Status: comes and goes.
Me, My Prussian Blues (and That Guy With the Horns)
The Thoreau Challenge Part 2
I started my walk at the Bedford Public Library. I drove there first, of course. In my car, my little green Volvo, my snarky Voltaire.
On the way out the doors of the fancy library I caught a most entrancing smell. The smell of Ireland. I was again on the dark steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral, I was beneath the iron awning of St. James' Gate, I was watching a beam of dusty noonlight cling thickly to the yellowed pages of the Book of Kells. I was tasting a fresh Guinness and toasting the smoggy factory-clogged skyline of the most beautiful city in the world: Dublin. I was watching the stormy sky wrestle with the Irish Channel from the vantage point of the Cliffs of Moer. I was in the Castle of Athenry, and the floorboards smellt of urine.
But no.
I was in New England. I was crunching through the damp autumn leaf cover on a greasy stretch of yellow grass stained with asphalt powder along 101 East about to pass over into a frigid swampy area around a cut-off street from Nashua Road. If I shook a little gold dust from my ears I could hear the gas-guzzling SUVs and hunting trucks roaring by my feet. If I squinted through the sleeplessness I could see the little white bodies of dead grey squirrels along the road. If I rubbed my cold fingertips over my eyes, if I tried to force the lingering dregs of frustration leftover from work out with my breath, maybe I could focus on this bleeding assignment. The art of Walking, sure. There hasn't been an art of Walking in the US since...probably since Thoreau's time. Nowadays, nothing could be more pointless. And in America, there's no such thing as an aimless expenditure of time or energy and especially not money. It's just not our culture anymore. And by this point I am so conditioned to walk with purpose, to see only the light at the end of the tunnel that deliberately avoiding that light is against my nature.
New Hampshire is my home, and I know all its scents like the insides of my eyelids. Now, they serve only as mild deterrents and uneasy blips of nostalgia.
I feel a ghostly Ray LaMontagne song trying to claw its way to the forefront of my temple, but I crush it because I'm just supposed to be walking. I think about sleeping. I think about getting off my feet and getting home to an excellently empty house so I could revel in so rarely a complimented solitude. I would be king of the hill, and stuff. What am I even walking out here for?
I smell a wood fire, and think of the days when the Bedford Barn lit up for us on summer nights. When I could forget academia and revel in the coarseness of my public school fellows. When Grant brought his dad's speakers and had Covey help him hook it up to the electric box out by the road so we could set a beat. Liz always brought the blacks. We would drink Moxie all night and set Roman candles off by the light of a pitiful bonfire. We would pull a crowd, and it was almost like even though we were all different, even though a few may have even thought thoughts like mine, we were all here. For just those nights, we were all just adolescents with everything to prove but nothing to put out.
There's a split pine branch by the road that I had to hop over. Its sappy, icy scent reminds me of the winters past, spent in Vermont, combing the slopes just me and my board. New Hampshire is a load of smells, and funnily enough one's sense of smell is the most capable of retaining memory. So long after I've forgotten the reeking gullies and icy ponds and toothy evergreens biting the overcast skies, I will remember New Hampshire from far away when I catch the scent of falling leaves on the streets of Dublin.
Maybe it's discursive and pointless, but that's what a reflection is, right? And, if I wanna really send that sentiment home, my reflections are just as Thoreau wanted walking to be. No destination, but a muffled sense of purpose that just keeps you moving. I think I get it. Maybe the art of Walking isn't dead yet. It's in our noses, in our feet, and in our bitter-sweet nostalgia.
On the way out the doors of the fancy library I caught a most entrancing smell. The smell of Ireland. I was again on the dark steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral, I was beneath the iron awning of St. James' Gate, I was watching a beam of dusty noonlight cling thickly to the yellowed pages of the Book of Kells. I was tasting a fresh Guinness and toasting the smoggy factory-clogged skyline of the most beautiful city in the world: Dublin. I was watching the stormy sky wrestle with the Irish Channel from the vantage point of the Cliffs of Moer. I was in the Castle of Athenry, and the floorboards smellt of urine.
But no.
I was in New England. I was crunching through the damp autumn leaf cover on a greasy stretch of yellow grass stained with asphalt powder along 101 East about to pass over into a frigid swampy area around a cut-off street from Nashua Road. If I shook a little gold dust from my ears I could hear the gas-guzzling SUVs and hunting trucks roaring by my feet. If I squinted through the sleeplessness I could see the little white bodies of dead grey squirrels along the road. If I rubbed my cold fingertips over my eyes, if I tried to force the lingering dregs of frustration leftover from work out with my breath, maybe I could focus on this bleeding assignment. The art of Walking, sure. There hasn't been an art of Walking in the US since...probably since Thoreau's time. Nowadays, nothing could be more pointless. And in America, there's no such thing as an aimless expenditure of time or energy and especially not money. It's just not our culture anymore. And by this point I am so conditioned to walk with purpose, to see only the light at the end of the tunnel that deliberately avoiding that light is against my nature.
New Hampshire is my home, and I know all its scents like the insides of my eyelids. Now, they serve only as mild deterrents and uneasy blips of nostalgia.
I feel a ghostly Ray LaMontagne song trying to claw its way to the forefront of my temple, but I crush it because I'm just supposed to be walking. I think about sleeping. I think about getting off my feet and getting home to an excellently empty house so I could revel in so rarely a complimented solitude. I would be king of the hill, and stuff. What am I even walking out here for?
I smell a wood fire, and think of the days when the Bedford Barn lit up for us on summer nights. When I could forget academia and revel in the coarseness of my public school fellows. When Grant brought his dad's speakers and had Covey help him hook it up to the electric box out by the road so we could set a beat. Liz always brought the blacks. We would drink Moxie all night and set Roman candles off by the light of a pitiful bonfire. We would pull a crowd, and it was almost like even though we were all different, even though a few may have even thought thoughts like mine, we were all here. For just those nights, we were all just adolescents with everything to prove but nothing to put out.
There's a split pine branch by the road that I had to hop over. Its sappy, icy scent reminds me of the winters past, spent in Vermont, combing the slopes just me and my board. New Hampshire is a load of smells, and funnily enough one's sense of smell is the most capable of retaining memory. So long after I've forgotten the reeking gullies and icy ponds and toothy evergreens biting the overcast skies, I will remember New Hampshire from far away when I catch the scent of falling leaves on the streets of Dublin.
Maybe it's discursive and pointless, but that's what a reflection is, right? And, if I wanna really send that sentiment home, my reflections are just as Thoreau wanted walking to be. No destination, but a muffled sense of purpose that just keeps you moving. I think I get it. Maybe the art of Walking isn't dead yet. It's in our noses, in our feet, and in our bitter-sweet nostalgia.