After a brief-yet-somewhat disturbing stopover in the local Dollar General store* I eventually flowed onward out of Pulaski proper and immediately onto the most brutal stretch of American highway yet walked – a steep, four+ mile trudge on Highway 11 up and over Draper Mountain …

*The DG store manager here was actually a nice enough young man who just didn’t know what to do with me. I could tell that he wanted to do the Right Thing and extend himself to assist a passing Peace Pilgrim (and he certainly had the authority to do the same), and yet he had obviously been indoctrinated with the hard-hearted myth that being kind to “the homeless’ only encourage them/us to “mooch” more from “more legitimate” and harder-working folks in the future. And so he resorted to nervous non-truths to try and send me on my way – brazenly claiming that his store had no duct tape available at all (and this, while standing over a huge roll of duct tape underneath his own register!) and that even offering me a bottle of water would “get him into trouble” with his boss (?!?). Two other customers overhead these linguistic shenanigans and I thought they would respond appropriately to the same, but instead they too emitted a shocking display of disdain for my presence (when that same critical regard would have far more properly been placed upon my mewling managerial friend) – with the first offhandedly (and almost aggressively) tossing two dollar bills onto the counter with a loud “Here!” before then walking abruptly out of the store and the second almost regretfully agreeing to buy me a small roll of duct tape (that of course the store did in fact have for sale), the latter clearly out of pity and not from any place of love or compassion. A bit depressed by the entire exchange, I ended up sitting next door for about 30 minutes, retaping the soles of my shoes with the duct tape and nibbling on the two small packs of peanut butter crackers that the $2 had allowed the manager to procure for me, before I once more sighed and smiled and shrugged my shoulders – and then wearily rose to head back out to The Way.

“When we draw from the deepest fissures inside us, we become a fresh breeze that lifts the Souls of others. As such you are the restorative wind in my Soul, just as I am the same in yours. Late at night, in the underwater current of dreams, I hear the voices of upcoming strangers whispering to me, voices of gentle wisdom beseeching me to become the fullest expression of who I am capable of being. My goal is to become like my own best Being: a synthesis of all the good in the world, a person who encircles the rocky strewn bank of human existence and embraces it with a loving and a gentle heart, a person who recognizes the value of living free from anxiety and want, who lives gracefully without desire and attachment, who lives to serve rather be served, and to love rather than seeking to be loved.” ~ via Kilroy J. Oldster

Filed under: Peace Pilgrimage #02: Walking HOME (2019) by Scaughdt