Walk Around

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I am sitting on the floor, at a pine coffee table I bought from IKEA a few months back. Simmering on the stove is a blend of herbs I formulated for the challenges of my current stage of life.

In the oven is a piece of salmon caught in a distant ocean.

I am typing on a laptop that is essentially a magic rock, made of elements (Aluminum, Copper, Gold, Selenium, Silicon, rare earth metals) from supernovæ that somehow made their way to earth over inexplicable time.

Its quiet in this room, in this condo in a building in downtown. It feels, in some ways, like a library. As possessions go, I could fit everything I own in here in my van and drive away, with plenty of room for a passenger. But I own more things than I have in ten years. I am living a life I never could have imagined.

And yet, amidst all the change, life always feels about the same. I guess because it is me that is living it. There is a strange thread that continues, day after day after day, and that thread I suppose I call myself. Resilient through changes and losses and gainses (sic), it continues while all else falls away.

Until, I suppose, it doesn’t.

But I don’t know what that feels like, and can only guess at the hereafter.

There is so much talk of big shifts this year. “A new world order” as a world leader said. Large movements of distant planets that are said to impact our emotions. A lunar new year with double fire energy.

Everyone seems to be saying: get ready.

Get ready.

Get ready.

But ready for what?

To me, readiness creates tension. Some kind of bracing for a fast start, or some future that cannot be controlled.

But I don’t know what to get ready for. Maybe others do, maybe they know exactly where they are headed and how to do it all.

I own that I don’t. I have no idea what to be ready for. And to fabricate something seems to be fabricating a form of augury that I don’t have an honest claim on.

And so maybe what I need to be ready for, is to release control. To allow what comes.

In many ways, living alone, I am spending more time on my own, with my own thoughts, than I have in some time. And studying medicine, I’m finding yet again that I am on a somewhat solitary, inward journey.

Having come through the most difficult two years of my life, I am now sitting at a precipice, looking into the future. What will I do with all the supposed potential of my current life? I want to create a healing arts center in the high desert that will allow expressions of creativity as a form of life giving culture. And the opportunity for people to come practice healing modalities of many different kinds there.

But to be honest, I don’t even know what healing is.

And some days, I suck at caring for myself.

I have a hard time eating alone, because it’s boring. I like cooking for people.

Living alone and being single in a city can be hard. There are rules here that I have had to learn, and a lot of unhealthy social dynamics that people accept as status quo.

Though I feel that all of this is on some kind of thread of direction that feels real to me. At least as real as anything I’ve done before, with the added aspect of being recognized after this passage as more than just a random artist with a camera, laptop, microphone, and notebook. I’ll have a license, be an “acupuncturist.”

Is this what becoming yourself looks like?

Because to me it feels messy, imperfect, uncertain, misty, painful, lonely, and strange—and this process has been going on for a LONG time.

Sometimes I don’t know where its leading me.

Two springs ago, when I couldn’t sleep more than a couple hours for weeks on end, was having panic attacks and night terrors when I did sleep, felt haunted by my own psyche, like I was an embarrassment to myself, my family and the world—I went to visit my sister in Boise. It was a blur of a trip. I can’t remember really what happened. My nervous system was so dysregulated, that even with my years of mediation experience, I couldn’t get myself into a calm state. I had to stop consuming any form of caffeine for half a year—I went off sugar completely for over a month. I experienced a complete nervous system collapse. This is what recovery from a long term addiction looks like, in case you were wondering.

But there was a moment in the airport on the way, when I was sitting in the atrium area, and I noticed an old man dressed nicely, accompanied by his wife. They came up to me. I was listening, as I often do, to an album, and had recently been inspired to investigate dance by a person I was dating. The track was called Scythe Master by Four Tet. So I was dancing a little in the chair. I don’t know if he saw me dancing, or was just attracted to whatever vibe I was giving off.

But he sat down at the table with me, after asking permission. He looked to be late 80s or early 90s, and his wife had a beautiful German accent. He told me he was a retired doctor, from WSU Medical Center in Seattle. He asked where I was going, and told me about the train trip he had taken north, long ago, through a tunnel, and how the train back then ran straight through the middle of a town in a canyon.

His eyes were full of joy and satisfaction, of a life well lived, I could only suppose. I told him I was going back to school.

“What for?” he asked.

“Medicine,” I said. A half-truth. Because I knew what that meant to him was “MD.”

He looked at me steadily with glistening eyes, and said:

“I taught at WSU for many years. And you can tell who will succeed, and who won’t.”

Then he paused, and looked at me somehow even more profoundly. And his next words were pronounced with gravity.

“You will succeed,” he said.

He reached over, patted me on the knee, got up with a chuckle, and headed off to a funeral of a dear friend.

I sat there, stunned, crying.

How could I, at the lowest point in my life, be recognized for my goodness? For what I had worked so hard to preserve, despite all the barriers and mistakes I’d made? How had this random man seen something that I felt I had to some degree, for so long, forsaken in myself? Somehow, he saw my essential goodness. And knew, maybe, what I had done to hold onto it. And that it was true.

So maybe this year, for me, is about an inward journey. About accepting limitations. About realizing and reveling in progress that is all but invisible to anyone but myself. And loving myself for that, and believing, that even though I don’t know the way, that I’m headed somewhere. And I may not make the right decisions, or even be in the right place, or meet the right people at the right time. But that every day is all that is meant for me. And to be content, and in love with that fact, as much as I can be.

Thank you for listening.

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Without honesty, life becomes a pantomime. And yet it’s hard to know what’s true.

I’ve found that truth unfolds in concentric rings; like ripples in a still pool of water, or the growth of a tree.

And each ring references, yet also takes space from, the previous.

And so only in cycles of time, and in seasons, is a kind of long term knowing revealed.

It’s easy to forget that there is a kind of glacial energy to the every day, like leaves unnoticed piling in drifts in the gutters in autumn. Each day another leaf, and soon enough, there’s a drift of half noticed moments, forgotten days, and the occasional memory that stays forever. And this is life?

Through the threads of being and days, acting and passivity, choices and impositions, life passes.

There’s a phrase in the northern part of Italy, up against the alps: “Tiempo alla passa. Passa il bin.” Which is dialect for: Time passes. Pass it well.

And I came across a phrase, translated from Lao Tze by Lori Dechars, that says:

How do I know the way of things at the beginning?

I feel like I’ve come to a thought about life and love in general recently that feels clear: which is that I should let what loves me do so, and I should love only what I love. And endlessly let go of those things that aren’t this.

In that way, I stop resisting the flow of life, and live out a trajectory that is true. And maybe I’ll gain some energy from no longer resisting the inevitable course that my journey wants to make.

In all this, in writing and in conversation, I try to find the words that are true. And yet its always hard to find the right words. And in that same way, its hard to know when to follow what is easy, or pursue what is hard.

It’s important to remember the rules of life. But I lost my rule book long ago. I do my best to make up whatever makes sense to do, whatever’s true, vital, alive, and real. And to remember that resisting is a form of safety. That it’s good to be safe sometimes, but a life that’s always safe... is maybe one that produces no living.

Thanks for listening ~

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Vic Playlist

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TRANSCRIPT

A long time ago, I used to have some friends who liked to go around the country by riding freight trains

They'd hitch out of Omaha or Lincoln or usually Kansas City and end up in Pennsylvania or Montana, California, Arizona

I never caught a ride with any of them

I didn't really ever have the chance

But I liked to sit with them on the rails and the bridges and watch the trains go by

And they'd tell me about the different kinds of cars and which ones were good rides, where they were going, what you had to look out for

Maybe that's why when I went for a walk recently and found an old abandoned railroad trestle in the western part of Victoria's downtown in Canada, where I live now. I climbed over a fence and went and sat on it for a while

And I've been going back to it, sitting there and watching cars go by, people, a couple of stories up above the ground

I don't really have anything else to say but that, just a funny memory, I guess

Maybe a reflection about living in an urban place because I've lived out in the countryside for so long now

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At the checkout counter, the southeast Asian guy whose country affiliation I can’t quite figure out smiles at me and asks how my day is going. We smile back and forth, subtly catching each others eye, like we are in on the same joke that neither of us know. His haircut is high and tight, he’s got a golden wedding band, he’s always here at apna, the Indian cafeteria and grocery store I come to for cheap chai, dosas, and studying. ....Full text & photos: https://walkaround.run

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Lake

You are a young girl playing on a log with your brother and dog The water in the lake clear and cold and deep, the rocks warm on the bank, little cottonwoods grow on the edge, in the distance: Mountains near enough to cast their shape on the waters surface. The water blue and green some rocks white, moved there in glacial time. One day you will be a woman Living in a city apartment And you will go down to a corner bar And you will meet a man, with curling dark hair And apricot eyes And you will tell him About the pink bathing suit you wore that day About how you called your dog giggles, but his name was Oliver How you tried to get him to float on the log About how warm the sun, and cold the water was About the moment your uncle and giggles fell off the log and shriekedAbout how your brother died that summer And you'd run down a winding road With the wind blowing in one ear,The grass cicadas drone in the other You’ll be shocked to feel so young Yet so far from something long ago Be alarmed and excited at the warm hand of this once stranger Holding your arm as your memories surge And you cry, and are held.

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Transcript

Hello...

I am on the hillside listening to two coveys of quail call back and forth

They've been slowly getting closer over the last 15 minutes, and I think they're going to link up

I saw one group

They had a bunch of fluffy little hatchlings running around

I don't know how big the other group is though

I'm below a range of mountains with snow and avalanche gullies, forests up the sides, larch and fir, ponderosa pine

Ah, wow, a western tanager just landed in a pine tree

I haven't seen one yet this year

That was cool

They're bright, bright orange, bright red, yellow, golden, crazy looking birds

Probably the most brilliant bird in the west maybe

I guess there's lazuli buntings out here too

Or is it indigo buntings?

....that quail is trying to get the other quails to come over

There's boulders on this hillside, and one of my favorite tea plants which is wild tarragon

I gathered about eight stems of it just now

It's a good spot for it

There's a bunch of plants

It's nice to be here

I feel like my mind is already clearing out from the dampness of the coastal, humid, cold Salish Sea

Up here in the high mountains, a divergent part of the Rockies above a big lake

On a glacial moraine

I guess I wanted to offer this today as just kind of way of saying of thanks to people

Everybody that's supported me over the years

Everyone who listens to this podcast

I guess these quail are listening to it right now

I just feel really grateful

I'm kind of a recovering pessimist, you know, so a lot of that has to do with gratitude

Pessimism is kind of this idea that there's no safety. Or that things are never going to really be what you want

And the opposite of that, obviously, is gratitude for what you have

Which is actually simple, but for a pessimistic mind, it's harder than it might seem

And there's a lot to say about pessimism

It definitely comes from damage

Definitely comes from pain

It's definitely a protective mechanism

But I feel like I'm growing less and less pessimistic as time goes on, which kind of relieves a huge burden on a person

I heard a meadowlark this morning as I was running

Discovered some physiological linkages between my lumbar and knee that have to do with nerves

Researched this type of technique called prickly...prickling nerve stimulation technique, which is developed by a Japanese neurosurgeon

And it's a technique that's used to stimulate the nerves in the lumbar spine

Which is developed by a Japanese neurosurgeon

Neurologist named Dr

Nagata, I think

Basically, it's the idea that our skin is a direct door of access to our nervous system

Which means that we wear our nervous system on our sleeves

Which is something to remember, as sensitive humans

I think we're all very sensitive, actually

Unless we've been damaged to the point where we've been able to turn it off, or we've learned how to turn it off, or have been in a mode of having it shut off

And it's really fascinating to note that there can be healing in the skin and in the tissues, just by stimulating the nerves around areas of trauma

And it's interesting to note that, more or less, that's what acupuncture functions on, to access the meridians and the internal organs as well

Kind of working with the nervous system in a lot of ways

I kind of see these quail as part of the Earth's nervous system

As showing what the weather's doing, and where the good grass seeds and the insects are right now

It's quiet here, I like it

It's easy to get away, just be in a quiet space that feels really big

I like that

I like to be able to wander

It feels like it clears my mind

It's starting to rain a little bit

And I've run out of things to say

I'm gonna walk down this draw and back to the van and head into town, get some groceries and finish settling in to my friend's house where I'll be for the summer doing rangeland surveys out here until I go to school in the fall

Got a condo in Victoria

Everything's lining up it seems

I feel really lucky

Thank you for your support, and thank you for listening.

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There’s finality to certain things in life. One kind has to do with naming something. Another has to do with speaking its name.

Listen for some thoughts on quietude in vast spaces.https://walkaround.run/p/owhyee-country

Public lands are in the process of being sold. Call your reps!(202) 224-3121https://www.backcountryhunters.org/take_action#/

Owyhee Canyonlands: Road to 30 PostcardsMore on Northern Paiute Tribal Member, and FOTO Board Member, Wilson Wewa

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Distilled moments of presence in nature More at: https://walkaround.run

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.walkaround.run

Transcript

Hey there

So I am walking the backside of this little meadow, forested area where my mom lives

It's on the edges of old farmland and I'm about to hop over a split rail fence, which is a little awkward, it's a little tall

There's some, a lot of native plants around here, and also some volunteers from elsewhere

Oregon ash and cottonwood, willow, aspen

There's a grove of hawthorn in full flower

This is a place where deer hang out

Floods in the winter

It's marshy where I am right now

I could probably set up a tent back here

It's quiet

I've just come back from the far east side of the state

I was off grid, down in a canyon for four days, in some pretty crazy country, working on a project and just existing really

I think it was probably the least I've interacted with screens and media in maybe a decade

I didn't really have cell phone signal for about a week and a half, pretty intentionally

I basically just didn't turn my phone on unless I needed navigation

And then there were three nights and four days when I was down in the bottom of this canyon where I really didn't do anything at all

I just kind of existed down there

Ate food and had a little fire now and then

Watched the light change

And it was beautiful and hard, easy, lonely, quiet, all the things

And I've been thinking a lot about why I do what I do, my work as an artist and person

I don't want to think about it too much, but doing something like that made me really consider a lot about why I make things, share things, live the way I do

There's just a lot there

There's a lot of assumptions, a lot of reasons I've been doing stuff for years

A lot of time passed, a lot of habits, that kind of thing

Now I'm in the Grove of Cottonwoods

It's kind of a flood grove

Some reeds back in here

Maybe there's sedges

So I don't have a lot of answers about why, but I think I discovered a new language of some kind down in that canyon

Definitely a new relationship with myself

There wasn't much to hide down there

Turns out being alone for long periods of time is pretty tough

I mean, I've done it before, but this was different somehow

It's really good to do, but it's not easy sometimes

Parts of it aren't easy

Parts of it are really incredible

It's always funny to be alone in a place like that and run into a person once in a while and realize that pretty much everybody else is out there with other people

It really got me thinking about the reasons why people do things and why I do things

For me, a lot of it is to get away from loneliness, actually

From being alone with my own thoughts

Partially because they can be boring

Partially because it's really not maybe the healthiest long term to always just be alone with one's own thoughts

But I think that there's something really deep there

And I don't consume much media

I mean, maybe a podcast every two or three days

Sometimes I don't listen to one for a week or so

But something I thought was really strange down there is I had songs that I hadn't listened to for many days just repeatedly looping in my head

And it was almost like my mind was just spinning in neutral, trying to find something stimulating to remember or to latch on to

Or maybe it was just digesting everything

My friend Martin said metabolizing, which I really like

Actually metabolizing the experiences that I've had

And I think it takes a really silent, open, empty space without any direction, honestly

No structure

No one else around

No information

Just the sun rising and setting

And sitting in places like that really makes me reconsider kind of my whole life.

Why do I do what I do? Why do I want to share writing and recordings with people? What's really at the base of all that? What need of mine is being met? Am I doing it as a means to an end? Or am I doing it as an end in and of itself? And I've decided pretty conclusively that I want to do things in my life that are an end in and of themselves

I don't want to be chasing different activities for a lot of my life because they're giving me something that's not inside of the activity itself

And I think I do want to share what I make, but it's difficult to know whether that's worthwhile or not for others

And so I decided that I'll do it for my own joy and my own insights

And if others want to come along for the ride and see what's there

I mean, I've been doing it this way all along, but I think that there's always these shadow sides, like hidden unconscious sides of any activity or anything a person does that aren't fully available to them unless they sit and really delve into the why

And an activity I've been doing recently is asking myself why seven or eight times about something really gets down to the root of what's going on

It's hard

I feel like my mind wants to squirm away from those kinds of inquiries

But I think it's pretty necessary and helpful in the long run

I'm leaning on a tree and there's moss on it

It's young

What happened is it fell over

Probably got blown over

That happened a while ago

The original shoot has since been pruned off by the tree itself

It's broken off and healed off

And right above it, the tree is totally horizontal from where it fell

And right above that crook, there's another strong, young stem coming out at a 90 degree angle

And there is one back further, too, before this one was the main apical meristem, I think is what it's called, which I learned about in my pruning work over the last couple of months

And that one's now 20 feet tall and the roots are still somehow connected

And in fact, the trees put down more roots to stabilize and this tree is probably going to be here a long time now

It's nice to see that when things get knocked over, they can get up again

That's kind of how I felt this last year

Lots of knocking over, getting up again

I think I can hear seven different birds singing right now

Thanks for listening.

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