The Journey

She was undertaking a long, dangerous journey, but nobody seemed to notice. There were probably several reasons for both the journey and the lack of awareness on the part of the other residents of the town. It might be a good idea to think about them. Sometimes we can learn important things when we pay more attention.

Gertrude Stein wrote a lot about a lot of things. She wrote this: “When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.” Stein was certainly accurate in this statement, but we all know things like loneliness, solitude, being alone - these mean different things to different people. Some of us get bored and sad when there’s nobody else around. Others crave moments of silence so they can think, or create, or just sleep. Sometimes it’s a matter of how long a person is alone, or if the loneliness she feels is because there’s an empty place in her life once filled by another person, or maybe an animal. 

It’s not always a case of a lost lover. That’s so limiting. It’s not always because someone has died. Or moved away. Or disappeared. Moving to a new place, changing a job or losing one - all these things can provoke a feeling of loss. Then again, as Stein wrote, some people just prefer to be alone. We call them loners, often without knowing if that assessment is accurate. It’s kind of hard to approach people who seem to prefer to live without others. Maybe this is why she was rarely greeted by people in town. She seemed to be moving in the stream of her own thoughts, a tiny vessel moved when there was a breeze, visible by day and ghostly by night.

Because she was so quiet, she never attracted attention to herself by her words. Some people wondered if she could speak at all, but others had heard her order something in a café or buy food in a grocery store after asking the price. She also greeted the owner of the art store in town, albeit in as few words as possible and in a voice as delicate as the wing of a moth. 

Her clothing was also delicate, as odd as that sounds. Nobody could say what colors she wore, whether her blouses or pants or skirts were light green or blue or some other hue. Her hair was neither red nor brown nor blond, but somewhere in between. It responded to the same breezes that moved her along on her daily activities which, of course, nobody knew anything about. Yes, this must all seem quite odd, but it’s the way she was. It’s what people saw.

Maybe she wasn’t real, but if that were the case, this would be a fairy tale or a story of the fantastic, and nothing more need be said. Except there she was, every day, walking slowly, although with an air of determination. If we were to add up these daily walks, we’d have to admit they constituted a long journey. There were miles and miles of steps in her feet. In her thoughts as well, one presumes.

We shouldn’t overlook the fact that, although we don’t know the reason for what had been transformed by her into a journey, had occupied several years of her life. That too made it long, because when you counted the days and weeks, even if the number of steps wasn’t all that great, she had probably gone twice around the world. Never telling anyone why she did what she did. Her feet should have been covered with blisters. However, blisters, while painful, aren’t dangerous.

The dangerous part was definitely the hardest aspect to determine. In town there was never anything to worry about. Nor did anybody ever think it was dangerous to go for a walk by a lovely river like the Androscoggin. Maybe in the past, when it was one of the most polluted rivers in the country. That was a bad time, but supposedly the problem caused by numerous manufacturers has been eradicated. The forever chemicals are gone now, so they say.

She seemed drawn to the banks of the Androscoggin, whose name might mean “river of rock shelters” and may refer to the places occupied by the fish nobody could eat for so long, maybe not even now, if the explosion at a paper mill a couple of years ago has recontaminated it. She must have been enticed by the rugged rock wall by the bridge that must be torn down after less than a century of use. The rocks will survive, though, as will the small sandy cove tucked into one fluvial curve. She must have looked at the overhanging branches, the swooping birds, the jeweled reflections of pines, and ignored the intrusive boxes on high where some people probably worked or lived.

The only person who seemed to notice her was the one who wrote a poem about her or another young woman just like her over a century before. Maybe that seems impossible to you if you are a rational person, but the poet knew, somehow she knew of the woman who walked to the river, always by herself. 

Or maybe she only wrote a poem about a woman she knew from her own town and time. It is really impossible to say. One can argue that the poem she wrote in the nineteenth century is about a young woman’s walks to the sea, not a river. The woman we are talking about always went to the river at the edge of town. That might mean they were two different people. On the other hand, we know that there is an inlet of the sea on the other side of the town, and some people say the lonely woman who lived there did walk to the beach there as well.

Maybe if the poem hadn’t been written, we wouldn’t know about what happened to the walking woman, the one with lonely clothing and a face fixed on something beyond the water. Maybe we wouldn’t know why it all happened, which is just as important. We can mourn, but we should know why. Why we didn’t look more closely or understand the long journey that took place every day, to the river or the sea. Why another poet wrote: 

nuestras vidas son los ríos 

que van a dar en la mar,

que es el morir

our lives are the rivers 

that run to the sea, 

where they die 

But Jorge Manrique spoke of collective humanity and Rosalía wrote of the woman alone. That’s very different.

Let’s just include her poem, as it was first written in Galician, but with English so it can be understood. Of course, even if we read it carefully, there is no guarantee we’ll find answers for the woman who made her daily journey to a river once made untouchable by the greed of men, by their corporations and lack of concern for other people. Still, if we read and reread, we might better understand what we can’t bear to think about, what we don’t care to fix, or what should never exist. 

The crime is not in the walking nor the solitude, perhaps, but lies elsewhere, in the waters of indifference, be they rivers or seas. Be it this century or the last or the one before that. And the reasons for the dangerous journeys people undertake are ones we really do need to understand.

 ¡Soia!

Alone!

Eran craro-los días,

The days were bright,

risoña-las mañáns,

the mornings glowed,

i era a tristeza súa

and her sadness was

negra coma a orfandá.

as black as orphanhood.

Íñase á mañecida,

She would go in the early morn,

tornaba coa serán...;

and returned in the evening…;

mais que fora ou viñera

but whether she left or returned

ninguén llo iña a esculcar.

nobody was watching, it seemed.

Tomóu un día leve

One nice day she went

camiño do areal...

off to the sand bar…

Como naide a esperaba,

Since no one waited there,

ela non tornóu máis.

she never came back.

Ó cabo dos tres días,

Three days later,

botóuna fora o mar,

the sea tossed her up on the shore,

i alí onde o corvo pousa,

And now where the crow roosts,

soia enterrada está.

she lies buried, alone.