Night Walking (Part 1)

Really this should count as yesterday's writing. It was all in my HEAD last night but my day started at 4 a.m. and the walk was so sweet and the bath was so hot and the steam was so soothing my fingers couldn't overcome the call of my down comforter and my dog and my bed full of pillows - a trifecta screaming sleep, sleep (poppies will make them sleep - and NO, there were no actual poppies - I just like that line. And I like how my mind is free associating right now. Wake up brain it's time to get going.)

This morning, still in my bed, coming into the same grey blue half-light I walked out into last night, not enough light yet to define the clouds, just the promise of what will be.

Last night though, I guess it went the other way. Started under late clouds, smoky cloud laced patches of blue. Sunset time but no sun to see. Just me and my dog, leaves rain-pasted to the cement, one last fan-shaped leaf hanging off the a low branch of a naked little Ginko.

Fall isn't usually my favorite season. Truth is, I see the leaves falling and something in me drops with them. I've never understood how some folks feel all their possibilities surge when we're coming into winter. The time for slowing. Hibernation. Sleep. Nah, that's not the whole truth. I sort of get it. Something beautiful and infinite about striping naked and slipping into a long, slow dark. It's the new burst of life you get on the other side. Again and again. Dark to light. Dark to light. Dark to light. Usually I'm more a Spring kind of girl, picking up energy as the days stretch longer. This year, though, it's like I've never noticed autumn before now. I'm in love with colors and the changes and contrasts. Spring in reverse. These early dark no time hours.

I crave the wide open. My little house, the ceilings are high and the colors are easy - blues and greens and the perfect orange-yellow blend on the living room/dining room/kitchen walls - the kitchen is modern, the closets are big and the fakewood Pergo floor always hides the dirt, but this space doesn't let the outside in. Out every window it's fence or hedge or wall, little bits of sky above the neighbor's roof.  All I want is out.

We walk the dog's pace and she leads, slow and scent bound, stopping for leaf piles and tree trunks and I don't yank at her leash to pick up the pace. A promise I made to her putting on my boots. "You lead tonight," I said. Because I never, hardly ever, let the walk just be hers. And my boots aren't really boots, just a pair of rainproof Columbia hikers. They're not even mine. The boots are Roxie's, the green tie-dye socks are Lila's, the fleece came from a clothing swap my neighbor went to last spring, the rain shell from the lost and found at my (almost) ex-MIL's school, and the orange t-shirt with darker orange stripes is the last thing my dad bought for me a couple days before he died. The hat I bought myself.

I want to walk and walk and watch the night until my legs can't carry me, no hurry to get home. Cold wood smoked air on my face, full moon backlighting the clouds and we don't take the usual route down around the golf course, through the park, past the big houses on the ridge because I'm tired of going the same old way. We follow neighborhood streets away from the traffic on Sandy and Fremont to blocks without much light. Turn and turn until I lose track of where I am, a walking dream, not lost, but never sure of my exact coordinates.

It's where I am. Inside and out. A walking dream. Not lost, exactly, but not quite sure.

The dog stops for a sniff. I'm leaning toward a left turn but she goes straight on and I follow. As we walk, I make up rules for our route. Simple: walk as far as you can, do not drop in on friends to say hello, leave the phone in your pocket, when you find yourself headed somewhere familiar turn away, recalculate, keep walking.

Houses and houses all lit up, each it's own complete universe, self-contained and strung out across the galaxy of my neighborhood. I love looking in. Moms and pops and kids around the table, laid back on the couch and for a few seconds I watch the shows they're watching as I pass. I want what they have. Or what I think they have. We do this, idealize other lives, not because we can't empathize with their realities, that they too suffer. We do it because we want to believe in their happiness. Isn't it better that way? We see what we want them to have. We want them to be happy. If their lives are simple and easy, made only of joy, then lives like theirs could be ours, too, right? Attainable.

When my head gets quiet enough it's just my feet hitting pavement, soft wind, traffic in the distance and a far off train whistle blowing out my favorite sound. The lonesome possibility of motion.

(to be continued or more later)