The Pleasure of Walking

As a little kid, I walked the farthest to school any kid was allowed to walk. Everyday it was a mile to school and a mile from school. A lot can happen to an unsupervised kid in a mile, but times were different then. There was a whole neighborhood full of kids, and we all walked together. We bundled up in our snowsuits, boots, scarves, hats, mittens, with our little backpacks and lunches, and that was how we went to school. We never worried about strangers; the worst thing that ever happened to us were the bigger older kids that sometimes followed us home from school. Walking was simply part of our existence, like breathing and ice cream on hot days. It's what we did in the morning. I slept so well then. Kids in general do, but the exercise calmed me as well and I slept like a log.

As I got older, the walks actually got shorter, but I hated the walking more because I had to do the roundtrip twice, once for school, and then again for theater in the evening. The worse things got at home, though, the more things I found to occupy my time away from the house, so the walking continued. It was a little piece of heaven not to be around cigarette smoke, fighting and being talked at. I walked out of necessity, not pleasure.

When I moved to Boston in the early 90s, I discovered a city that you could really navigate on foot. The T (tranit system) was simple, but slow. As a friend put it, her boyfriend's apartment was an hour and a half on foot, by T three quarters of an hour, but by bike it was ten minutes. So to save time and money I got a bike. But I was noticing I was spending so much time securing my bike, looking for a place to put my bike, walking my bike across weird intersections (for which Boston is famous), the biking really wasn't very good. Plus the drivers were nuts. So I took up walking as a means of transportation.

This continued even after I got a car. Keep in mind, I love to drive. I learned to drive in the craziest city in the world, and I am to this day a great driver because of that experience. If there had been a car rodeo, I would have come in first place place, even ahead of the cabbies. I could parallel park like a demon and get my car to fit into spaces not fit for a motorcycle. But driving was not Zen. It was like the anti-Zen. It was exciting, but everywhere I went I ended up with a parking ticket. So walking became a luxury. It was stress-free, I went out, saw places, saw people, saw things. And when I got home, I might be blistered and sunburned, but I was calmer and happier than if I had driven.

Walking here is not the same way. In Boston the neighborhoods are close together. You can take a walk through many neighborhoods, and it is almost like visiting different eras of your life.

Although I have spent much more time here, the vividness of the memories has long since faded, except the red, raw scars left after too much bad healing and festering infection. I walk here, and the sky is at once unbearably oppresive and endless; it shrivels the soul, pounds it into numb, everlasting, ongoing submission, the clouds warring and tumbling across the sky, the swan song of my ambition ringing in my ears. Night is a welcome relief, especially in winter, a respite from gray light, respite from the unplumbable depths of my own failures. In short walking outside has become unbearable here.

I miss feeling my muscles move and work under my skin, the differences in the textures of the streets, the feeling of hot pavement through my shoes, the way my shorts fit just that much better because of how walking changed my body, the freedom, and the faith that it took to claim it... stress and fear and age and time and responsibility and injury and memory, conspire to rob me of a favorite activity I once did all day. I wonder if I will ever be able to reclaim the pleasure of walking.

Easter and Alone

Easter holds no particular signifigance for me. As I kid, I got Easter baskets full of colorful chicks, cute bunnies and candy. It was an excuse to get together with family and friends. But it was a purely secular experience.

This year, I found out that the season of Lent and Easter Day are much holier than Christmas, which is much more widely celebrated here. I was surprised, and felt embarrassed that I had not known. However, I came by it honestly. As I am fond of saying, my father didn't find Jesus until I was almost fourteen, so I was raised in essentially an atheistic home.

When my father did find Jesus, let me say he went looking with a vengance. This is the same man who got angry if other people wanted me to go to church with their families because I had spent Saturday night with them and it was easier for them to drop me off after church. He didn't care. No one was going, covertly, to educate me religiously, which is what he thought was going on.

My curiosity was then piqued as to what my friends spent their Sundays doing. And thus, my search for God began, but it turned out my search would bring me to a much different understanding of a higher power than my father's beard in the sky. As a result, I am once again alone on Easter with time to think about the existence and nature of God.

I don't believe in a vengeful or magnanimous God. I believe God is much more the rules of physics and common sense than a sapient being that created all. Whatever God there may be is one of our creation, rather than the other way around. There are many that would regard this as sacriledge, but it is not intended to be. It is just my belief, and is not intended to influence or disparage anyone.

One person who has been very influential in my thinking about Gods, and their rise and fall, is Terry Pratchett. Gods in his books are centers for belief that take on a life of their own only once we give it to them. Gods are very real, but not creators, per se. That seems logical to me. The universe is, as often, carefully ordered as chaotic. Gods bring reason to the chaos, and for that reason are helpful, and for this we owe them a great deal regardless of whether they are our own construction or not.

Often people who think differently are alone. It is our cross to bear, so to speak. So, here I sit, with that which makes me different, once again alone on Easter. Whoopie for me.

Marking the Day

When I was 29 my mother died. I was in a period of intense self-evaluation, and a very fragile state of mind. I am fond of saying that had been broke and broken. Once my mother died I was beyond broken; I was inconsolable.

Every year it has been the same: my mother's birthday, followed by my divorced parents anniversary, the date of my mother's death, and then Mother's Day, all within a five-week period. I used to call it "the season".

Then, long about year seven, all of sudden it got easier. I don't know what made the difference, but I remember where I was and what I was doing when I realized I had changed. My step mother and I were having lunch at a chain restaurant in the mall with a friend of hers. We were talking about our parents. I was describing the events, and I realized it was actually the seventh anniversary of my mother's death, and unlike all of the previous anniversaries, I hadn't remembered it. It was the only time that I have actually been happy about not remembering something of great personal signifigance.

I had another similar milestone this year; I didn't remember the anniversary of my mother's death until the next day. It wasn't until someone told me Mother's Day was coming up that I realized I had weathered the season nearly pain-free.

I used to ask my mom about my grandfather who died the year I was born. I asked her why she could talk about him without crying. She said, "The pain is still there, it's just no longer a new fact." I never thought that I would be thinking this about the person who taught me that, but time really does heal all wounds, and my mother's death has ceased to be a new fact.

Going in the Wrong Direction

Some days I wake up with a feeling of going in the wrong direction, and this feeling persists all day regardless of what I do thoughout the course of the day. I don't know why this is, but it is harder to figure out what to do when I can't rely on my feelings to tell me what are good things to do.

Today, I woke up with a feeling of optimism and hope until I looked outside and it was snowing. It is no longer snowing, but now the feeling of optimism with which I greeted the morning is gone. So, sometimes right after I wake up the feeling comes over me.

Sometimes I don't get the feeling until I am up and doing things. For example, if I know certain chores must get done, and get up and do them right away, I may have feelings of well-being that last most of the day. However, if I put one foot wrong, then the feeling comes back. I can make the feeling go away by thinking about several courses of action. I do which ever one provokes the least negative feelings.

I guess it's dread that I feel, fear of an unknown enemy, fear of success, fear of failure, fear of being so afraid I do nothing and waste my whole life. My life would me so different if I were incapable of feeling fear. I read an article about people who are incapable of fear, and they do not invariably act irrationally or erratically. Most of them just get on with living, and are usually very effective people.

I wish I were effective people, but often I am paralysed by fear. Fear of leaving the house is the worst one for me. Oddly enough, I almost never have the going in the wrong direction feeling when I am out. Whether it is being out that quashes that feeling, or whether I wouldn't be able to get out if I were feeling that feeling, is unclear. Some days I want so badly to leave the house, but am unable to achieve escape velocity. Longing to be free of my prison of inside, and pets, and too much stuff and screaming birds... I long for the Sun and the open sky and to be alone, in all of my glory, outside.

The courage this takes is often beyond me, as it is right now. There are so many steps to get though before I can go out: the proper attire, keys, bag, phone all must be found and assembled... or perhaps these are self-inflicted barriers I put up in order to stay safe inside.

I will get out today. And tomorrow, perhaps I will get out tomorrow. All that out is frightening and exhilarating, and a reason to wake up tomorrow with optimism, and with any luck no dread.

Like a Healthy Animal

For years I have been too warm all of the time. By too warm, I mean the only person too warm in a crowded room at standard room temperature. No lie, I used to set the thermostat at 64 and was comfortable in a t-shirt and jeans, no socks and sitting still for hours.

Then I got thyroid disease, and was pleased (for a while) to be able to get cold. It took a long time for the novelty to wear off, but it did one day mid-winter. It was minus ten out, and I was bundled under a sheet and two comforters, wearing long underwear, a t-shirt, shorts, long sleeved t-shirt, long pants and socks, and I was still shivering. I felt stuggish and tired and awful.

After being treated for an underactive thyroid, I don't get unpleasantly warm, at least not yet, and most times I am comfortable, but I find my back gets cold. This is so strange to me. Part of it is my new shorter haircut, but part of it is a vestage of the havoc auto-immune disease is wreaking on my body.

I don't want this. I don't want to be sick anymore. I want to be well, feel well, be normal, a regular person just like everyone else. I don't want to sink down inside my body anymore, lacking energy, ambition, drive because I am still here, damnit. And for the first time in a long time, I felt pleasantly cold again. I felt well, I felt whole, I felt normal. It was magificent.

I had worked out at the gym. I am a big advocate of Planet Fitness. I find it to be a non-punitive place for people to work on their bodies, develop personalized routines and goals based on giving their bodies what their bodies need. Even when I had stopped all other non-essential spending, I kept my gym membership in the hopes that I would go back. And I have started again.

So, I had worked out. Sweating is a now a sublime experience for me. I have a funny relationship with water. When my bloodsugar was too high, I couldn't get enough of water, and sweated horribly, uncontrollably. Now I sweat, but when I do it means something: that I have worked hard and done a good job. It being a glorious day, I left partway though my workout so that I could finish the walking portion outside.

For the first time since being sick, I walked outside in shorts, even though my skin was wet. Walking kept me just warm enough not to need long pants, but allowed me to feel invigorated by the cold, like a healthy animal playing outside in the spring.

I feel happy and enthusiastic and whole.

The Domino Effect

Since the last time that I wrote a new year, disease, pets, deaths, students, and household rearrangement have come to pass.

I got really sick last fall and didn't know that I was sick, however it had a profound affect on my life and the lives of those that relied on me. When my thyroid quit it was a quick, twenty-pound trip back to high blood sugar and pressure, so tired I couldn't leave the house, or even my room most days, let alone work, prepare proper meals or work out. I neither called my friends nor engaged with the world. And I didn't miss it. I didn't have the energy to care.

While I was sick, my senior rabbit, Blue, got sick. I was too tired to notice. There was nothing that I felt I could do for him without money, and I couldn't make money because I had no energy. So I turned a blind eye to his suffering.

Miraculously, the thyroid problem came to light, treatment began, and the struggle to regain control over my life began anew. However, Blue was too far gone. He died last night. I am left with the sure and certain knowledge that I did not do the best that I could.

I don't believe in euthanasia, but in his case I made an exception. He was unable to move his feet. The doctor said that there was a 50/50 chance that he was in excruciating pain from the underlying neurological cause, which may or may not have been a broken back. I had seen him do something, which once described, the vet said could have caused this condition, so it was not out of the question.

Secondarily, he had an abscess in his jaw. There had been a foul discharge from his nose which I had taken to be a sinus infection, however this was probably pus from the infected jaw seeping into his throat. That would have been very painful as well.

His prognosis was poor on both fronts. Outcomes would be limited in their efficacy at best and at worst either procedure/course of treatment could kill him. Worse, the treatments and recoveries would be painful and he would have been in pain until both problems were cured. Worst, most likely either or both were incurable, in which case his suffering would have been all for naught.

How could I put a rabbit, one that had always been gentle with me, who was calm, tolerant and patient with children and other pets, despite the pain, foul odor and taste and the times when I would try in vain to keep his nose clean, how could I subject him to this? What had he ever done that I should hurt him so?

We said our good-byes. He was barely responsive, but I patted him for a while on his forehead. As a healthier rabbit, when I patted his cheeks, his ears would spring up. They didn't, and that was how I knew that while the body may have been minimally functional, that life was well and truly over.

I loved him. He was a wonderful companion, an unconditionally loving, accepting animal. I hope that he is easy now, as peaceful in death as he was in life. Rest easy, little guy; I will not forget you.