Walkin'

I’ve taken to pacing in the evening. Once the sun dips down below the opposite ridge of the valley I put on my wool hat, turn on my iPod, and walk 33 paces down my “lawn”, turn around, and walk 33 paces back the other way to my pit-latrine. I’ve been known to do this for up to an hour and a half (until it gets too dark to see anything, and I get too hungry to think anything.)

The Bo-Me’ have taken to calling me “the Chicken”, because I look like a chicken looking for food I guess.

The children always ask me what I’m doing.

I don’t have much of an answer for them. I tell them, “I’m thinking” and they ask “about what?” and that’s where the language barrier slams down between us.

Even if I had the words I’m not sure I’d be able to explain.

When I graduated High School I was at a bit of a crossroads. I’d just been cut free from the life I’d known since I was 5. Wake up, go to school, explain why I was late, learn some, come home, do anything but homework, and repeat. After High School we’re lead to believe that the entire world is before us. Truth be told, I knew that at least the next few years would hold much the same.

College was another routine and more of the same. Throw in a job and you more or less have the same thing. Even after College I knew the general direction I wanted to go.

Cross roads isn’t the right analogy. With a cross roads you can go left, right, or straight. Maybe its one of those crazy five point crossroads that everyone panics a bit when they come too. You still have clear options. Now I have a feeling that its more like the road has come to an end at the ocean.

I can do anything.

I can do nothing.

While I pace I think about all my options. Professional options; I could get a job, go back into politics, try to find something else I believe in. Educational options; law school, grad school, technical school, language school… And personal options; time with family, time with friends, places to live, girls, girls, girls…

I attempted to explain this to a girl of 12 who has particularly good English. She didn’t understand at all.

Take all this, the ending of the road, the open sea, the possibilities of life all spread out before me, and then add in that nagging question, that question you cant help when answering truthfully but sound a little conceited, cliché, hokey or foolish.

What has the last two years been?

So I just walk. Thirty three steps this way, followed by thirty three that way. One slow step at a time the questions come and the questions go.