desire paths
walk with me & stream my consciousness
I’m stepping into a day that looks colder and whiter than it actually is, and I should be working but I’m not.
Out on the square, a few kids are playing football. Some of the fathers have joined in. Mostly though, the world is quiet. I can hear an aeroplane, its engines humming high over the houses.
Let’s go for a walk.
We’re crossing the street, cutting through the small park behind Horta metro station. It’s empty save for two men drinking beer, although it’s barely noon. Just one can each, it looks like. A little pick-me-up.
Flowers are still blooming here even though it’s mid-October. Delicate ones, bright pink. I’m not sure what they are. Geraniums, my phone claims. Most of the other flowers have already died, leaving just dry stems and blackened, petal-less heads standing sentinel. I’m not sure it counts as mindfulness if you have to ask your phone what the flower is.
Let’s head up the street past the Saint-Gilles town hall, and then take Avenue des Villas up to the park; the first park. The sun briefly breaks through the clouds, glinting off the gilded statues on the town hall’s domed roof, which I’ve never properly noticed before. Gilded angels.
It’s Sunday and people are doing chores. The launderette is packed: people go in, come out with blue IKEA bags full of washing. Others return from the market clutching baguettes or bunches of flowers. It’s the sort of autumn day where nobody really knows how to dress. Some people are in T-shirts, bare legs, slippers without socks. Others, like me, are wrapped in wool.
Avenue des Villas is one of the most beautiful streets in this commune. A ribbon of wild, overgrown plants separates pedestrians from parked cars. A woman walking ahead of me clears her throat and spits the phlegm into the flowers. Then she takes a few steps, spots a lavender bush, rubs the leaves between her fingertips and smells them. That’s mindfulness too. Stopping to spit in the flowers. Smelling them after.
Something’s going on at the St Alène church. Twenty, maybe thirty children are gathered outside, dressed in white, wearing tiaras and sparkly shoes. They’re holding roses and balloons. I can hear singing coming from inside the church. This seems like a big deal in these small lives, though I’m not sure what’s happening. I stare just slightly too long. A little girl stares back at me. Her eyes are dark wells.
We’re crossing into the park now. I can already hear the parakeets filling these treetops. I know they’re not native here, they don’t belong here, but I love seeing them, these bright flashes of green, love hearing their loud complaints. Back in spring I saw them make their nests. Their fledglings will have left by now, or they’re about to. Maybe that’s what all the commotion is: the young ones flying out.
It’s a mild day. Nice to be outside. The leaves are very yellow, sometimes very red. I love it when the crown of a tree is just one colour. During a guided meditation yesterday, the voice in my ear said the body is a field of sensations. That’s what I’m thinking about now, seeing these trees, these fields of their own colour standing shoulder to shoulder.
A flock of pigeons flies up. Runners appear behind me. City parks are always so full of life. I see a pine split like a tuning fork. Lining the path, there’s a shrub I recognise from childhood: an evergreen with white berries. It grew wild at the Ardennes campsite where we camped every summer. We’d pick the berries, throw them on the ground and splatter them under our feet. One, two, three, several at a time. The common snowberry, my phone knows.
Okay. I’m going to pick one of these berries. I’m going to pick one and crush it under my shoe the way I used to when I was a kid, and see if it still brings me joy in the same way.
Snowberry.
There we go.
Ah, no.
It’s rolling.
It’s rolling downhill.
I have to follow it down like an idiot.
Let’s head up to the panorama. From there we’ll see the hand-in-hand parks and far beyond. The Brussels skyline: the Midi tower, the Atomium, even the Basilica, so close to where I should be working now, but am not. I’m here because I need to replenish my energy, whatever that means. I’m not sure I like that word; it sounds too much like one simple action, like filling up the Brita.
This is the first time I’ve gone on a walk without music or a podcast. Just looking around, talking into a voice recording. I usually need a voice in my ear, something from outside to think about, to tell me what to feel. If I happen to find myself in nature, I’ll turn the volume down and listen to the birds, just to get the hit. Then I’ll press play again. Micro-dosing peace.
Now, though, I’m noticing things. It’s the kind of weather where it seems as though you’re inside a cloud. Whenever the breeze picks up, all these golden leaves come flying. They’re falling very fast. In just a couple of weeks, there will be no leaves left. Just the bare outlines of the trees and then months and months of colourlessness. The light has this very diffused quality, ricochetting off the pale facades of buildings that are almost pearl-like against the clouds.
We’re moving into the other park. The Duden Park, which is more like a tiny forest. Dappled sunlight falls on the path ahead of me. When it hits the leaves, it makes some of them still look impossibly green and fresh, full of sap.
It’s very quiet here. Just birdsong and wind in the trees. A magpie sits on the path ahead. When I was young, our neighbour kept one as a pet. Pipo was an assertive bird, who’d always try to attack or provoke us. We’d all run away, shrieking, terrified. This one seems friendly and moves out of the way for me. Sits there, watches me pass.
Just off the path, two adults and a child around ten are running circles around a young, yellowed tree. They’re throwing a ball around, roaring with laughter. On days like today, these parks are full of people who really love being alive, or at least seem to be having an okay time being here. I can observe them and figure out how to feel that way too. I’ve always been a visual learner.
We’re approaching the campus of the film and photography school, which sits in the middle of this park. There’s fencing and cleared gutters, rubble piled up. I briefly considered enrolling here this year to study photography. I probably would have started by now. I didn’t follow through the way I don’t follow through with most things.
Further down the path, there’s a police truck with a horse trailer. The police have started using horses to patrol the parks. I assume it’s after what happened to Fabian. This summer, Fabian, an eleven-year-old boy, was hit and killed by a police car while playing in the park. A different park, the one close to where I should be working, but am not.
He was just playing, riding around on his older brother’s scooter. The police went after him because he was too young to be riding it. Fabian ran away, scared, the way you would be when you’re eleven and the cops are going after you. They chased him in their police car, speeding across soft paths and grassy lawns, until they finally caught up with him and ran him over. He was too young to be riding a scooter but apparently not too young to be killed.
Let’s take a desire path. The whole park is full of them: places where people have decided the official path doesn’t make sense, so they’ve cut corners. I love them so much, these small symbols of the human spirit, of resilience and stubbornness. I see a similarity with how my mind works: it struggles to stay on the path that was laid out for it. It does as it pleases, goes wherever desire takes it, or common sense, or curiosity, or rebellion. Even, no, especially if the desire path makes no more sense than the real path. And the more important the path is supposed to be, work, admin, things I have to do simply because I exist, the more my mind will roam. Like a fox, following a trail, a scent.
I once heard the writer Olga Tokarczuk describe two kinds of writers: foxes and hedgehogs. Foxes hunt stories out in the world, hedgehogs burrow inward.
We’re briefly leaving the park because there’s a nice bakery nearby where I’ll find something to eat and a place to pee. So now, we’re heading down a lovely street with stately homes, their front gardens still full of flowers. There’s something decrepit about it, though. Here and there, windows are broken or gates are covered in cobwebs, clearly abandoned. One driveway is littered with yellow apples, even though there’s no apple tree nearby they could have fallen from.
Right, I’ve just left the bakery. Bought myself a cannelé, a small, cylindrical pastry, flavoured with rum and vanilla. I’ll try to eat it as mindfully as I can.
The first bite: the crust is perfectly crispy, almost slightly burnt; the sugar has fully caramelised. The middle is tender, sweet. The crust really sticks to the teeth though. I feel this urge to avoid the crust and just go for the middle, turn my tongue into a spoon and lick it clean. But then I’ll just end up with an empty bowl of crust, which I’ll then have to eat anyway, by itself.
We’re passing the dentist’s clinic now. Usually when I’m around here, I’m spaced out on anxiety meds. Today I’m feeling sharp, clear-headed. Something has pierced through the clouds I was surrounded by this morning. But I’m also hitting a point where my body is suddenly tired and there’s still a good forty minutes of walking left. All I want is to be home and sit down. This is where the real mindfulness test begins: when the body runs out of energy.
I notice the trees, the leaves, the sky, the air on my face as I walk. How my breath changes as we go uphill. I try not to judge how quickly this happens.
Another desire path. This one’s so big and well-established that it resembles an actual path, and it has smaller desire paths leading down to it. If you’re stubborn enough with your desires, the desire path becomes the path. This is the path that starts to make sense. The other one starts to seem outrageous, inefficient, a detour. I just signed the lease for a studio I’ll be sharing with two other artists. A creative space, for writing and photo work. A great first step onto the ground that will eventually wear down into a path, into the path.
We’re going into a steep climb. I can already feel the muscles in my legs protesting. My body is tired but it can handle things; I shouldn’t forget that. One, two. One, two.
I think I might just sit down for a second. My body can do things but it also wants things. And the sun is so bright suddenly. Flooding into me. The real world is finding me where I am. So are messages, reaching me about the work. It feels almost wrong, being here, not doing it. But then — oh. My eye just landed on the forest floor, orange leaves clumped into a surface, with sunlight filtering through the canopy and pooling on the ground, when I saw a red squirrel climbing up a tree. And that’s the kind of thing I can get really excited about. They’re not so common here, the red, bushy-tailed ones.
We’ve reached the top of the hill now. In the sunlight, the colours of the trees are insane. It’s really something. Almost too much. The yellow, the red. Knowing that it’ll end soon. It’ll all be gone soon, but I saw it today.
Let’s go home. A. is on his way back. I bought some really nice bread. Maybe I’ll make some eggs. It’s hard, not being able to give more. Not being able to work harder. I’ll make some eggs and see where we go from here. Today is what it is, and tomorrow will be what it will be. And we’ll see.