The Sacred Ordinary 6.1
A Record of Sensual Insights
At the split of the path, where the corners of her mile-wide smile start, I bend down and peel the velcro from each strap of Teva.
The sound reminds me of the Gravitron that appeared each May in my small southern town for the Contraband Days carnival. An excuse for the local fare to disappear for one weekend a year into the swell of obvious pirate tattoos, breathable cleavage, and warm dip spit. To swig Boone's Farm and smoke Capri Ultra Light 100s in relative peace, crouched beside funnel cake stands while giant stuffed alligators in pink shirts and sunglasses swung in synchronous tandem overhead like celestial wheat.
I don’t think they call it Contraband Days anymore. Something about the romanticization of thievery not being ideal for international crime statistics.
The Gravatron.
I like to think my mechanical favoritism sprung from the primal craving for proof that I wasn’t crazy. That it was possible to remain suspended in a state of disbelief while the world spun madly on. If I’m being honest, my teenage body probably just needed a break from the unrelenting effort of erasure. To be held upright by a force beyond itself. A force that promised, for three and a half minutes, a pickpocket of relief from feeling entirely out of control.
I slide the backpack from my shoulders, slide the zip through its undo setting, and shove the sandals unceremoniously inside. The dirt is cool on my fallen arches. My daughter informed me once that walking is an act of massaging the Earth. Insinuating the obvious: that She likes it.
It is this transference of otherworldly wisdom from this home-grown saucer-eyed savior that moves me to walk barefoot on Her back through the green valley. To hologram this seemingly hippie-dippie call for attention into a sacred act of reverence. Who actually gives a shit what the off road bikers think. Whipping around corners and catching me unawares. Pants down in a patch of nettles. The indignity.
It is this divine download that echoes against my bones as I breathe in honeysuckle and enter the portal. That second fiddles the prospects of broken glass, startled spiders, and undetectable, sporish splinters you begin to think may be of the phantom variety.
I decide in the Grand Scheme of things. It is always worth the risk.
Sacred Ordinaries from Crunchy Walking:
