Pilgrim

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hmorandell/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

I've started writing three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing in the mornings, as recommended by Julia Cameron in her book 'The Sound of Paper'. This book is a series of essay, with tasks, designed to help you get in touch with your creative self. This morning, my writing was strangely different from the usual anxiety and drivel. Here is an edited version.

I ask for genius to run through me like wildfire, as if I were a field of grass left for too long in the dry heat. I want to be in the exotic places of the Australian desert, I want to be in Coober Pedy. I want to be entirely alone, a stranger in an unknown land. I want to go by my own two feet, walking a dusty pilgrimage, marking a route that is mapped out inside me. Following some path that was determined before I was born. To discover things left there for me, by the last cosmic traveller. Walking on the land, but in a parallel dimension. There, but not there. In the world, but not of it. There, but for the grace of god, go I. And I will see my shadow pass before me and lead the way. Strung out in the afternoon sun to a stick figure of immensely skewed proportions.

I never would have dreamed. But keeping my eyes on my feet, I don't question but simply follow. Walking under the hot but cooling sun. Soon it will be cold. So cold I will wonder if the day will come, with its sticky closeness. The night opens up a space akin to agoraphobia. A stark contrast to the day, when you feel you can't get away from your own skin, clung down with humidity. The motion when you walk, is of skin sliding on skin, lubricated by salt water sweat. Sweat turns into air from your back.

You walk the pilgrim's road asking for favours. You're looking for signs from on high. You look into the faces of strangers, searching for a friend to tell you the way. But not one spark of recognition in their eyes. They don't see you, and you start to wonder if you are already a ghost. If you're caught in a time warp on an invisible plane of existence. One way glass, you can see out but they can't see in. You feel strangely liberated, free from their observance. Free to look how you feel and do as you please.

You sag under the heavy, dwindling sun, keeping up a steady rhythm. An insistent forward motion. Plowing through the air thick with your evaporating breath and the flies that cluster around the intake and exhalation of your mouth. Each time you suck in, they are in danger of being drawn into the vacuum. Soul food. Soul flies. To feed the hungry traveller.

You need somewhere to rest your weary head. In the safe and comforting caverns underground, where men have carved a home for themselves. An inversion of the outside world. Contained, like a lunchbox, and dark. A culture for groups to multiply, provide each other company through the night.