Today is August 22. I actually moved into my freshman dorm on Sunday, August 22, many years ago. (I remember this the same way I remember that full-time tuition was $242 that first semester.) I realized the significance of the date this afternoon when I was in the grocery store, pushing my cart past a lot of new college students who have just arrived in town. I wonder how many of them will do what I did and deliberately buy a different brand of laundry detergent than their mother used, just to prove how independent they are. Radicals!
There's been a lot of water under the bridge since that day, but at least I'm consistent -- I still use the same brand of detergent.
Fast forward a few decades to one year ago today. It was Saturday, August 22, and I was visiting St. Louis. Having just finished my last year of coursework in my doctoral program (four degrees later, different school), I was getting ready to walk a few labyrinths as an adjunct to all the book research I was facing. I thought of this as a fun way to enter the dissertation and balance the intellectual work on the labyrinth with an in-the-body experience. It seemed like a good idea to make the research experiential. I just didn't know how literal this would become, and that the whole trip would turn into a gigantic labyrinth.
I went into the first labyrinth on my agenda the next morning, a Sunday, when the grass was covered with a heavy dew, so that I literally got my feet wet. It was a turf labyrinth at a church just down the street from my hotel, and I was nursing an unexpected heartache from the night before along with sincere confusion about what I was doing there. So I did as the church's pamphlet suggested and asked myself that question as I was walking in. It was not pleasant; introspection is sometimes painful. However, it was probably at this point that walking labyrinths became something besides a game for me. I walked out a little later feeling like I might actually have touched something real.
There's been a lot of water under the bridge since that day, but at least I'm consistent -- I still use the same brand of detergent.
Fast forward a few decades to one year ago today. It was Saturday, August 22, and I was visiting St. Louis. Having just finished my last year of coursework in my doctoral program (four degrees later, different school), I was getting ready to walk a few labyrinths as an adjunct to all the book research I was facing. I thought of this as a fun way to enter the dissertation and balance the intellectual work on the labyrinth with an in-the-body experience. It seemed like a good idea to make the research experiential. I just didn't know how literal this would become, and that the whole trip would turn into a gigantic labyrinth.
I went into the first labyrinth on my agenda the next morning, a Sunday, when the grass was covered with a heavy dew, so that I literally got my feet wet. It was a turf labyrinth at a church just down the street from my hotel, and I was nursing an unexpected heartache from the night before along with sincere confusion about what I was doing there. So I did as the church's pamphlet suggested and asked myself that question as I was walking in. It was not pleasant; introspection is sometimes painful. However, it was probably at this point that walking labyrinths became something besides a game for me. I walked out a little later feeling like I might actually have touched something real.
Today I'm looking back on the winding road between that long-ago August 22, the first of my college career; August 22 of last year, my initiation into my dissertation; and today, August 22, 2010, when I did some writing for my dissertation, along with some more walking. There may be a glimmer of order in the chaos, if I'm not imagining it. I don't know where the road will go in a few years (or even a few hours). But I found this motto on a fountain near another labyrinth I walked that memorable weekend, one year ago. If I ever get a tattoo, maybe this should be on it. Solvitur ambulando: "It is solved by walking."
