I had wanted to write a blogpost on Thanksgiving day of 2013 because it had marked four months since I'd stopped walking, the exact amount of time it took me to cross the European continent. I never got to writing it.
In February I wanted to post another blog entry after I noticed my weight had stabilized (though with added pounds) plus a good friend had also commented, "you really seems like you're back to your self, Stevyn". I agreed with her. But I never wrote that post either.
It is now April 1st, 2014 and the one year anniversary of the start of my epic journey. It is also my birthday. A part of me feels melancholy today, helped, no doubt, by a day of gray & rain. But as I've reflected on where I was a year ago and what has transpired in this year past, I have felt a sense of overwhelmingness as well as a dream-like quality which makes the trek feel a bit intangible too.
I cannot remember the last time I have been home for my birthday. Usually, I am working outside of the city. Last year I was in Spain. I thought for once I might enjoy this moment of a birthday at home (Not that birthdays are really so very important to me. Actually, birthdays are anniversaries. My anniversary, on the day my mother birthed me). But as the morning wore on I felt more & more like all I wanted to do was cocoon inside my apartment and finish a project I'd started related to my walk, one I'd wished to have had done today.
Slowly I have been building a web page and on that web page I've been uploading my photos onto slideshows. My goal was to share the link to that web page on my one year anniversary. Alas, it is not complete. However, I did stay inside & diligently work on those slideshows finishing up the last one late this afternoon. I still want to tweak a few things here & there and make a few changes to the actual web page itself before I allow others to enjoy it. Soon I hope to have it fully completed.
It was a bit strange though, to be mindful of the beginning of my walk while looking at the last photos of that journey. Everytime a picture of myself appeared I would peer at my face and see something I felt, mainly exhaustion at that point. But for those first three months, rain aside, I had a lot of energy and enthusiasm.
These days I feel the overall after effects of last year's sojourn. There has been a change, a shift, something like a tilt to my axis. At first it was huge and I was very much affected by the return home & the readjustment to the life I'd left. Then things started to even out, though it took time. A lot of time actually. Once the major alterations vanished they turned into more like minor nuances. Well, I say minor in comparison to what I was feeling the first few months back. But really, the minor shifts have become more permanent changes as if something subtle is taking root and grounding me in an different way.
I have welcomed these shifts and have tried to remain aware of them, understand them and even nurture them. Overall, the changes move so slowly that there hardly seems to be much movement at all and yet I am cognizant that forces are at work.
If I were to explain these changes one might jump to the conclusion that it's nothing more than "getting older". I would agree to a certain extent. Hopefully, as one gets older they separate the chaff from the wheat and follow a path based upon one's life-learned lessons. But I think it's more than that. For myself, I would say there has also been, and continues to be, a spiritual opening that is carefully allowing a different kind of light in. It's not always there. Sometimes my moments and days are no different then they were a year ago. But there are more of these rays seeping in and I am trying to bask in the clarity that the light is trying to provide.
I told myself during my walk that if I made it to Istanbul in one piece, safely, that everything else in life would be a bonus. I try to remember that when I get upset because I'm not getting my way or something doesn't work out. Most of the time I'm doing alright. Other times could use some improving. But I am grateful for all that I have, mostly my friends and family.
It's odd because I used to have so much ambition to do so many things. If they get done now, great. And if they do not, great. Finishing the walk meant much to me. At the time it was a vocation-calling plus a sense of accomplishment. But the walking is really more of a metaphor for the course I stumbled upon to flow a path which I am still on. Walking is therapeutic, it is meditation, it dredges up life and also produces art. It is art. Just like life.
A good friend of mine has told me for years that he thinks my greatest work of art has been the way I've lived my life. OK. Yes. Agreed. But now, what if I do nothing? Does it matter if I continue with such flare or simply find a route with ground beneath my feet?
Sure, I still have dreams. I have places I'd like to visit, art I'd like to make, songs I want to sing, people I want to hug. But it's all ok if nothing more happens. I'm just going to keep looking at the light.
