*A tiny note: I wrote this on my phone while walking through my neighborhood so capitalization and punctuation vary in this one.
i’m on a walk, seeing so many beautiful things. gold leaves fallen onto wet pavement, accumulating in clusters that bring relief to so much grey. damp flowers, withered by rain and yet still so vivacious, still so bright and boastful. twinkling lights, red and green, adorning brush and bush, bringing life to metal and plastic. a cascade of circling gulls above my head, swirling with organized chaos, dancing with themselves and each other, like some kind of meditation. trunks of trees that tell their hard-fought longevity, the tops of them nowhere close to piercing the sky but still reaching upward, either in praise of it (the sky) or themselves.
I don’t take walks for any other purpose than to return to myself—my feet, thighs, hips, breath—after hours or days of disconnection brought on by so many thoughts, thoughts brought on by so many anxieties, anxieties brought on by so many looming questions that feel too big to let idle inside of me. on these walks, I find home in the feeling of the heat of the sun on my neck, or in this case, the chill of the air on my cheeks, and I feel grateful to feel so much, when only minutes before i was cursing that characteristic that brought me to walk in the first place.
when I walk, i like to vacillate between listening to music1 or nothing. but it’s never really nothing. there’s always something to be heard, something to be perceived. I pause my music and took out my headphones and heard the tinkling of dog tags behind me, the splatter of water against moving tires and street, the desperate wailing of a siren in the distance, a squirrel unseen in a tree above me, chirping some kind of protest to another who responds just as passionately. I hear the crunch of my own feet on gravel and take pleasure in the cadence of my own steps. another sweet reminder that i am alive.