Walking

Tonight I find myself thinking about a path. It might be secret, or magical, or both. Heaven knows how many of them there are in childhood, in the books we read. (Yes, I grew up reading books, real ones, most from the town library. There were so many paths to follow through those pages. So many words to traverse, bridges, steppingstones, dried ruts in country roads. All magically absent from my hands, because the books were returned to the library and because I grew up and moved on. Down paths of my own.)

Now I ponder those paths, some leading into the trees or forest or woods, some leading out. The thing is, I don’t know which I walked along - perhaps all of them, every last one? This uncertainty leads me to a realization: my relationship with paths is pretty iffy. That might seem like an odd way to describe the ways and places I’ve walked in life, but it’s fairly accurate. That’s ironic, because what’s accurate is the undefined nature of all the routes I’ve followed.

I’m a bit impulsive about my movements (and my words, to be honest, which I’m trying to do here). I start off and keep going, until, well, it finally looks like I can’t figure out where a path is going, the uneasiness begins. What’ll happen if I get lost? And then there it is! A quote like this one appears at the top of this page in my journal, and I have to wonder what I did to deserve it:

Do not go where the path may lead;

go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Why, I ask, had Emerson seen fit to include this specific quote on a page in this specific journal entry? It seems I’m always running into old words from former pages, but the coincidence has still made me shiver. Are paths omniscient? Do they know where we are and come to find us rather then the other way around? Do you hold conversations with them as you walk? As you follow? Did Emerson make an incorrect assumption, that I would choose to be led? (Let me remind you about that iffy relationship: the one wherein I want to be shown the way, but often balk, or turn tail and head anywhere but where I’m supposed to go.)

There’s another possible inaccurate assumption in the famous writer’s thinking: that a path goes somewhere. Maybe it only resembles a path and simply exists without allowing for any transit to occur. A path that doesn’t work, that’s useless. Which is another odd term, because paths are usually described with different words: sunny, shady, muddy, tree-lined, winding, but never useless. Paths exist because people need them. But as I’ve alluded to before, we don’t always know what we need them for.

That not knowing might be because a path was born so long ago that nobody has any memory of when or under what circumstances. A path was needed to get from one point to another, but who needed it or why has been misplaced over time. If I walk beside a field simply admiring the grain shifting in the sunlight, am I on the same path as the farmer who walks with tools to tend the grain? Am I even supposed to occupy a space I haven’t earned?

What if a path has been forgotten, the field left fallow, the farmhouse moved to the world of cement? Do birds need paths or do foxes and snakes? Must people use them, for without our feet are they reduced to a line, crooked, straight, sunken? Or is that human arrogance, thinking the natural world, if it doesn’t have us, has nothing?

I’m reminded of people who are convinced they’re going somewhere but it only happens in their heads. No other part of them really moves. They’re stuck - on a dime, by the side of the road, in a ditch. So many of them, moving but not going anywhere, or maybe, yes, staggering about, similar to the well-known Walking Dead. The Dead, also affectionately known as the Walkers, come to mind easily now, because after months of siege it feels like I’m slogging through muck and blood and there’s no light, only tunnel.

These Dead, our Dead, have no reason for being, which also means they have no reason to transport themselves anywhere, yet they do. I’m not certain as to whether they’re aware of anything, if they feel pain or pleasure, or if lethal lust is what drives them. They do not appear to be very happy - who would be, in their condition? - but they don’y give up. They keep going. They are ugly as sin yet retain some element of humanity. For their inability to do anything but stagger and slaughter, we must eliminate them by destroying their brains, already rendered useless because of their condition.

I think: it’s the human condition we observe in them, and as such, it serves as a mirror of ourselves. I don’t want to cross paths with Walkers because I am repulsed by seeing what I too will become. I almost feel pity, but then no, I just want to eliminate them or run. Why am I so arrogant? Do I think my appearance is superior (for now, at least)? My body is not rotten and infected, I read and paint, dance and sing, build things and talk with those around me. Yes, I must be better than the Walkers. I am useful.

All of which does not serve as a deviation from the idea of the path and its many interpretations, along with its numerous uses. It is both a necessary and a dangerous thing, a path is. Our relationship to it is impossible to define, but we keep returning to it, just in case there are answers to be found. In case having that word, that idea, that way of getting somewhere and doing something along the way, is the only thing that keeps us going. In case getting somewhere and following a route to get there is not really as important as simply knowing that there is a path, that such a thing exists.

Whether or not we follow it. Whether we decide to blaze (cut, dig, pave) our way or not. Or write poems to eternity.

Camino blanco, viejo camino,

desigual, pedregoso y estrecho,

donde el eco apacible resuena

del arroyo que pasa bullendo.

White road, old road,

Uneven, stony and narrow,

where the soft echo spreads out

from the stream that’s bubbling past. (Rosalía de Castro)