1/6/2011
I took a walk. Before I left the house, I had resolved to walk far away; to go on an adventure. By the time I walked out, which was around 4:40, by the time I walked a hundred feet away from my house, turning to the left corner, the desire to go on an adventure had sunk.
I had no desire to go exploring. There was nothing.
The sun was already taking cover beyond the horizon. The sidewalks were empty and desolate. The dim but faint glow of the sky did not compel me to go anywhere.
So I simply went to the usual place--the Valley. It's my secret base, though practically everyone gets to it. It's sort of accessible--if you walk through a short, forest-y path with the backs of houses lining both sides. Or, along the mouth of the street that goes into my neighborhood. It's right there, at the front, cloistered by rows of coniferous trees.
In the summertime--that is the best place to view sunsets, if not across the highway along Westfield. But this is the best place to view sunsets that's closest by. I used to keep note of what time the sun set everyday during the summer last year and planned accordingly.
Today was the first time in seemingly ages that I had taken a walk to the Valley.
It's a gentle, sloping...valley of sorts. A lonely little place to watch sunsets, to watch cars go by, to see a rare sea of green (or yellow, in this wintry case).
Somehow, whenever I go to the Valley, my mind is devoid of thoughts. Blank, for the most part. I don't think of troubles, I don't think of things to do, I don't really think much of anything or do much besides walk and walk, and then stand at the crest, atop the little hill, and let my eyes run over the grassy plain and comb the horizon beyond.
Today, I unwittingly made a new discovery. A discovery on perspective.
I felt tired.
And so,
I lay on the cold, gravelly sidewalk, flat on my back.
Supinely.
Naturally, I looked up.
Ah.
It was all a sea of blue.
A beautiful blue that was so familiar--I had seen it before, yet it seemed like so long ago.
Winter blue.
I was looking up at the ocean, a pale and cold expanse of azure, stretching beyond and beyond infinitely.
It must have been a mixture of things; all the right things, that made me feel different.
I was lying on, as I said before, cold gravelly ground. The path was hilly. I was lying with my head at the base of the hill and my feet at the top. So essentially I was lying downhill supinely. It was all a very funny feeling--you know, peculiar.
It reminded me of that one part in The Great Gatsby:
"Or perhaps I had merely grown used to it, grown to accept West Egg as a world complete in itself, with its own standards and its own great figures, second to nothing because it had no consciousness of being so, and now I was looking at it again, through Daisy’s eyes. It is invariably saddening to look through new eyes at things upon which you have expended your own powers of adjustment."I wasn't looking at my world with the usual eyes. Through Daisy's eyes, this time, hm.
I can't say if it was saddening or not.
But it was a moment of clarity.
And then I made my way back home, slowly.
I hadn't realized that my fingers had turned numb and red from the stinging and bitter cold, until I lifted my camera to take this photograph.
