1001 Nights Cast

One foot in front of the other, step by step, one step at a time. Commonly used phrases given to the recovering, the grieving, those needing to be patched up. And although he knows these little phrases are not meant to be taken literally, he walks. One foot in front of the other, step by step, one step at a time.

He walks, and he walks. He cannot help but walk.

Although he thinks about it a lot, he is not sure if he is walking to her, to the fact of her being gone, or walking away from it, resisting it, not believing in it. He does not understand why he walks, but the steady slow rhythm he has created over these last few months draws him onwards, and in whatever direction he is going, he feels it is the only thing he can do.

He used to run, kick balls, play. Used to yell and jump and ignore the sharp pains in his back and his knees. He used to enjoy speed, being fast, being strong, highly mobile. But without her, his energy has gone. He does not like speed anymore, does not want to play, does not want to go fast. It is the simple rhythm of the walk that fills his days now, exhausts him, helps him sleep. Walking, slow and steady, keeps him alive.

He walks, and he walks.

On his walks, he takes in the harbour foreshore, its industry, its parklands. He takes in beauty and ugliness and can no longer tell you which is which. He walks through the university, looking up at its old, hallowed buildings, the gargoyles recently cleaned and sparkling, made stranger without their cloak of black dirt. He walks through avenues of trees and bare streets full of children yelling at each other, teasing, playing cricket when the cars aren’t roaring past. Such different scenes and landscapes he travels through.

On his walks, he notices that he is usually the only male walker. His gender jogs, panting and sweating. He wonders if men walking alone, without a dog, look suspicious, creepy. Women are the natural walkers, the owners of this activity. He worries that he looks at the women walkers too long. They are women he’d like to take home, hold, because they look a little like her, or nothing like her at all. He tries to walk past them quickly, afraid of all his maleness and anger and upset. He is afraid of forgetting her with all this wanting of strangers in the park.

He walks, and he walks.

This walking, it’s like a drug. It’s a compulsion. He can’t help himself. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, step by step. He wakes in the middle of the night, after a dream of her, and feels that he must walk. He gets out of bed and pushes himself out into the freezing blackness. He is unafraid of what might happen in the dark. He is strong and able to defend himself. Fuck them, he thinks of the yet-to-exist knifer in the park.

If he sleeps through, he wakes early in the morning, as the sun is rising, and he walks. He watches the new day as it comes upon him. This is the thing that most perplexes him: that the days still come, that the earth still turns. It upsets him that people, that he, still find this newness beautiful. How could anything new be lovely?

He walks, and he walks.

He avoids hills. He will walk a mile to avoid a slope. It is not because he’s scared of the physical effort. It is just too much like life—everything steep, hard, slow. He prefers the flat, the sameness of a steady path. And anyway, when you reach the top of a hill, you can only go down, and that is what life feels like too.

He enjoys going in circles. Sometimes, he finds a football oval and walks around it, lap after lap, for an hour or more. He likes to walk past the start and finish, over and over again, as if at point A, he will find that life begins again. If only life would. He hates its ongoing trajectory.

He walks, and he walks.

It is lonely, this walking life. He feels his legs, sore and hard, and it hurts him that they have untangled themselves from her, that she untangled herself from him. He is rootless without her, lonely without her. He sees his grief counsellor once a week, who tells him he’s making progress, that he is doing well. He sees his parents, her parents, when he can, and he feels uncomfortable in their presence but he does it because he cannot bear the worried phone calls. He wants them all to feel as if he is getting through. Perhaps, some days he is.

He loved her, he loves her, he wishes she were here. She loved to walk.

He walks, and he walks.