Tag: walking

536: What “I’m Asking” (Tochi Onyebuchi)

“Hell yeah, I’m lost. More lost than I’ve ever been in my damn life.”
“I don’t have the answer you’re looking for.”
“Answer? I don’t even know what question I’m asking anymore.”
“But you’re still asking it. That is the important part. That is always the most important part.”
                -Tochi Onyebuchi, Harmattan Season, p. 178

                I just got back from a walk with my mom. Well, my mom’s some thousands of miles away, actually, so what I had with me as today’s 68 degrees dropped toward tonight’s 36 was my jacket and my phone and her voice, walking along with me. And the blowing leaves. And the shadows of someone else at the park, also talking to someone on their phone. And the trees, the clear skies, the moon. The traffic sounds. The silences in between.
                I’ve lived far away from my family since I was seventeen. For whatever reason, this year’s been especially hard. There are probably several good reasons for that, but instead of trying to lay them out, I’m thinking about the leaves that swirled by with our voices on the evening wind, and the little chill in my fingers, almost pleasant, that’s drifting away now that I’m warming up inside. I think years ago I started wondering what happens if I turn less toward answers. (I know I miss you). I think, these days, I’m also letting go of questions. (What can we say to connect?). Or some of them, at least. There are still the questions that we can’t put into words, and whatever is between and through the questions. The rustling leaves. The wind. Someone else on the phone, talking to their loved one. The branches drawing pictures in the sky. The traffic sounds. The silences in between.

by Azlan

457: “A Lot of Trust” (Joy Harjo)

                “Sometimes when you go into a creative project there’s a lot of trust.”
                -Joy Harjo, in conversation with Jenny Davis at a CultureTalk on April 23, 2024 

                One of my favorite memories from my teenage years is walking through the forests of Oregon at night. We walked through tall trees. The boughs drinking starlight and moonlight. Filling the forest with a perfect darkness and playing tricks with our eyes. The brown needles carpeting the edge of our thoughts, and our little group following a dirt trail by the feeling of our barefoot feet. I did this once a year for seven years or so. Sometimes we lost the trail, and I would crawl on my hands and knees, feeling for smooth dust and the path that led through creaking tree trunks to a creek and then a river where the sky washed down and the water told long stories. I think, for me, that walking where I couldn’t see was a way of practicing—celebrating—growing into—resting into—trust.
                Creative projects are a wonderful place to grow that way. Lately I’ve been working on a novella I started in 2018. I started it as another kind of walking into what I couldn’t see, another kind of feeling for paths that lead toward river stories. In 2018 the project started as a kind of delighted what’s here?, a curiosity that was strong enough (easily!) to wrap roots around the rocks of worry and uncertainty and keep growing. Can I follow this? Find my way to listening a little more? Returning to the project, now, the can I often feels more frightening. I did an MFA. More of my professional life, more of my career, is tied to this idea of being a writer. That means the feeling of losing a path, of fumbling around for smooth dust in the prickly pine needles, is even scarier. “Can I follow this, learn from this?” can become a threat instead of an invitation. Joy Harjo reminds me that this project (like my love for Harjo and Davis’ poetry, their teachings) started with a lot of trust. And with a practice of trust that is a delight, and that gains even more delight through its strong roots, through the long slow growing and creaking of its tree trunk.

by Azlan

444: “Walk to the well” (Rumi)

“Walk to the well. 
Turn as the earth and the moon turn,
circling what they love.
Whatever circles comes from the center.”
                -Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks, The Essential Rumi p. 279

                This evening I had the wonderful chance to walk with my friend Roger. That’s part of how we became friends: long rambling walks, through the woods of Amherst, MA, to the ponds where little lives glowed at the kiss where earth met water, to the hill where stars scattered, and back beneath the trees, limbs creaking. Shadows alive. We became friends on long walks and in conversations that felt like long walks, circling through hopes and dreams, ideas and curiosities, and back to shared silence. Pauses that felt like long drinks of cool water. Circling back to each other. 
                Today we walked with each other through a phone call. Less good? Perhaps. I certainly wish we could walk together in person more often. Like so many of my friends, we’ve moved away from each other with jobs and degrees and all the steps that felt necessary. But tonight, sharing voices, we felt close again. And instead of saying we moved away from each other, I thought, we’re walking to the well. Circling what we love. I think I love walking because of its stillness and its movement. Running, or driving, or riding a bike—I feel the rush, the excitement. And stretched out on the grass I feel at ease. Although, in another way, that’s not true at all: in the middle of running I sometimes find a moment where all there is is breath, stillness, and in lying on the grass I sometimes feel roots digging, sun pouring down, blood circling. 
                Walking with a friend has a way of bringing me back to the kind of center that can stretch all the miles from here to there, that can live inside a phone call. I’m so grateful, and so glad. Walking to the well, and sometimes walking is its own drink of cool water.

by Azlan