Et cetera, but my real goal is to stop ticking boxes (pilgrim Gerson van Luijk)

By Gerson van Luijk

Bison Bay. The hardest thing for me is to slow down. Take your time. To stand still just to stand still and look, to feel, to smell. The world sometimes seems to be all about yourself and it can feel selfish to become aware of this. The world feels like a big blanket around you. Then a nice woolen blanket against the cold and then an old blanket like an old broken burlap bag. But walking through the world alone you will see that this blanket always fits. That it’s perfect because you can place and pick the things you want to use yourself. Walking alone through the world, not capturing anything, being alone on the path with yourself; It feels like grabbing the pure “I”. But still, I simply want to complete the route, as if I just want to tick this route off a list, as if it were a task.

Tick off that you are touching the water of the Bison Bay in the cold. That this gives an invigorating feeling (and yes, I felt nerves in my chest for a long time; and yes, the dive gave a huge amount of variation of feelings). Tick off that you prick up your ears for water murmurs in the Filosofendal. Et cetera, but my real goal is to stop ticking boxes. A life without goals to tick off seems boring and scary to me, but it might give time for rest, yourself, the world, the other. The last day I would like to take a dip again and then maybe without ticking off.

Kranenburg.

The fields are still white from the frost. I feel the warm thermos full of tea against my back. I walk gently into rolling countryside. Gawking geese in the background. For me from the copper ball of the sun that blinds more and more. It still hangs over Germany. Diagonally next to it is the pale crescent moon of the night that has passed, she hangs balancing on an invisible thread. That’s waking up. After the quietest night ever. No mobile, no TV.

For me, the fog looms thicker now.

I don’t know where I’m headed. Gray and white. I also put the card away; I let myself be guided by the license plate of the route. Behind me I can still see the hills of Nijmegen. A bank looms. There is a young bare tree next to it. One day she will bend mightily over the rotten bench. I look back. The hills are now also swallowed up by the fog. In front of me, the watery sun tries to give clarity. Sound of cars somewhere around me.

The Nieuwe Wetering.

The impressiveness of the tour has worn off a bit. No more dramatic effects. I’m sitting here now on a small bridge in the middle of a canal. It’s very quiet and empty and lonely. There are very few people here. The background noises are in no particular order: the highway, quacking ducks, truck traffic driving over speed bumps, a chattering woodpecker, the wind through the trees and the reeds, the occasional fighter plane high in the sky, birds chirping, those two panicking geese, who seem to chase me everywhere and then there are my thoughts, which sometimes startle because for a moment it seems as if someone else wants to cross the bridge, But I am the only one who is allowed to occupy this entire bridge and sit pontifically in its midst. How long am I going to want to muse here about how long I’m going to muse here?

There’s a dog walking by.

The owner walks on indifferently and there is quite a distance between him and the dog. The man crosses a small bridge through a fence over there. The gate slams shut and I can’t help but wonder how the dog will ever get to the other side of the ditch. After all, the gate is closed. The dog confidently walks towards the bridge and the fence. I expect a huge jump from the dog every moment to get to the other side. There follows a jump, a hop, to be precise. Along the fence, between the bars of the railing, directly onto the bridge. That’s how it can be, while all I saw was the path with the fence. It pays to be different…

I wonder why I usually look down while walking.

I look at the ground to guard my feet that they don’t trip over bumps. But sometimes I go completely wrong and I miss important license plates of the route. If I looked around me, up and forward, I would see better where I am going and I would notice more how unlikely the churches and sand hills are in this desolate polder landscape. Then I would see the clues and choose the right path to arrive where I want to go. And yes, I sometimes stumble.

De Waal.

It’s the last day and I’m in the eye of the hurricane. Dark clouds in front of me, deep blue above me and for a moment the wind is gone. The air changes every ten minutes. Wodan on his mighty mobile planes! The gulls’ wings reflect the low-hanging sun white. A new day has dawned. Where the branch (a dead branch) breaks due to the wind, I take three dives, or rather immersions, in the Waal. There are no boats for a while and it’s nice. At this tree I hang my past in the form of my old pajama pants. It now runs lighter and relieved. I realize again how everything revolves around me. That’s my life, because my life revolves around me. Selfish?

The Rhine is wild.

The wind rushes over it. Waves are mountains and valleys in the water. No stretch of river is flat. It collides with the stones of the cribs in green-blue. “Stay in line!” scream the basalt boulders. I stand still again and let the wind whiz around me. So much wind. The soft yellow of sand with black stripes of loose branches. The green-blue of hard-lashed river water, into which the fluffy sandy yellow disappears. The roots of the old willows naked and high above the shoreline.

I’m back in the car. A little sad that it’s over. The noise will return. Take a breath.

Gerson van Luijk