I’m writing this with a pained abdomen, my self-inflicted misfortune the result of a late-night indulgence involving sticky sweet potato chips and an egg-and-hashbrown-filled steamed bun married to potent chili sauce.
Ouch. It shouldn’t be this way. It’s definitely NOT often this way.
I try to keep my health in order. I don’t go out of my way to do this; avoiding too much food, too little sleep, and dehydration is all within reasonable discipline and capacity. Added to this is my attuned disposition to walking, which I do in the park near my house whenever the opportunity arises.
I first became attached to the idea of parks twelve years ago, when I was twenty-six. I lived next to a magical one then, whose narrative included stray cats, wispy afternoon lunches, and a quirky family of ducks.
I would walk around this small park often, mostly at night when shadows came out to play. You see, before the age of twenty-six, I couldn’t contemplate walking in a park at any time of day, so real were the mortal dangers of doing so where I’d lived previously.
Over the course of those walks and the years that followed, I came to find that parks can be portals, which, synonymously, I still describe parks as. In a safe, city-bound environment, walking among people in lush natural settings is a gateway to the subconscious, which, if accessed, can offer a hyperspace route to the imagination that potentially leads to a more balanced reality than the everyday one.
I’ve been walking in parks ever since, and, sans all ideas of arrogance and/or intellectual frivolity, I often encounter visions. These visions do not materialize literally: ghosts, hallucinations, etc., but rather as concrete concepts whose details flow automatically from their conception. If this is in any way difficult to believe, read my first novel, And The Birds Do Sing. Not only was the storyline conceived in a park, but the book also pays homage to them, such is the effect these natural spaces have come to play in my life.
It’s no coincidence that my writing career has coincided with my forays into park life. Upon realizing that deeper levels of reality exist, I have gained the confidence to put my ideas in writing, and in doing so, I have broken down innumerable barriers within myself, revealing how beautifully nuanced terrestrial existence can be and feel.
Parks – both mental and physical health-wise – are bastions of truth amid the confusing narratives of modern life. They are a bridge between our child and adult selves, portals offering fluid passage between the known and the unknown.
And if you can avoid junk food fiestas before stepping into them and surrendering to their holy lessons, you’re on a road to improved self-awareness.