Reid Harris Cooper

The truth is, I do not walk alone. I have been very lucky on this path we call life to have people who have walked the paved and unpaved roads (literally and metaphorically) with me. Be it the dirty streets of the city, the abandoned rails of a train line, the dirt and rock mountains of a beach park, the alleys and hidden corners of a town, the bumpy floor of a convention center, or the deepest darkest deep mystery of the human psyche. Yet, I have also truly took my feet both covered and bare along many a destination with me, myself and I. That may sound like three people, but it is only one. Trust me, I'm only good at math when there's a dollar sign in front of it, but I can at least count to ten.

Lately my walking has not been alone. If and when I go outside during the last few months as I write this in August of 2024 I am pushing a wheelchair with a 135 pound woman in it and then sitting in long waits with my mind in patience. When I do walk alone, it isn't pretty or safe and it has gotten me in trouble. This is what that stress path is. You crawl before you walk, sometimes I wish I could go back to crawling. That isn't the way it is though, so to help one breath I look backwards at the footsteps made along the way and treasure every path and walk I have done.

One of the most interesting walking alone I ever did was in various days in Las Vegas. Actually walking from my hotel at the Excalibur all the way to Treasure Island then back again on the other side of the strip via Flamingo on my second day there in 2021 had affirming “life can be hard, but also awesome and rewarding”. It was not a direct route but calculating it all together would be around 7 miles walking, essentially alone. It was also a walk that was truly full of lessons and living in just one day. A day that began with discovering the joys of going down a slide and standing under a man-made water fall in the wee hours of the morning before actually proceeding with your day. If you have never gotten to feel perfectly tempered water crashing on your shoulders and back, especially the day after travel and lots of living you have not had that experience to your life and made it more bountiful.

   
This day continued with choosing to have my one and only meal of the day be the buffet at The Cosmopolitan Hotel known as The Wicked Spoon. My meal there was a lesson in gluttony. I ate so much I actually wrote it all down. This isn't about that meal, because I didn't walk, I sat, but boy did I journey, through countries and delicacies. That also lead to the purest of guiding paths to every bathroom I could make it to while still enjoying my day. Visiting bathrooms doesn't sound like something fun, but in Vegas it is an adventure. The theming of a hotel continues to their public bathrooms. It forced me to see the Bellagio gardens, the amazing sculptures of the Roman empire in Caesar's, the aquariums of fishes, the mermaids of The Mirage and so much more.

One of the most exhilarating experiences was having taken the walk to see something that now can only be seen via recordings and memories, having been torn down July 2024. The Mirage Volcano with its original music composition and spectacular choreographed fire and water show. Having this in front of ones own eyes lead to that continuing journey which only you can deliver yourself on even though the universe may conspire against you getting to every discovery you planned. You can't walk this same path I walked, at least not as I did. Spiritually, you can, the enlightenment, the pure joy of the existing world merged with the created. You can find it.

You can find it in many places. Some of them places I have been. Some I have never been. Some I will never get to go. Sometimes just in your mind, for the footsteps in our mind are the ones we truly are alone in and we can walk anywhere. Absolutely anywhere... a boulevard of broken dreams, a street of forbidden promises, a valley of endearing escapes, a hill of vaulted exuberance. It can all be reached, just take one step forward and walk; or roll, or crawl, whatever you feel most comfortable, it is your body and it is your mind!

[All photos by me from my trip.]

{written for LJ mini-Idol 2024: Week 6-“The path is made by walking”}