We’re sitting on a dock in Malindi, waiting for the next bus to take us back home to Nairobi. Our conversation drifts to a question — of how much we feel we are in the past, present, or future.
When it comes my turn, I remember saying — apportioning myself — to 90% in the present, 10% in the future.
I think of this now, as I renegotiate my distribution.
Walking the path, many paces behind my dad & sister as we hike the skyline, I leave myself this voice note. It comes to me on the drift of a car ride of distracted silence. As I consider my own state of fog and stuckness.
In times of meditation and alike, I’ve begun to let myself wander. The spaces of my own memory, and the slimmest glimpses of what my future could be.
How much it serves, and how much it cements — I can’t be certain. It’s explainable to compare; to elevate the calm I felt on that dock in Malindi. But there is something to be earned, in being with the past. If not peace, then perhaps meaning.
In any case, as I leave myself the voice note, I remind myself to be in the present. And enjoy the hike.
The present brings me nothing but the sensation of cold & prickling legs. It’s a familiar reaction. Fleece-lined leggings are no help. I still remember a friend diagnosing with chastise and care, telling me to build more cardio into my routine.
I think about how I dare not trust myself to hike distances with friends, for fear of falling behind. Encumbered by wavering steps and unreliable knees.
Eventually, we decide to turn back. As they begin to think toward dinner, I break and erupt into a run. It doesn’t relieve my irritation. But perhaps it shortens the discomfort.
Back in the warmth of the car, as we navigate the winding road:
“I haven’t seen you run like that, since Newport.”
I get a flash of pavement along the pier, completely forgotten by my conscious brain.
With levity, they help me reminisce and rediscover. It’s true. Before my accident, I was a runner. How funny that what was part of us, can feel so foreign.
I briefly consider moving to Hawaii, to reclaim my enjoyment for running. Time lived in tropical climates has acquainted humidity as a friend.
How easily we forget, that we are not fixed.
I recognize that even this lesson is simply the old, made new. I’ve been having a lot of these lately. A breath of self-discovery, the acuteness of which leaves me gasping — until I find the same revelation, already articulated years earlier, in a scrap of writing.
We lose knowledge silently, submerged in our own memory.
Inside of all of this, I rediscover why I write:
I write to leave a trail of myself, for myself.
I think it’s an essay for another time. For now, I’m choosing to just let the fragments breathe. Trusting they are enough to be recombined into something — someday — that makes sense.
