What a stupid address. Because everything and nothing always changes, and we know that "always" and "never" is usually a lie.
I walked to dinner tonight. The Fitbit demands these kinds of sacrifices, and it's no sacrifice when it's a temperate autumn evening and your destination is over the ridge, at a campus restaurant.
So when I wonder how I got so stuck, if you could gently remind me that I live not only in the town where I went to college, but the town where I was born? That would be appreciated.
In walk just short of 10,000 steps, I can walk by:
I walked to dinner tonight. The Fitbit demands these kinds of sacrifices, and it's no sacrifice when it's a temperate autumn evening and your destination is over the ridge, at a campus restaurant.
So when I wonder how I got so stuck, if you could gently remind me that I live not only in the town where I went to college, but the town where I was born? That would be appreciated.
In walk just short of 10,000 steps, I can walk by:
- every ex-boyfriend's college housing
- the woods where I suspect my stolen purse was tossed, but have never been able to find therein
- a most magnificent view of Kalamazoo College's chapel, and if you turn 120 degrees to the right, the East Hall cupola at Western Michigan University
- the track where a college student was killed by a mentally ill stranger in 1987, which changed this town the obvious and paranoid ways that these things do
- a ginkgo sapling growing in an eaves-trough
- Dairy Queen, and all the calories therein
- the tracks where I flipped the bike I'd borrowed from my brother, and broke its frame
- the apartment where I lived at first with my now-husband
- the apartments of many more friends, past to present
- rotten apples placed along the top of a stone wall
- smells of wood burning, leaf mold, sour water and trash
- and finally, the overgrown garden of home.
For all these connections, I don't have more plans for tonight than the dinner I already ate. It's the time when I would be getting ready for bed on a weeknight. I guess I am worrying, what if I was alone? Would I ever leave the house? Or would I just connect with these memories, again and again? Does this worry mean that it's already too late?
But it's not too late. I can go for a walk anywhere, but here I know these things, and can learn even more. (In fact, I'm already plotting a trip to go back and see if that's really a gingko, and how to take a picture of it.) There's no need to hyperventilate. Just breathe. And besides, my Fitbit fell off my wrist somewhere, so none of these future steps "count" anyway.
But it's not too late. I can go for a walk anywhere, but here I know these things, and can learn even more. (In fact, I'm already plotting a trip to go back and see if that's really a gingko, and how to take a picture of it.) There's no need to hyperventilate. Just breathe. And besides, my Fitbit fell off my wrist somewhere, so none of these future steps "count" anyway.
