Yesterday I went for a walk to the lower back pasture and walked back. It's about a mile walk. I crisscrossed by my brother's house to see if he was home. The path I took meant that I probably wasn't going to see anybody else back there. People around here are pretty good about not trespassing on other people's property. I was very aware during this walk that I was going slow. Almost stutter stepping. I tried to liven things up, but found it difficult to change pace.
This morning I walked about the same distance using the broad concrete sidewalk in front of the stores at the Wal-Mart strip mall. I like walking there because I can stumble along not watching where I'm going so particularly. Hardly ever do I run into people on the sidewalk except for when they're going from their parked cars to the store entrances and back to their car again. The driving area to and among the different parking areas is located right beside the sidewalk, so the people in their cars driving by me can see everything I do. Not like back in the woods behind my house.
I walked on the sidewalk at a good, steady pace looking like a much healthier person. I did that totally aware that I was moving around in the public eye. I was aware of my posture and my pace. The exact opposite of the stutter stepping I was doing back in the woods. In the woods I was walking for-myself, while on the sidewalk in public view, I was walking the way I did for-the-other.
When I was in public view on the sidewalk in front of the shopping mall, it's easy for me to do a walking meditation. One of the reasons I can do that out in public has something to do with the fact that the sidewalk is so wide and usually so unoccupied that I don't have to pay much attention to where I'm going. About the only reason I have to stay alert is for people coming in and out of the shops.
The SuperCenter is the last store on the western end of the strip mall. I don't walk in front of it, but start on the east end of that building and do my walking away from all that traffic. When I do one round and return to where the Wal-Mart is, I turn around before I get to it, and go back the other way. I do have to watch where I'm going in that area, so I don't try to walk there.
I'm not sure I can explain why being in public forces me to dwell within myself better than if nobody can see me, but I do know it's the sa-me dynamic involved with me publishing my journal on the internet. It forces me to dig deeper and to come up with something that's at least an entertaining curiosity to me. I don't have any control over what the people who read this blog thinks about what I've written. It's only important to me that it's available for anybody who comes here to read.
One thing is for sure. With a million people a day creating a new blog, there is not much chance anybody is gonna read what I write here, and yet according to the counter, I got more readers on the internet than people who read the county newspaper. More readers, even, than there are residents in this county. About 50,000, and unfortunately, growing.
I also know I don't understand how this dynamic of how I act different when I'm alone than when I'm in public. I spent around 7-8 years, off and on, hitch-hiking around North America. Mostly the continental United States of America. There is not a lot of people who have done that. I would have seen them. I've seen a few.
I did it because of what I read in the King James Version of the Bible. "Go ye therefore into all the world.... yadda, yadda, yadda." I don't know if that was my original motivation or whether I remembered what it said after I ran away from home when I was fifteen years old. I had to return home under threat of the law, but I never forgot I could just go do that. Anytime I got tired of being where I was with myself, I could go out to the nearest through road and stick out my thumb. I did it a lot. It's not a respectable thing to do. It makes a soul seem irresponsible. Why would I not be? Who will tell me "No!"? Nobody knows. Nobody cares.
"Do what thy wilt is the whole of the law." ~Aleister Crowley
The reason I'm writing about hitch-hiking in the same breath as taking my constitutional in front of the shopping mall is that when I was hitch-hiking I was in the public eye 24/7. True, there were times when I could find a hiding place to be unseen for a while. I got real good at it. But, being in the public eye drove me inside myself for privacy, and that's why the Jesus stories recommended going ye therefore.
I've tried to tell about this to people, but they don't have the ears to hear me with. It's not like it's my idea. I don't have anything on the line whether they do it or not. Lots of people are in the public view much of their lives, but their personal survival don't depend on their direct behavior. When one goes on a vision quest such as the "go ye therefore" one, it matters a lot, for your survival WILL depend on whether you can turn inside to yourself for direction/amusement or not. There are black holes out there on the road you gotta recognize and decieve.
Being on my own like that for months and years at a time made me look different. I learned to deliberately telegraph my punch. I made sure people would see me coming. There is not a way in hell I could ever teach somebody to do that. It can only be learned solo. There are songs, poems, and tall tales told about it:
"You got to walk that lonesome valley.
You gotta go there by yo'self.
There ain't nobody here can go there for you.
You got to go there by yo'self."
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
