Solvitur Ambulando

                                                                          Solvitur Ambulando

                                                                            by Marco M. Pardi

“It is solved by walking.” Latin. Apocryphal. Often posted at entrances to labyrinths.

All comments welcome.

Every morning I get up, have my coffee, and go for a 1 & 1/4 mile walk with Plato, my furry companion.  Since I don’t shave much anymore he probably thinks I’m furry too.  In cold weather he wears his Kodiak full wrap-around coat; in rain he wear his Nor’Easter raincoat with hood.  Each has a slot in the back to pass the leash through to his chest harness; I’ve always thought leashing a dog by his collar is demeaning to the dog.

The first hundred yards are the hardest; the Voices tell me I don’t have to do this, skipping a day won’t hurt, we can walk around in our woods out back. But, one foot in front of the other.  Apparently others have problems coping with walking; they must have some distraction.  We see people with wires in their ears, noses fixed on a hand held screen in front of them, or babbling like an ambulatory psychotic – until one sees a plastic bauble above one ear.  And, the joggers.  About the dumbest thing a person can do, but the hip and knee replacement industry loves them.

What we do not see – or it may just not be obvious, are people taking in their surroundings.  It’s as if the surroundings are just to be gotten through one way or the other but not appreciated for what they are.  I am reminded of three days in the mid 1950’s when I spent time in a monastery/retreat house literally on the shores of Lake Erie. The days were filled with various religious instruction including the frothing rants of a priest who lectured very graphically about the fires of Hell, even showing a film purporting to show how it would be if we didn’t rid ourselves of impure thoughts. But an adolescent penis speaks its mind when it wants and where it wants.  The nights were far better, with allowance for us – the boys from Gilmour Academy, to walk the large labyrinth in the gardens.  Although ignorant of the term “detox” at the time, I walked that labyrinth with the sensation I was walking through a cleansing shower.  In the gloom I heard other boys cracking jokes, mocking the priest and talking about girls as they bumbled along the stone pathways.  In fairness, some may have gotten something from their walk but what I saw and heard could as easily have been gained in hallways between classes.      

I’ve always had a deep attraction to the Moon, Luna in Latin, Selene in Greek.  Psycho-analysts would say it was a desire to be elsewhere, and I would agree.  But I feel I’ve made an important discovery in my walks.  The Moon at night is clear and well defined, but Other; it is distant in a way other than mere miles. Because everything else is shrouded in darkness it stands alone.  But the Moon in the bright blue sky of morning conveys a deep sense of presence.  In the context of the world I can now see around me it is an undeniable reminder that we co-exist in endless space; it is the larger context in which I, a mere micro-speck, traverse an almost equally small micro-speck I call my neighborhood.  Time becomes irrelevant except as a measure of the Moon’s transit, reminding me at once of the ultimately meaningless way we order so much of our lives, reminding me too my efforts to speed or slow the hands on the clock are meaningless in the cycle and flow of all things.  My walk is a metronomic cadence against which the rhythms of my life are felt, analyzed, and allowed to vaporize behind me.  A destination cannot be reached without a journey, inside or out.  And if I carry all my life baggage with me, have I reached my destination or have I just moved my baggage?

And Luna appears. A stark counterpoint to our houses, cars, manicured lawns, mailboxes, wars on each other, predation on every other living thing, and self-righteous tunnel vision. Never moving an eyebrow, simply being with a Mona Lisa smile that says her perspective is far beyond our tiny self made labyrinth. She is inching away from us year by year.  Perhaps sick of watching Gaia struggle with the melanoma known as mankind.  Who can blame her?

Not given to pareidolia – seeing images in clouds, I nonetheless enjoy watching dawn break, illuminating clouds from below. Some clouds are Wagnerian in their splendor, some more reserved, not sharing their judgment with those below.  Different regions seem to have their own characteristic cloud formations.  Blue water sailors tell you they can predict landfall by the kinds of formations. Before I was married I had an associate who owned a 48 foot motor yacht.  We often cruised to the Bahamas to mix with the international elements who found safe haven there.  But she was killed before I learned much about open ocean cruising.  Some would say she chose the wrong path, intersecting with another in her walk through life. I disagree; quae cursu suo – things take their own course.

The morning clouds put on a spectacular show but I have yet to see any fellow walkers/joggers looking up.  The colors are ever changing, making me wonder how, before photography, artists managed to mix their paints so correctly before the color changed. Must be something about “photographic memory” at work here.

As the temperatures change throughout the year I’m reminded of a question I once asked my major professor, a Psychological Anthropologist from Finland: “Are people from cold climates less likely to be outgoing and demonstrative in greetings when outdoors and, if so, is it that the cold keeps them huddled in their winter gear?”  He said he didn’t know, but there were two linked hypotheses in there that deserved examination.  We never got the chance to pursue these, but I wonder to this day. Unless someone is obviously engrossed in cell phone conversation I almost always greet people Plato and I encounter.  The colder the weather, the shorter the reply although Plato often gets compliments on his very fashionable “Detective” coat.  In warmer weather I’m reminded that insects do not fly, despite our mistaken impressions which actually lead to calling particular insects “flies”.  Most small “flying” insects do not fly; they swim.  Even indoors, wave your hand briskly from side to side.  You will notice air has density.  And when you compare the density in our human context to the density in the context of a normally immeasurably light weight insect, you realize the insect is being carried along on a current – or swimming against it, just as a swimmer in a fresh water lake (less dense) or a salt water ocean (more dense).  Beginning SCUBA divers learn this difference, sometimes at cost.  That mosquito did not fly to you, it swam to you. Want an insect free evening on your patio? Forget the expensive zappers and the poisonous lanterns.  Place a simple box fan so the air currents prevent the insects from swimming to you.  Getting out of our contextual perspective opens the world in innumerable ways.

So no matter the weather, each walk is a realization, an experience of the real.  Also known as Enlightenment.  What’s real does not change because we realize it. The face in the mirror does not change because we see it for who it is.  Mindfulness is full realization of context.  My morning walk, shedding the aches and pains of aging while experiencing the morning songs of birds around me is not a walk to a destination. With each new step it is an affirmation I am where I am.  As long as I think I have not arrived I will deny myself the realization of who and where I am.  And that denial shuts out life.