The Power of Keep-walking

 Dear Future Historian,

I met a miracle engineer.

He popped up at the park, I was sitting with my friends in. We had a portable speaker playing Jazz. It was my first day out after a long time and after I asked from the universe that day for it to be therapeutic. I felt kinda drained lately.

Some days ago, I was washing dishes and I felt weak and a bit dizzy. Then again, the next day, while walking up the hill and returning from the supermarket, carrying 2 heavy carrier bags, I wanted to sit right there on the bench of the park I was passing by, and just wait there till teletransportation would be invented. I was thinking about my willpower theories. My devoted contemporary and future readers will be familiar with my ideas about the power of keep-walking.

However, I remembered that Hope was the last evil in Pandora’s box. How do you explain that? What if I am fooling myself? Willpower can’t engineer miracles. Only in stories. Myths. Made up fantasies. Wishful thinking.

I refused to believe that. Consciously, I declared to the universe that I refuse to believe that. Nevertheless, I warned it that I can’t control my subconscious. And, my faith doesn’t seem in good shape there. It’s going to have to do better than keeping the silent-treatment attitude. I have already made clear that if the story is that we are the subjects of a Godly authoritarian narcissistic dystopia, then I’m not interested in submitting to such a God.

People either don’t believe in God(s) or they fear and unquestionably obey him/her/them. Not me. No. I’m an agnostic that chooses to believe in the gods. But, refuses to let fear be my guide on my spiritual investigations. I choose truth and love to be my guides. In which case I should be honest with my gods. Even when that means questioning not just their existence, but even their motives.

I met a living legend at the park. One of Joseph Campbell’s hero myths.

So, we sit at the park, on the grass, jazzing the surroundings. And, the calmest and happiest smile comes and approaches.

‘I like your style and your music,’ he said.

‘Thank you, do you wanna hang out with us?’

‘Sure.’

He had two scars on his neck. We asked. He said he was in a witness protection scheme.

‘They tried to cut my throat, but it didn’t work,’ he said.

We kept chatting, listening to music, inhaling the sunny-day-in-the-park.

‘If you could choose to live at any point in history, when would you be born?’ my friend asked.

‘I am fascinated by stories,’ I said. I’d choose to live now. Cause never before had we had such a vast access to an almost endless number of stories. Plus, it would be a terrible idea to be a girl at any other point of history.’

‘What about pre-history?’ they asked me.

‘No Netflix,’ I said.

The sun didn’t stay still. My friends got hungry.

‘Before we go, I have to ask you something. I might never see you again, and I must know. I told you I love stories. Survival stories are my favourite. Have you ever contemplated on why you survived? I mean, I’m happy you have, but why/how did you? Was it mere chance? Or was there something that contributed to your survival?’

‘Yes. Yes, I have thought about it. I was on a road trip, and I went to visit my grandfather’s grave. I was talking to him for a long time, and then I continued my journey. I slept inside my car that night. In the middle of nowhere. A gang saw my car, and being unaware that someone is in it, thought it was a great opportunity to steal it and use it for their purposes. When they got in the car it was too late. I had already woken up and saw their faces. So, they decided that the best thing to do, given the circumstances, would be to torture me, then drive me to the desert, and cut my throat.

I was quite surprised that I was still conscious when they did cut my throat, but I thought that this was not an information that they should have. So, I just played dead. They left me, and I heard them walking, starting the engine, and driving away. I opened up my eyes, but I was frozen. I could not move at all. So, I did the only thing I could do. I prayed. In a while, I felt like someone was lifting me up, and I managed to get on my feet. I cut of my sleeves, and I tied them around my neck. The doctors later said that I had lost 35% of my blood.

I saw a tree, not too far away. I thought that I would probably die soon anyway, but I wasn’t willing to just wait for death to take me. I wanted to fight it at least. I decided to walk to that tree. Against the odds, I was still standing when I reached it. So, I kept walking towards civilization. I still didn’t think that I would survive, but as long as I could walk, I would walk. Because I was losing so much blood, I started hallucinating. I still had consciousness of my situation, but I was seeing visions. Visions of a future that was taken away of me. Visions of the family I could have created, the places I could visit, the things I could have done.

So, I kept walking. Walking to claim that future. Walking till I couldn’t walk any more. Or maybe, even if I couldn’t anymore then at some point I would walked enough to be found.’

‘Wtf!’

‘!’

It was like someone was reading my blog and sending me the perfect farce.

Like Jesus did with Thomas, he let me touch his scars.

A real legend. A real miracle engineer. A real superhero.

A real dude, at the park, that was dead, and then he somehow managed to rise again. Moreover, he bumped to me, at Easter, to tell me his resurrection story.

If I believe that gods are created by humans’ worship-powers, then how on Earth have I dismissed the idea that the god I broke up with in my 20s is one of the most worshiped ones. The only one that managed to separate history in two; before and after him.

When I was about 8, we went with a lot of people from our church outdoors for a huge Easter barbecue. In Greece at Easter the main dish is lamb on spit. To be evenly cooked, it has to be constantly turned, during the many hours of its cooking. On a sunny Easter day, being next to the burning barbecue pit, it feels like you’re being cooked yourself. Everyone took his/her turn to play the role of the yet-uninvented-electrical-cook-on-a-spit. Ten minutes each were enough. It was a big gathering. A girl just two years older than me sat there to turn one of the lambs.

‘That’s the most fun thing I’ve ever done,’ she said.

‘Can I try that one?’ I asked the lady that was turning the other one. She was already getting sweaty, so she welcomed the idea to find an heir to this important role.

The girl on the other side seemed even more excited with the idea that kids will feed the adults.

‘Let’s not get up till the lambs are ready,’ she said.

I was also having fun. Not so much with the work itself, but with the idea that I could do something as well as an adult could do. I had my doubts, but if the adults were really ready to let me in charge of half of our main plate, then maybe they also thought that I could do it. I had to make sure. Maybe they just expected me to quit soon. That’s exactly why they’re not stopping me. Only way to find out would be to actually stay there and boil from the fire and continue to turn the lamb even after my arm starts to hurt, and ask for the miracle of determination to appear, or something. And so I did. All the way through. For about 1,5 hours.

The girl of course on the other lamb left after a few minutes.

But me? I live my life doing ordinary things as if I fight the archetypical Dragon of Chaos. And, even if I struggle sometimes to be able to hide some days that high-functional does not mean that I’m not struggling to function… still, I am willing to ‘keep walking’ and live my hero myths if that’s what it takes to walk home up the hill with the supermarket carrier bags or wash the unrealistically big pile of dishes (when 1 hour ago everything was washed. What on earth is happening in that kitchen is almost supernatural!)

And then I meet that dude at the park. LOL

I thought to use his story in a short story. Something maybe with a suicidal guy that goes on a road trip before he shoots his brains out. During that trip, he gets kidnapped and survives with his throat being cut, but with a change of mind about life that made him decide to live. A kind of determination that gets magnified by someone that just some hours ago was planning his last words on pocket notebooks and napkins, spending his last money on cheap breakfast and cheap wine.

It would go something like that:

He took the decision to kill himself one day at the lunch break in a twelve-hour shift. It was more like an epiphany than a choice.

While he was chocking on his packed-lunch sandwich because he was chewing in a hurry to manage to have a fag before he had to return inside...

I didn’t know how to continue.

I always dreamed to write stories. Essays were not my cup of tea, but when life does not let you shut your door and write some hours every day, or even once a week for gods’ sake, then freewriting diaries might be your only hope. Plus, stories like that are way too good to be disguised in irrelevant plot inventions. Especially when they’re written without childcare.

Either way, that is the only way I can write the story given my circumstances, and I will embrace the interruptions.

Either way I have to go now. Go, and keep walking.

I’m leaving the conclusion part for you my dear reader.

Stay safe and take care.

Lotous Michalopoulou

(Me later, that day)