Body Journey: March

In March I turned 53, and I decided to learn to walk.

Walk mindfully, that is.

old mushroomy Keens

I had a walking meditation keyed up on my phone. I set the phone in the crook of my neck below my ear, held in place by the hoodie pulled over my head. I didn’t want to use headphones that would separate me from nature. My feet were encased in my comfortable, sturdy new shoes—a splurge after five years with my old hiking boots, which had basically disintegrated into mushrooms.

in new Merrell hiking boots, noticing bullet casings

“When we’re walking mindfully, we notice things we normally wouldn’t. Our experience becomes richer. Sounds and smells are sharper. Colors are brighter. We tune into our body in a whole new way,” said Tamara Levitt, the Calm app narrator.

I walked through a sculpture park, indulging in the feel of my muscles, my stride, my foot placement on the ground. I listened to birds to the right by the canal, cars whooshing like an open faucet to the left, and my thumping heart in the center.

I looked at my surroundings with the eye of a wanna-be artist. I had recently taken a Travel Sketch class and as I learned about perspective, background/foreground, shading, and gesture lines, I began trying to see my surroundings in terms of how I could render them on paper. In the class, we sketched from photos, but the idea was to one day sit in a French countryside and dash off a sketch of the landscape with a few flitting lines that represented hills and roads and a spattering of hash marks that gave depth and shadow.

            

I did OK the first night of class when I was just having fun, but the more I learned, the worse I got until I was paralyzed with new information and couldn’t put the pen to paper. Still it did make my walks more mindful. I looked at my surroundings and tried to imagine what would fall in the middle of the paper, what kind of pen scratch would represent that tree in the distance, how to show the path narrowing before me.

After this walk, my body felt powerful, and my soul felt full and warm. I went home, got out of the car, opened the garage door, and fell.

Katia by Curt Brill 

The artist says he is interested in capturing "movement, serenity, and humor." 
(She was sitting on the bench (see February blog). 
I promise I was not the one who knocked her over ... though it does make for the perfect symbolic photo here.) 

In my arms I carried two half-full travel mugs of cold coffee, a purse, some random papers, and another bag. I stepped out of the door, rolled my ankle, and was on the ground. Before the coffee could even slosh completely out of the cups, I popped back up. The coffee settled back into the mugs, I looked around sheepishly, waiting for the workers who are rehabbing my neighbor’s house to point down at me from their rooftop-view and laugh. The workers were not there. It was I who let out a guffaw before quickly scurrying into the house.

I did a careful body scan. Despite only having a little ache in my ankle and wrist, I fought off panic. I felt vulnerable. I ate spoonfuls of caramel sauce until my belly hurt. Then sat there with the shame and guilt.

Shadow by Lucy Slivinski 

The artist used "welding, crocheting, weaving, bailing, and coiling" to make Shadow. 
These techniques are not unlike what we do to ourselves with shame and guilt. 

But I stopped. I caught myself and said out loud: You don’t deserve this judgement. You fell, but barely spilled the coffee. And you popped back up like a kid. That’s because of all the working out. It’s OK that you felt vulnerable and went back to an old comfort habit of eating. You noticed what you were doing right away. And you stopped.

I replayed the fall in my head and found myself laughing. I recalled that my immediate reaction was to jump back up and laugh. Maybe it was embarrassment or maybe I was giggling like a kid because I felt like a kid. Kids fall, not adults. But kids do a lot of fun and active things that adults forget they can do. 

At one end of the walking spectrum there’s falling, fear, fatigue. At the other end, there’s power, discovery, confidence. Even fun and humor. And often the two ends make a circle.

Fairy Circle by Mark Chatterly 

At first each figure seems to be alike, but there are subtle differences. 
Just like each walk we take—it is always walking but different each time. 

Fifty Years of Walking (and Falling)

When I was in my teens, I walked with confidence and swagger. I walked at night. I walked past my reflection and looked with a sense of pride. It was power to walk and be in charge of getting myself somewhere.

In my twenties, I walked on African soil for almost three years. As I navigated new lands, my walks were outward-looking. Every day was an onslaught of tangled surroundings, full of so much that I had never seen or experienced before.

Fete de la Jeunesse/Youth Fest 

Yagoua, Cameroon 1991 

In this excerpt of a narrative I wrote about my time in Cameroon, I start with my experience of walking past a strange field every day.

It has been almost a year, and still Yagoua spins around me like a maniacal kaleidoscope. I pass a field every day on my way to school that vaguely registers as some type of billowy black foliage growing on brittle bones. Then one day I see what it really is. Hundreds of plastic bags snagged on dry brush.


In a slap of clarity, everything clicks into focus. My Foulfoulde teacher pointing to a plastic bag. “Leida,” he said. “Leida,” I repeated. This is Leida Field. Plastic Bag Field. There is only kind of plastic bag in Cameroon. Black, thin, the weight of 10 tomatoes could split its transparent skin before you even get home from market.

Almost every structure in Yagoua is softly imperfect, made of mud and grasses and twigs, with bits of sunlight peeking through little holes. The walls never meet the dirt floors exactly. Never more than semi-privacy created by thatch weavings called seikos. Everything lumpy, frayed, wood, mud, plant matter. The circle of life presents itself daily in the growth of plants that are then cut down, woven into walls and then quickly disintegrate and collapse back into the earth. 

Amidst the perpetual browns that merge everything into a blur, I search for familiar navigational tools—a street sign, the hard edge of a building, a corner, a straight path clearly designated as such. A sandy footpath I successfully follow to a colleague’s house one day is the next day forked differently and ends abruptly behind the prison.

This piece, called "Navigating Yagoua," was recently published in Wanderlust: A Narrative Map, an anthology available on Amazon. 

Enjoy more travel narratives on Wanderlust. 

In my late twenties and thirties, my body learned the terrain of more foreign places, such as France, England, Spain, Germany, Australia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Western Somoa, Italy. I went to Europe for three months. I had one backpack, a Eurorail pass, addresses of friends all over the continent, and good walking shoes—Mephisto sandals. 

There are some places in the world where you don’t walk. But sometimes what you don’t know is the very definition of adventure. In Italy, I told new Italian friends that I wanted to go to the sea and lounge on a beach. They told me to take the train from Pisa and then a ferry to Sardinia.

They described the small town of Olbia, where I could eat fresh fish and melt on nearby beaches. It sounded perfect. In their dreamy revelry, they forgot one important detail. A car. Every person on the ferry had a car on board. Except me. I was the only walking passenger.

The massive ship docked at a tiny port town. The sun was sinking. I walked down to the lower deck with the other passengers, wishing I had schmoosed my way into a friendship instead of sleeping in my little submarine bunker all night. I very much needed a driving friend at that moment. Everyone got in their cars and puttered out of the ship as if a kid had just tipped her toy boat to let all the Matchbox cars spill out. Beep, beep, happy waves and off they all went to arrive at their beach abodes that night. I, on the other hand, walked out like a Barbie doll on stiff, awkward legs. I saw no taxis. I started walking. I had no idea what I would do. Fifty-three-year-old me wants to write: “I was terrified. I panicked.” But I don’t think I was. I don’t think I did.

I remember that I walked. I walked and looked around and bit my lower lip raw and narrowed my eyes, puzzling over how to solve this intriguing problem. I made eye contact with the few people I saw. I asked for a taxi. No taxis. I asked for a bus. No busses. How about a restaurant? Yes, there is one. Keep walking. The restaurant was on the main street, but it was empty aside from a waiter and a cook. I managed to communicate enough to understand that Olbia was not walking distance. I would have to take a bus tomorrow. I was led to an old woman’s house where I paid for a room for the night. 

I wish I had stayed in that clean, bright room the whole time because the next day when I got to Olbia, it was as if I slipped through some kind of portal and entered the dark side. My hotel was all dark—the street in front, the lobby, the hallways, my room. 

Though my room wasn’t dark enough to mask the filth. I covered the pillow with one of my shirts and slept in my clothes. My window opened to a loud courtyard three stories below. I opened it for fresh air. I looked down on the top of a striped and slightly shredded awning that was littered with odd bits of paper and objects that must have been thrown down by hotel guests. Everything looked dried and bleached out by salty sea air. Something about the place felt like a sketchy circus. All I could think was that the window sill was the perfect place to dry out my bunny jawbone. And in this setting, having a bunny jawbone didn’t seem odd at all.

I had a bunny jawbone with tiny bits of flesh still on it because just the day before walking onto the car ferry, I was in paradise. At an Italian family home in the country where they had an outside wood-burning pizza oven and told me to go pick what I wanted from the garden to put on my pizza. I plucked rosemary and figs for one half and basil and tomato for the other half. While the pizza cooked, melding the flavors into a tiny island of ambrosia, I played with the bunnies.

Later in the evening, we crossed the rustic road and went to the grandmother’s house where she had just fried a mountain of zucchini flowers and “other things.” Someone translated for me—“you can fry a dirty old shoe, and it would be good!” She couldn’t have been more right.

I devoured the fried delicacies, mostly unable to identify what I was eating. Including a bone with two long teeth that I pulled out of my mouth and stared at in confusion. I held the bone in front of me and the Italian banter in the room paused. Then there was an outburst of happy laughter and congratulatory looks for me. I still did not know what I was looking at, what had just been in my mouth. When someone finally told me in English, I was both horrified and amazed. I guess it wouldn’t be paradise without a glimmer of the dark side.

My next three days were mostly spent on busses and walking along roads full of beach-exploring families IN CARS. I had come back to my room to find the jawbone covered in ants. On the last night, I treated myself to a nice fish dinner with several nice glasses of wine. Then I got back on my feet and started walking to the port to catch my overnight car ferry. The sun was sinking again. I walked along a long pier carrying three-month’s worth of accumulated souvenirs—minus the bunny jawbone. I was overloaded with bags, wine, and stupid, wonderful youth. So, I fell. 

I boarded the ship with blood dripping down my leg. I left Europe with a wounded knee—the badge of courage and adventure of a true walker of the world.

In my forties, I settled on American soil and began to look more inward when I walked. I walked and thought, walked and dreamed, walked and listened to music, walked and listened to books, walked and planned. Always in my head, rarely in my body experiencing the world I was walking through.

My life was a blur of children, trying to be married, work, divorce, single parenthood. My walks mimicked the frenzy and distraction of my life. I attempted to slow myself down after reading Slowing Down to the Speed of Life by Joseph Bailey and Richard Carlson. I walked by Lake Michigan every morning, collecting one piece of beach glass to represent each walk. But the ideas churned and spun in my head and soon I was thinking of things I could make with the beach glass. My walks became work as I hurriedly collected pocketsful of beach glass each morning. I stayed up late and made them into mirror frames and light fixtures. I was focused on many things but never the walking, the surroundings, or the moment.

Then I got a dog. I was forced to experience the moment as I attended to the dog’s pleas, pulls, and poops. Other dog walkers wanted to chat and let our dogs sniff each other. I had to take off my headphones. I had to watch behind me for bikers and walkers who wanted to pass without my dog jumping at them. Walking the dog was a step toward mindful walking.

In my early fifties, despite my attempts at mindfulness through books and dog walking, the distance between my mind and my body was many dark miles. One night there was a parents-vs-players game for my kids’ soccer league. I stood on the sidelines watching my ex-husband’s big belly bounce down the field with tremendous speed and skill. I drew on my high school year of being a successful soccer goalie and jumped into the game. If he could do it, I could. I did not warm up. I did not consider that I hadn’t played soccer since high school while my ex-husband played and coached on a weekly basis.

The high school field was brightly lit, making the green turf glow neon below me. As soon as I stepped on the field, the ball came toward me. I took three quick steps toward it, kind of like running, and wound up for a big kick, just wanting the ball far away from me. I felt the back of my thigh collapse—like a slab of wood exploding and splintering from a gunshot. But I did not fall. I didn’t even stop. The ball had not gone far from me and an opposing player was coming fast. I was too embarrassed to stop. I got to the ball, kicked it away, and played on for another ten minutes. Then I stood on the sideline the rest of the game pretending to be fine while fire from hell burned my shredded hamstring. I limped to the car, tears in the corners of my eyes, feeling like a loser.

photo by Pavel Anoshin

I ended up going to physical therapy, doing floor exercises, and walking a slow, crooked walk for a month. On Thanksgiving, I finally felt back to normal, so I took my dog for a walk. I was strutting a little, satisfied with my recovery. I did two loops around the park. When I got home, I plopped down in a chair and my back seized up and clenched in agony and left me breathless. There was only one bent position I was remotely comfortable in. I guess the month of crooked walking put a strain on back muscles that I hadn’t often used. For the first time, I felt old.

I started attributing aches and pains to being older. I heard friends my age talk about buying reading glasses, going to bed earlier, having hot flashes. I felt sore after an hour of cleaning the garage or yard work. My eyebrows were disappearing. In fact, when was the last time I shaved my legs? My leg hair had stopped growing. My skin had pink and brown blotches. I spotted small sags on my body—under my eyes, my neck, under my arms.

So here I was finally on a path to mindfulness, beginning to experience juicy moments when I realized that even with mindfulness, not all moments were wonderful. Moments when your knees ache and you have to hold a menu at arm’s length to read it were moments I could do without. I did not want to be mindful of my aging and mortality. I did not want to be present in the moment, experiencing the fallout of getting old.

Like Clockwork by Samuel Spickzka 

Being mindful had been bringing richness to life, but I hadn’t practiced enough to see that the benefits could outweigh this new impending feeling that I was on the downside of my life’s journey. Instead of digging deeper into mindfulness and improving my body’s function, I panicked.

My thoughts seemed to be stuck on a loop. Kids grow up, leave home, I am alone. Kids grow up, leave home, I am alone. My thoughts dragged me along on endless paths of pity. My thoughts dodged through tangled forests of fear. My thoughts sprinted from loneliness to anger to helplessness.

I spent about a year dealing with the anxiety triggered by changes in my body. I had enough therapy by then to know it did me no good to suppress my feelings. I had been through enough overeating, overdrinking, overworking, and ignoring my self-care to know that also did me no good. But I hadn’t done enough meditation and mindful practice to stop my thoughts and feelings from carrying me away.

I spiraled, constantly imagining I was having a heart attack or a stroke. I couldn’t sleep. I woke in a panic night after night. I tried melatonin and theanine. I doubled up on therapy. I consulted my physician, a cardiologist, a nurse practitioner. I did a sleep study. I ate a Keto diet. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I drank many martinis.

photo by Adji Teoudoussia

My lowest point came when I was watching my daughter play soccer on a small field surrounded by huge trees. It was a very windy day. I felt off. My breathing was shallow and concentrated in tiny pockets in my throat. I couldn’t seem to get a good, deep breath. I stood apart from the other parents. The ground seemed unstable. I tried walking around but that only enhanced the off-kilter feeling. I tried to focus on the game but suddenly the trees seemed enormous. I was small and detached. The earth seemed to tilt up. I felt like I was falling.

Second Breath by Maurice Bilk
The artist, a holocaust survivor as a child, says this sculpture is about getting a second chance in life.

Movies and novels have a turning point—one particular event or epiphany that changes everything. Real life is rarely like that. I cannot point to one thing that pivoted the plot of my life. I’m not even sure that my life really has changed. I do know that with a combination of meditation, exercise, low carb eating, therapy, alignment of the stars, things seem to be shifting.

When you’re growing up, you can’t tell day to day that you are getting taller. Often change is like this. Day to day, it’s hard to see. Which is why reflection is so important. Looking back over my fifty-plus years of walking, I see many times that I believed in myself and I created, I took risks and I did not die, I was adventurous and I made discoveries.

Since I started this body journey, my thoughts no longer yank me around, the trees are normal size, the ground stays in place, and I walk it with a new sureness.

I do still fall. But I get up, laugh it off, and walk on.