Steps

I have been walking, I think, for a month. My flapping shoes slap the sidewalk, and my knees creak with each reach of the leg. Each step sends a pace-length of ground falling into the past, into memory, fading and unreal before the next step is even begun.

I remember every step I’ve taken. I remember every tree I’ve passed, every crack in the sidewalk, every unpaved road. Every house, every town, every city through which I’ve passed. I remember because I am not going to anywhere. I am simply going. If I were to place my finger on a map, and say, “I am going here,” then what is the journey but an obstacle? One does not savor a hurdle. One does not relish a pitfall. We jump over these things, walk around them, move on as quickly as possible. I go nowhere. No, not even that is right. I can't say anything more than, “I go.”

I might have been walking for a year, wandering, but not wandering because wanderers are walking and hoping to find. I am not a wanderer. I am not an adventurer, or an explorer. I find without seeking with every slipping moment of time. I was There. I found There. I am Here. I have found Here as well. Here is there, and That… is Here, and here I am, and there I was, and it is all what I was looking for. A journey, and nothing more. Nothing more? Nothing at all? A journey, and everything more! For what is not here is what I was not seeking.

Have I been walking only an hour? Already I have found such treasures that I turn back to where I began, wherever that was, that I might share my discovery, only to realize that I don’t know where I am. How long have I simply been, without any knowledge of the passage of place or time or self or world? There is no home for me now. I might pass that place a thousand times before my legs sag and back breaks, body crumples to lumps of dust, but it is no longer a place of comfort or sentiment. It is a place. Celebrated, delighting, absolutely, but naught beyond that. I have no beginning, because all the world is a memory. I have no end, because to have an end is to miss the middle, and the middle is all I have. All I am.

I think I have been walking for all of time, and my mind cringes at the thought of immortality.
Men die chasing dreams, but what of we who have chosen no end?