Walking

The theme for today is Walking.

Do you like walking?
I didn't always.
I did as a child, of course.  Who doesn't! 
Then it was touch and go for a while. 
Life seemed to have creepy streets and I wasn't where I wanted to be, yet.
But once I gained a little self-recognition
I found I liked it more and more
the more I "got into" it.

We know walking in a lot of different ways.
It is - or could be:
a physical skill we learned as an early age and have forgotten how marvelous it is.
a healthy exercise activity.
a way to go places
as well as a "way of going".
a form of transportation.
a mode of travel affording certain unique pleasures.
a form of meditation or "practice".
a time for conversation.
a time for contemplation or communion with nature.
a metaphor for deliberate process (walk me through the steps)
a metaphor for embodiment (walk your talk)
and so on.

There's something universal about it
thought not all humans, literally speaking, walk
and we may spend more time rolling
our wheeled vehicles with a different kind of rhythm.

One goes place to place
and step by step
in this-and-other-ways
rolling, sliding, gliding, turning
with body and attention
from "here" to "here" to "here"
on the string of moments,
the "what's next" in the story of what's happenng
springing up lush around the ticks of time
beads in the mala of experience
the words on a page
the words spoken by a friend.

And when I walk
whose footsteps am I following in
and who is walking by my side
through the lands
where we need metaphor
to step nimbly over the empty spaces and uneven ground
the in-between concepts
where we might find "reality"?

Who walks
and what IS walking?
What is "just walking"?
When I do it?
Is it just physics, just objects?
Just what I can sense "in the moment"?

I like the things that happen, that "go on", during walking
in the space created by what doesn't happen, during walking
and I like the space, the "zone" itself.

It's not necessarily easy to remember,
when I'm not doing it,
how the inner and outer aspects of come to meet and encourage each other.

Or is it?... my muscles and bones, my subconscious remember it
a sense of rhythm
finding synchrony with breath and heartbeat
standing on the earth,
held by it
presented to by it,
presenting myself to it,
presenced in it.
The direct experience of mobility:
excitement in the soles of my feet
and in the core of the body,
the changing moment-by-moment of my relationship
with what else is present
besides that which I call "me"
and a shift in the significance of other events and experiences.

Like meditation:  a different quality of today speaks
of having done it yesterday,
"Walk this way".  There's a "way" about it.
The "same" walk every day, perhaps.
This is how I do it.  Always the same.
Always a little different.

The man who walked out of history.
We're always walking a continuation of deep history,
Perhaps we can remember it in an animal way
a "species" kind of way too.
Born to walk.  Evolved to walk.

But what is "walk"?
...how exactly?
and perhaps some modest conjectures
some stories of "why"
...as in, why did I / do I
...as in, what for?

You've been on some sorties
and returned with some stories.
Do "tell".
Some "just plain stories"
about the "just plain walking"
you did
and what it is / was "like"
and what it might be teaching,
lessons about many things
that one doesn't find out about until walkin
with their emergence

or

the epic and defining dramas
of pilgrimages and passages
big life events,
or equally big ones
framed by a summer afternoon