Tomorrow morning I'm going to walk out my front door and south of everything I've known. It's late but I am not tired, not nervous, not excited. For the past three weeks I've kept a tight lid on my awareness of the precipice I'm approaching. No surprise here; I'm adept at denial, using it as a fog to cloak my troop movements, to deceive myself of my real intentions until it's too late! I'm already on the road.
I am also not afraid, for once. Tomorrow will not even be a real first day. I will be walking along roads I've driven along for years and staying with family friends who live in the next town. At their house, I'll retrieve a sign that says I'm "Looking for America." All my ideas about what that phrase means to me zip in orbit around me but I can't lock anything down. It just feels like that's what I'm doing, looking for America. It feels important that I seek out people and their stories because they are what really comprise what we call America. The land doesn't care about the name we projected onto it, but learning the land by walking it aids my understanding of us because it's part of our environment. It's where we grew up, are still growing up. And stupidly enough, I would follow this feeling to whatever suckhole of misery it's leading me to, if that's really the case, because I believe what it's suggesting. I believe walking across America is important. With or without facts, whether I am perceiving this at all accurately or not, I don't think I could do anything else but accept what I feel I'm asking myself to try.
I know I'm using the phrase "I feel" too often, but what choice do I have when, at the core of this, my impetus for walking is feeling? I am not going along quietly. If anything, the more I learn the less certain I am. Therefore, more questions well up, or I ask the same ones over and over, never sure if I've found an answer that fits. I have a binder full of reasons I could offer to anyone who asks why I'm doing this and those are important too. But the answer I am struggling to provide is the one I am most moved by. Perhaps, this is where I need to exercise patience. I'm not supposed to have all the answers. If I did, why would I bother walking? I don't need to have all the answers today, or tomorrow, or the next tomorrow.
I am also not afraid, for once. Tomorrow will not even be a real first day. I will be walking along roads I've driven along for years and staying with family friends who live in the next town. At their house, I'll retrieve a sign that says I'm "Looking for America." All my ideas about what that phrase means to me zip in orbit around me but I can't lock anything down. It just feels like that's what I'm doing, looking for America. It feels important that I seek out people and their stories because they are what really comprise what we call America. The land doesn't care about the name we projected onto it, but learning the land by walking it aids my understanding of us because it's part of our environment. It's where we grew up, are still growing up. And stupidly enough, I would follow this feeling to whatever suckhole of misery it's leading me to, if that's really the case, because I believe what it's suggesting. I believe walking across America is important. With or without facts, whether I am perceiving this at all accurately or not, I don't think I could do anything else but accept what I feel I'm asking myself to try.
I know I'm using the phrase "I feel" too often, but what choice do I have when, at the core of this, my impetus for walking is feeling? I am not going along quietly. If anything, the more I learn the less certain I am. Therefore, more questions well up, or I ask the same ones over and over, never sure if I've found an answer that fits. I have a binder full of reasons I could offer to anyone who asks why I'm doing this and those are important too. But the answer I am struggling to provide is the one I am most moved by. Perhaps, this is where I need to exercise patience. I'm not supposed to have all the answers. If I did, why would I bother walking? I don't need to have all the answers today, or tomorrow, or the next tomorrow.
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