Hot Girl Walk, but make it existential

Do you ever feel like everything is so goddamn heavy all the goddamn time? *woof*

I gotta tell ya, my life is pretty freaking privileged and blessed, all things considered, but, hot dog, there are some days when my brain has Had Enough. I think too hard and I spiral too deep and then I’m just stuck in this endless, lifeless void.

Can a girl get a little more freaking glitter and tenderness in the world and a whole lot less to-do list energy?

Like, I was getting a tattoo this week and my artist said, “I mean, I’m tattooing a composition notebook with a rainbow sticker and we’re watching Ghost Hunters. It’s not that serious. It doesn’t feel real.” And I responded, “But it is.” “But it is,” they echoed, like we’d just unlocked some secret to the universe. And maybe we did.

That’s the kind of energy I need in my life.

As I was adrift in all this murkiness, I remembered who else gets this but none other than Mary Oliver herself. She was a big walker, you know? I imagine her hiking for hours through nature with a pocket notebook, sun hat, and cargo khakis. I want to be Mary Oliver when I grow up.

I don’t live near nature; I live smack-dab in the middle of metro Detroit. But there are a lot of sidewalks and trails around here. So I went for a Hot Girl Walk. If you’ve been around here for a while, you know I’m really more of a Sad Girl Trudger. I didn’t unlock any new secrets of the universe, but I did feel a whole lot better afterward. And ain’t that a conundrum: the things we fight the most usually have the best effect on us.

Here, read Mary Oliver’s poem, “Wild Geese.”

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Sometimes the task at hand is to just keep our brain, our feelings, company and not solve them. There isn’t always a solution. There isn’t always a happy ending. And that’s okay, too.

Amen.
And fuck it.
And onward.