“I always knew I was a star and now, the rest of the world seems to agree with me.”
freddie mercury
today I walked to bible street. in a pair of flip flops, I think from the rockaway beach days. they’re not quite the right size. because everyone has the same cute brown leather flip flops called rainbows, and if you stay surfing until dusk, or whatever, or even just hang out for a while, you tend to kind of keep floating afterwards. to the point where you can easily stick your feet in anyone’s flip flops, walk home, and not even realize to the next day. when I walk I tend to think about how all these little past moments made up the now moment.
anyway, being human, I only decided to go for a nice long walk because I wanted a gelato, and I couldn’t bear to use my car to get there. even though the sun was setting pink, and I live on a road with no sidewalk. I wanted to walk to the gelato more than I wanted ice + cream. and of course, there are many little past moments along the Via Francigena which made up the today moment. gelato is always a good motivation to walk.
and as I was walking some good things happened.
my feeling of well being improved a lot. I made an important life decision. some strangers offered me a ride! I broke a tiny sweat. I found a little path to skateboard. I thought about teleporting, and growing up, and cloning yourself. How sometimes life feels like the airplane to where you’re going, and sometimes it feels like the place. The tickets I’m taking. How the press is always late, how Roger Federer is the one of the best tennis players of all time, but worth more than that through STYLE. (Kanye said, “I’m worth 5 billion dollars, and more than though CHRIST”). About a little red dress I finally found in this wild word, with a fan print and ruffle hem that made me feel so pretty with all muscle on top of my thighs when I ran my fifth marathon of 2017 in Buenos Aires . About how I look back on my life like a movie, so much so that I enjoy collecting the costumes. Like somebody else’s flip flops, you never know where a great dress will take you.
but anyway, the other thing I thought about was this phrase, I heard someone say about awareness. something to the effect of “your awareness is literally paving the ground underneath your feet with each step you take”. whatever that means. but you know, as someone who grew up in Sunday school with a very clear picture in their head of the disciples walking on water through a storm and sinking when they doubted, it just made sense.
and I thought about the Via Francigena, how a top comment is basically why did it work out cool? and is there some special quality or formula to it, because it seems like everyone, myself included, wants more of that!
and you know, just as much as the walking, as the mountains (at this point I pause to listen to the edm song “higher” by don diablo and remember the special energy of passing through the Swiss alps to the Aosta Valley), as the churches, I think to write the experience day by day was to literally script the journey and my life in an intentional way.
and you know, I can do that everyday, because really, adventure is just a matter of stepping outside. everyday you are on planet earth is like this magical, finite time, this journey, that, you don’t even need a PBS special with Neil Tyson Degrasse about meteorites to know isn’t going to last forever.
so I want to live like that, and write like that.
the gelato was delicious.