I remember walking home. This image from Bosna-Hersek neighborhood in Konya in 2014 was from a normal walk home from my campus office. Getting in extra walking-time was easy in that city. Here in Atlanta it is workable, but more difficult. The plateau allowed for a smooth trail, a constant breeze, and space to think. Health is surely wealth in this space. When I took this picture I left the wind-blown water bottle and a little debris so I could remember that it was a normal human space, with some people who cared deeply for its health, and those who were careless, and natural entropy, insofar as "natural" can be with the relationship humans have with environment lately. In Jacob The Baker, Noah Ben Shea wrote "memory is the gentlest of truths", and I have carried that idea with me for decades. Walking here, both as part of a pair, and later as a widower, I can look back at our old letters and see how the wordless part of us influenced what we did years later. Aundreta wrote me once about "the divinity in writing" when it is directed toward important people in your life. Celaluddin Rumi taught in the spirit of "No mirror ever became iron again; / No bread ever became wheat; / No ripened grape ever became sour fruit. / Mature yourself and e secure from a change for the worse. / Become the light." I want to remember as much as I can, in order to honor it. The mind that I carry now flows in a different form than the one I had six years ago. I want to remember the joy and the noise and the peace and the dust and the wind and the connectivity of the place. Conversations and silences that added their own spices for the years there are just as valuable as names of streets and shops and tram stops, and the mosque across the highway.
