1` Steps and Everything But Me

Everywhere I step, my surroundings change just one degree. A shifting ray of light, a swelling shadow, a new angle, new perspective; all when I step to the left or to the right or straight or reverse, or maybe even diagonally if I feel so inclined.

So it's no small wonder that when I take many steps -- so many steps, in fact, that I have to board planes and trains and cars and buses to make those steps -- the one degree of change transforms into enumerable degrees, circling every 360 but still arriving at some wholly novel point. When I found myself restlessly shifting in an uncomfortable economy-class seat, headed to Narita Airport, Tokyo from the familiar terminals of JFK Airport, New York, I felt the degrees growing and shifting, traveling not merely along the dotted lines of a planned circle, but expanding and contracting with the breath of each step, the penetration of each cloud, and the idle reflections of each ripple on the Pacific.

The degrees became wholly different. Not simply from 20 to 200, but from number to symbol, from letter to arithmetic. The degrees could no longer be called degrees, their very definition trodden by each step, contorted like pavement that has suffered under the unbearable weight of heavyset tourists for years. Imagine each step it takes to get from New York to Tokyo stomping on a single piece of pavement. Eventually only traces of pavement remain, and the steps have no choice but to stomp on the resilient earth. Multiply that thought by that same amount of steps, and that's how much the degrees mutated.

When I took the last step and landed on the carpeted turf of a foreign airport, when the degrees finally finished their slow and painful coagulation, I felt entire concepts around me shatter. Now that degrees were no longer degrees, words stopped being words, numbers changed into organisms, animals were drained of blood and became inanimate. It was as though someone took the floor of my home and turned the entire thing into a playpen, complete with colorful plastic balls that were impossible to tread. I moved slowly through a familiar but unexpected jungle.

Of course, I'm not a liar, but I exaggerate. I still stood fairly balanced on strong turf, I still thought in words and still computed in numbers, still assumed animals to have hearts and minds and cute little wagging tails.

2` Still 6'1" >>