I use a cane, I count each step, chanting in my mind
...twenty two, twenty three, twenty four.........
I don't know why I do that.
Each day I can get a little further without stopping to rest.
The act of walking has become a brave repetition of small movements
that strengthen me, ground me, and give me ritual.
I've have been considering doing this for years.
Last winter, each time that I completed the walk, I moved a square of white linen into a basket, although I didn't know how or what I was going to do with them. Some kind of path perhaps.
The repetition of day after day of stepping reminded me of stitching. It was as if I was sewing myself to my local landscape. I wanted to make something that referenced the running stitch I guess.
A walking step/stitch.
No more walk.
Instead, I looked at the horizon. I sat on my deck.
I began wrapping those squares of white around around sweet clover. Wrap wrap wrap.
The clover stalks grow as tall as me. In the summer they smelled sweet.
I bent the branches, cut the stalk, and bandaged them with cloth and thread.
I thought that somehow, these could still represent me and my walk. The walk un-walked.
My daughter told me that they looked like bones.
material objects open a door to inner ness
My life path, a patchwork of time.
My path will measures the distance of the walk I can do now and I'll speak more about it when it is installed during the elemental festival in 2 weeks.
Gravity is measured by the bottom of the foot. Juhani Pallasmaa said that
