Day 6 - 4/9/09 (Thursday)
i’ve taken a couple of days off to make my way to visit friends in new orleans, but day 6 is now here:
last night was painful. not in a physical way, but in a “the man next to me (who i will come to know as “stealth” later on in the hike) snored like a freight train” kind of way. like a freight train dragging a bag full of fingernails on chalk boards behind it. there was no sleep. there was only delirium. in a room of 20 or so, i had the unfortunate luck of setting my bag down across from him and for some reason in my sleep deprived mind there sat only one idea: devise a plan for waking the snoring giant without arousing suspicion that i had been the one to do so. what was the solution? well, as someone capable of rational thought one could devise several possibilities i’m sure. but, given my state i merely repeated the same idea over and over for the entire night. the same dream/thought came and went off and on for hours. a water gun. if only i had a water gun. one squirt to the face from my bed to his. it was perfect. even my cover as i ducked back into my sleeping bag to feign sleep. i would purchase one at the next dollar store i found for protection on future nights from the assault of any anonymous snorers. it was surely the only logical solution.
after taking a zero day yesterday (a day with 0 miles) to rest the blisters i am taking off again on the trail. i’ve picked up another pair of socks and perfected my cleaning and cushioning method with the help of the guys here at the shop. hiking with two pair of socks creates a new issue, sweat, which i resolved today by taking a lunch break at an overlook to let both my feet and socks air out for a bit.
there are seldom more than one or two thoughts from the trail on any given day…i am such an external processor that regularly only one or two topics made it into my mind in the lengthy time of just walking. this is really the main reason that most of my stories come from shelters or from town, when there are others around.
- today i thought about paulo and his ideas of the second mind and of the horizon. in my boiled down bastardized version, he says that we always have some thought in the back of our mind, or the second mind. if we take a few moments to focus on that thing and think it through the mind will weary of it and we will find ourselves able to focus back on the present without the gentle nagging at the back of our mind. with regard to the horizon, he says that if we raise our eyes from the ground to the horizon we begin to see things and people that are farther from us as a part of the world that we are impacting and being impacted by. we include more of the world into our story. basically, these have jumped into my mind as i try to figure out how to be present here. i rarely have trouble being present in the moment, but it seems that here i am perpetually thinking of the future if anything at all.
“how do i bring myself to the trail…a lover of music, technology, and the city, here in the woods?”
- “tomorrow is good friday. i realized that after i prayed for god to show me how to pray. my first thought is gethsemane…and then the dark day that followed. i want to try the peter rollins thing about putting myself in the day of the disciples when god was dead. to love him without hope as they did…to love him without any motive for self…without the resurrection.”
one of my current favorite authors, peter rollins, proposes an act in which christians place themselves in the position of the disciples on the day between the death and the resurrection of christ. a day with no hope for them. obviously we return to a world where the resurrection is proclaimed after the act, but to sit in that place and with our love for a god who has died and yet to conquer, is interesting if nothing else…and something that the disciples surely felt.
tonight is my first night in a shelter!
