A Path to Nowhere
On the 773rd day, I woke up early and exhausted. Saturday morning in our house in Kulcs with a busy, tiring week behind me.
Evaluating our participation in a brand new mobile app, I had heated phone discussions, a lengthy meeting, made the first steps joining in. I prepared the yearly post-calculation of 8 releases. I was looking for a small theater for a video shoot. I called a partner of ours who helped in similar projects before. No answer. I e-mailed him. Nothing. I asked our mutual friend on messenger about him. He left the company. I got a new contact. I called him as well. No answer. A few hours later he returned my call, but my mobile was muted, because I was sitting in a meeting. Right after leaving the office, I called him again. No answer. He called me again just to give me the name and phone number of his colleague in charge. I called her to learn that a third party company operates the hall in question, but the owner died recently. A new concept arose. Film the video in a church. I struggled inside. Does our art and intentions fit that place? I had to share my doubts with our artist. My messenger note led to a long phone conversation. Finally I e-mailed the cantor of the church. In the meantime, I submitted the full-year statistics to Mahasz, the Hungarian Recording Industry Association. Then I saw a post on the new single of a former artist of ours based on a photo we own. Should I call him? Should I live with it? All these nuances on top of the weekly routine.
I was still dizzy by these experiences.
I stayed up late Friday night. I had to feed the fireplace to warm up the house, where the temperature fall to 9,4 degrees Celsius in our absence. During the vigilance, I made significant progress in finishing my next article for HammerWorld magazine. I went to bed after midnight. I get up sometime after 4 o’clock, put wood on the fire. Being unable to fall back asleep, I decided to start my daily walking meditation around 6. There was dark outside, and the fog dimmed the pale street lights. Our street is the last one equipped with public lights. When I leave it and head for the Danube, the road disappears in the gloom of the dawn. It had rained at night. Now the fog is sifting unpleasantly. I feel tired. The unexpected noise of the birds in the undergrowth startles me. Here and there, hounds are growling low. I hear a watchdog even in a garden I do not remember had one. I hope it is lurking behind the invisible fence.
At the end of my zig-zag descend to the Danube, I reached a street with lamps again, and it started to dawn. The river floods. It already reached the bottom of the wooden stairs leading to the gritty riverbank. The strand is invisible because of the inundation; the other side of the river disappears in the mist.
I walk my usual circle in the village. Every house, garden, parking car is familiar. Surprisingly lot of things have changed since my past week’s stroll. Here is an emptied cottage lawn: only the enormous heap of sawdust reveals the giant trees’ fate. I am shocked by their absence. The void is painful. Further down my route, there is a brand new fancy fence, where the row of thuja dried out last summer. Two new building sites emerged on the top of the hill among the villas. My mind is clearing, I enjoy my walk, contemplating on the smallest details of the neighborhood.
The final section of my route leads to a plough field I have to cross to reach our street. People trod a narrow path through this area. I feel guilty when I use this trail, but I cannot resist this track’s beauty. Today it is particularly spectacular. The footprints disappear in thin air on the top of the hillock. I stop to take a photo.
At home, while my wife prepares breakfast, I post my picture to Instagram. When I give a title to a post, I usually google the expression to see what kind of artwork, poems, songs, films were born in this context.
The first three search results include a song from Groundfold, an album from Depressive Mode, and a post on the blog called Spiritual Awakening Process. I have enough time only to perceive the name of the page with a brief smile because Andrea served the hot sandwiches. I have no time to read the article, and recognition slips away. We break our fast, then head for the Saturday market in Dunaújváros.
From the sixth or seventh garden from our house, an angry small dog flies at our car, runs ahead of us, next to us, casing, propelling our slowly, carefully advancing vehicle for long. At the end of our street, I see a man working on the road on the other side of the crossroad, arranging plants in front of his garden. Not to startle him, I don’t carry on to the next street but turn left. I still had to recognize the white dogs in the garden at the junction who bark at us every time we walk by their territory. At this moment, a strange feeling hits me. I just walked on that route half an hour ago, and I cannot recall any detail of that 1,5-kilometer walk. Nor the man, nor the dogs, nor the pig we like so much. Nothing. That path across the field really led to nowhere.
On returning home, I search for the blog post again:
There is nowhere to go on the spiritual path.
