Things I thought about on my walk

Time, fear, sickness, wellness, swifts

Tonight I opened my front door and was swept into a river of sunlight pouring down the street. At our latitude, it’s not due west that the humble bit of pavement stretches, but whatever it is, on this June evening it was paved in gold. I looked dumbly into it and light consumed everything beyond a few feet from me. They say you should get sun in your eyeballs first thing in the morning; does my brain, after all these years, know that this low-angled flood is a sign that it’s time for bed? When we lived just over the border, I used an Instagram hashtag, #mustbebedtimeinbelgium, for the glorious displays that would erupt after a cloudy day, just as we were trying to put our young children down for the night. (I’m happy to say it’s still there and uncorrupted).

The podcast people in my ears were talking about how the U.S. worships charisma, mentioning a radio host—no, the radio host, our chief usher into this political moment—and explaining who he was for his Gen Z listeners. I was flabbergasted and thought that makes me feel old, then thought about how I say that and think it but it doesn’t actually make me feel old. It makes me feel odd. Experienced. More aware of how all of history was just yesterday and the future is tomorrow. Did you know that President John Tyler’s [b. 1790] grandson just died this week? 

I was trying to walk as slowly as I could. After a year plus with a lot of slow shuffling and rare recreational walks, my stride has quickened as I find a little respite with a new medication. You don’t know how your brain can crave the regulation of the step - step - step - step of a walk for walking’s sake until you lose it. And even now, it’s very different from the rush around neatening up the house and the mission through the grocery store.

When I first got better this time, I couldn’t remember how to stride. I still minced my steps, with my newly-deflated joints all loose and wobbly, muscles stiff and weak, scared. I’ve since picked up the pace to what feels fast to me until I try to walk with most other people, but I still don’t remember what’s an appropriate height to pick up my feet off the ground. Presumably, it’s not millimeters (that worked for me pretty well while sick). But it seems not to be eight inches, either? Very confusing. So anyway, I’ve been enjoying my new-old capability of rushing around and pushing things to my still-low limit, and I’d done that today for sure. So tonight I needed to just stroll, not exercise or get anywhere or smoosh my anger into the pavement. I kept catching myself speeding up until my breathing clued me in to limits again. Aaand slow. And breathe.

A man and regular walker who I think of as older than me but who is probably my same age passed with his two German shepherds, low and thick. He said something calming to the bigger one as they approached, and the fear that it hadn’t occurred to me to feel gave a little quiver. We said “bonsoir,” which is a courtesy that only happens in this little pedestrian alley. Normally one keeps to big-city mind-your-own-onions¹ manners around here. A white cat with a stripy tail meandered onto the path, fleeing in terror into the hedges at the sight of me; another, piebald, stared in terror from the safety of his garden. Or a garden. I don’t know why the cats I see here are always so scared. Maybe they can sense that I hate them with the fire of a thousand suns, since they represent the other neighborhood cats that are the reason why I don’t hang a birdfeeder. Or they’re afraid of meeting each other, since they’re evil.²

I’d turned a corner and was heading straight into the sun. I shielded my eyes and bowed my head, and saw the asphalt and my ratty shoes and scraggly jeans gilded, their own colors subsumed into the shimmer. I admired my confident footsteps, an appropriate length and quite possibly somewhere in the range of the right height off the ground. (Later, I tripped on nothing. Too low! Too low!) Some of you will be made to feel old odd by the fact that I filmed just a few steps. Because one day this medicine won’t work and this will feel like a dream. I didn’t mean to write about this so much. It’s just what I think about.

I strolled by daisies that were past their peak and a newborn thistle with a spiked green corona of younger siblings. A row of graffitied garages. Two planes from the airport south of the city shone white in the sunset, one at that funny straight-on angle where it looks like it’s blasting into space.

Did the thought of swifts come first, or the look into the baby-blue sky? I couldn’t remember even just afterward, because they met me there as if this moment had been destined for all of time. They were back. They were back! They’d probably been back for a while, but they don’t hang out on my street, so this was their return to me. They zoomed in front of the moon, just at the limit of my sight. It’s not dignified to rhyme “zoom” and “moon”, but swifts aren’t dignified and neither am I. Even with the podcast paused, my earbuds blocked their shrill calls. I pulled them out just in time to hear them before they followed the bugs away. 

Earlier this evening, I’d been staring blankly out into the garden and muttered out of the blue “we should get a swift box” even though our landlord could never. Maybe I have a spiritual connection with the returning swifts, or maybe I’d heard some calling without consciously registering it. At that moment I decided to dictate into my phone (because my brain is a sieve) and it thought I was talking about Taylor. “...the idea of Swift...” “Swift in front of the almost half moon...” Feels TTPD-coded.³⁴ 

I’m afraid that those of you who know me are expecting me to get to the deep stuff and weave it all in somehow. But I don’t have a point; I just decided to enjoy being in the flow. I needed to just walk with steps of dubious height, and breathe, and see the zooming swifts.

1. One day when my child was in early elementary school and newly bilingual, she bossed her bothersome brother to “mind your own onions!!” That’s how I learned about the French phrase “occupe-toi de tes oignons” meaning “mind your own business”

2. I jest, I jest. In fact I have a friend here whose cat has to wear clothes for health reasons and it is the most Beatrix Potteriest thing you ever saw.

3. Out of courtesy to those of you feeling lost: this is just Taylor Swift stuff, don’t worry about it (Taylor Swift is a pop star) (my readership spans generations and, like me, centuries)

4. It very funny to me that I have adjacent footnotes here about (1) hating cats (OK I confess I do hate outdoor cats) and (2) America’s preeminent cat lady