Or is each journey a serendipitous adventure never before experienced, and so a total mystery?

My journey is not such a mystery.  I have walked this way so many times now.  The sidewalks never move, the grass barely rises and falls, but the labyrinth or pattern can be varied.  And that is what makes it bearable.  I twist and turn, walking between buildings and over curbs, around play yards and across parking lots.  By the busy streets and through the quiet ones, the journey has long since ceased to be about the scenery.

This is a journey to the center of me.  I am split between worlds, watching for cars and potholes on the outside while spinning farther and farther into the depths of my own mind inside.  My mantra is deceptively simple, “Thirty minutes to go, thirty minutes to go…” or perhaps, “Halfway there, halfway there…” It doesn’t really matter what I say, the way is always before me, the vision deep within me.