Getting Out the Door

When there’s an appointment to attend, or a commitment to keep, I am a machine.  Getting out the door is an easy hurdle, entirely taken for granted.  The clock, with its unrelenting progression, sweeps me out the door at the appointed hour.

But, when the commitment is with myself, and the appointment is for Wandering, “getting out the door” is an entirely different proposition.  It is propelled only by self trust.

In these scenarios, walking out the door becomes such a high hurdle it requires a running start.  I have to fling myself through the portal quickly, before I see one more neglected project or unattended chore.  

Before I can talk myself out of it or convince myself it’s best left for later.

Before I can make any more arguments about the weather, the time of day or the available time.  

My only hope is to gather my supplies, put on my coat and let the momentum sweep me out the door.  

Crossing the threshold feels like a triumph.

The trouble with this particular flavor of triumph is that it makes it awfully difficult to then take my foot off the gas so I can slow down to wandering speed.  This kind of unhinging from the linear push of productivity is not something that can be accomplished in one motion like lacing up my shoes or zipping on my coat.  

It is an unraveling.

I take it step by too-hurried step.  I have to ease into ease, fumbling for the portal that allows me to enter the Wandering World, uncoupled from schedules and to-do lists.

I find the entrance in a coniferous bush.  It is inexplicably covered in yellow flours.  In January.  There is nothing in my botanical upbringing that would prepare me for such an apparent contradiction.  I stop in my tracks to study it, thinking perhaps its simply a matter of weeds growing up among the bush (it is not—the flowers are growing directly from the bush itself). 

And, there I am.  A Wanderer.  Curiosity is at the helm and the strictures of time are swept away.  I sink into the textures of this place.  I am still so young in my understanding of what Barcelona is.  

Palm fronds spread in the thin winter sun.  Parakeets squawk noisily over scattered crumbs.  Two flags, decorated in contrasting patterns of yellow and red, flap in the wind.

I am here simply to know more.

This truth sinks into the newly cleaved gap: Wandering is simply a practice I have to invite myself back to—again and again and again.  It is not a task I can check off and it is not even exactly a skill to be mastered.  It is a space to be inhabited.

As I walk home, I feel the air around me just a little bit more gently.  I consider how to cross back through the threshold into home and family and obligations.

This is how I know that I’ve sucessfully crossed over into the Wandering World: when coming home feels a bit like a transition that must be navigated with finesse so as to not burn up upon re-entry.