SONG OF THE DAY: Come Walk With Me

Did a train/bus trip around the American nation a couple summers back, in the lead-up to our last MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER which we seem to always have for some reason, and one of the two strong takeaways for me from that trip was that borders in terms of nation-states are bullshit, false, and ultimately not a good thing. This does not mean they’re fake, because – like many false things in this age of falseness we inhabit – they’re very real, and have been shoved so forcibly into our physical existence that they’ve put their poisonous tendrils into metaphysical reality. You can feel the difference when you cross these arbitrary borders in many places, because of the variations in manmade authority being enforced. But ultimately, if you get back to the dirt, back to the foundation of being alive, that shit’s false and likely needs to go away.

The one place I have found peace throughout my life, and escaped the chaos, was wandering the woods. This was true as a kid, and as adult, the entirety of that time in a geographic region that’s best described by the term Piedmont Virginia, which was also all once land tended and lived upon by the Monacan. That land has always been home to me, and there’s a feeling to the land that I find comforting, unlike other places, which can also feel beautiful and safe, but do not feel like home in quite the same way.

Our hyper-“connected” lives today allow us to sort of know about so much more, but that knowledge is about an inch deep. I actually know more about people in other parts of the world than the folks that live across the street from me, which is kinda weird to be honest. I think about the difference between a one inch depth of knowledge spread across a large base, like most of us have now, versus a mile deep knowledge of a tiny area, explored greatly. In other words, truly knowing a subject or region or thing, to great depth, as opposed to this cursory wikipedic knowledge we tend to possess for things, accumulating trivia like pokemon. I actually contemplate this a lot as I walk around, a lot, though have not the past two weeks. I live in a city now, and miss the woods, and I guess I’ve sunk into a funk of being too extended in terms of errands and external responsibilities, and not been taking the literal steps each day to just walk, know the region I’m living at right now. Dedication to walks is important, a form of exercise but also a form of meditation, as well as connecting better to where I live. And the better connected I am to where I actually live, the more I actually feel alive. We’re not machines, meant to be productive and spend the entirety of our awake time performing tasks. I’m not “wired” in any way. I’m a fucking person, born and raised and nurtured and comforted in this little corner of the Earth best described as Piedmont Virginia because the name it used to have got lost as the history of western civilization manifested its destiny over top of what was already here. But when I walk, whether in the woods or the manmade places, I hear it vibing, it’s always been there and keeps that hum going, from deep in the ground, sedimented in for centuries, beyond the borders and fences, beyond the flags, beyond the MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVERs which keep happening for some reason. It was here before all that shit, and it’ll be here after all that too.