The House Where My Thoughts Live

I sure seem to be doing a lot of pacing around the apartment today. I keep wanting to feel like I am supposed to be doing something else, and that maybe I should stop and try to figure out a direction instead of doing all this pacing that is beginning to make me feel dizzy. I left my typewriter out on the little wooden table in the center of the room for this very reason, so that while I am pacing around the apartment I can feel it looking at me, and be constantly reminded that I can always get back to writing. Writing is just as self-gratifying as anything else I could be doing right now. It's just as fun as a bike ride around the neighborhood, and quite the same, as I have ridden the streets around here enough to be quite familiar with where they will take me. It's the surprise of what might be lurking around the corner that makes it exciting almost every time, guaranteed.

All this pacing and talk of pacing and typing like I am pacing about riding a bike instead of pacing, I'm reminding myself of the sight I saw yesterday while riding my bike across town to meet up with my friends for dinner. There is this one house along the route where there is a circle path in the grass out front. This little circle path in the grass between the sidewalk and the curb was created by a child who walks it in circles—he paces in a loop, barefoot and talking to himself like children often do. He seems happy. He seems normal. But it's the wear in the grass that wants you to think otherwise. He has been pacing this circle in the grass in front of his house before, and before that he paced it some more. It's obvious that he had created this little place on his own, carved out of repetition with his own two feet, over and over, first on top of the cool grass, then later over and over and over until the grass gave way—with little blades stuck between his toes, he hits the ground running around and around until it is polished smoother and softer the longer he goes.

I wonder if this is the house where my thoughts live? I wonder if I have found it after all these years? And after all this time it has been so close that it was easy to miss unless you happen pass by just as the little boy is turning and turning around and around, spinning and pacing, compressing the dirt harder than it was before. I imagine he can't stop himself from turning around and around once he starts going, that he sees his path there at the end of the walkway that leads him there directly from his house, and he has to walk it at least one time more because he has walked it so many times before, and he finds that once he gets started he gets lost in the feeling of starting over and over one more time, and keep it going, one more time—walking in circles, pacing this same-old worn-out path, around and around again, because I can't stop now, I can keep going around one more time, around and around again and again and again again.