Days 29-31: Blank Face

OLDTOWN, MD —

April 22-24, 2024

Days 28-31:

“Nothing that can be said in words is worth saying.” - Lao-tse

A few weeks ago, Peter Markus, the author who will be hosting the Certain Steps Writing Workshop, sent me an essay by A.R. Ammons titled “A Poem Is a Walk”.

“Here’s something to think about as you walk,” he said in a text.

With my tent now pitched not a quarter mile from the West Virginia state line, I’ve walked 320 miles along the ADT, and I’ve thought a good amount, too. However, in my life’s worst moments, I’ve spent considerable chunks of time I’ll never get back thinking and not moving—paralysis by analysis.

When trauma speaks, it often says, “do not.”

Three days ago, as my Brooks Cascadia’s lug patterns treaded dirt and gravel along the sun-baked C&O Trail more than mid-way through another 20-mile haul, my mind brimmed with thoughts from my past. A symphony of agony pulsated through my legs up to my head, where it played its orchestral work as my life’s lowlights in vivid form: crippling perfectionism, the incapacity to process rejection, the inability to finish what I start, fear-driven self-seeking behavior, self-hate, self-pity, bullshit, etc.

Thought after thought after thought.

‘I shouldn’t be having thoughts like this yet. I’m too early into this thing. Think of the people you’re doing this for. Where is this coming from?’

As tears welled up in my eyes, I kept my head down so the tip of my cap covered my face from oncoming cyclists. Once they began to run down my cheeks, I realized hiding them was futile, so I returned my gaze to the road dead ahead—blank face.

In this brief moment of not giving a shit about being seen in my weakness, the symphony of agony came to a sudden cessation. I did not feel pain in my body, for my body was not there; nor did I experience psychological anguish, because I did not exist. It was a totally ubiquitous flow state expressing itself through us all: the drifting Potomac to my left, the still C&O Canal to my right, the sun-lounging painted turtles resting atop dismembered tree branches within it, the gliding ospreys in the sharp blue sky overhead, the cyclists zipping past, my mind, my body, and the road were all one, a silence more perfect than silence. A clean slate. Self-compassion.

Maybe A.R. Ammons was right; perhaps a poem is a walk.

That moment has walked, with interruptions of Zach-ness, the last three days.

As it entered into Oldtown, Maryland looking and smelling homeless at the threshold of the West Virginia state line, a young white boy, maybe four, with blonde hair and blue eyes stood along the last few steps of the ADT’s C&O route with his grandmother, guarding the American South.

“Big hike,” he said to me, not asked.

I turned to the boy. His slate was clean with compassion, and I was inspired by him.

“I love you,” he said—blank face.