Leaving Four Walls
n.s. david

I often think of The Four Walls. You know, those slats made of wood and plasticizers and anti-mildew agents. Those four expanses of white that enclose many of us who live in urban epicenters for the majority of our waking, working, days. We go to bed in a room with four walls, we wake up and eat our sustenance in a room with four walls, we make love inside four walls, we create in four walls, every day we go to a separate set of four walls owned by our bosses so that we can sit in front of screens to earn the pay for four walls and screens of our very own.

To be clear, I understand the need for these walls, and appreciate their protection. In fact, I am rather fond of the walls in my apartment, currently groaning under the weight of a plethora of paintings, wall sculptures, and musical instruments. I thank the walls that support my many bookshelves, my cabinets, my closets – storage spaces overflowing with food, books, tschotskes, shoes, art supplies, and outdoor gear. I’m not a rich woman, but within my walls I live in abundance. I have so many things, and I have so many things that I love to do. I write. I paint. I bake. I woodwork. I sew. I sculpt. I photograph. I climb. I canyoneer. I love. In many ways, I live in absolute, wonderful, filthy excess. My god, I am lucky.

But it still hits me every now and then – maybe when I’m trying to write and it’s quiet, or when I’m frustrated by a painting and I need to yell a little. That’s when the existence of The Four Walls slithers into my consciousness, when my skin begins to itch a little and I think to myself, Oh yes, I must behave. There are rules here. I’m penned in again. 

My earliest years were spent in a small Philippine village in Mataasnakahoy. In English, "mataas na kahoy” translates to “tall trees.” Looking back, the name seems a little grandiose, especially after moving to California, home of General Sherman and entire forests of coastal redwoods that routinely breathe in sky at 300 feet. But when you’re a little six-year-old running barefoot with a dozen other six-year-olds, Acacia, Longkong, and other sticky fruit trees are giant, especially when they surround you with choking, verdant, fecundity. Back then, days started when the darkness burned up rubescent, and ended when the light rubbed its belly down into the jungle lace. There was nothing but us and our limbs and the earth and the sun. Just light and light and light, and the burning thereof. Our skins hardened from the earth and the heat, not just that beneath our feet, but that which stretched over our bare breasts, our faces, our thighs, our necks. Joints were marked with scars; roads were just another stretch of rock where we had stamped out the bush, and our knees bore the mark of that labor. The water we drank was cloudy. Food was rice and salt; something to chew on. Our language was precise, pragmatic. We were animals, organized earth with heartbeats, that was it.

So I can’t shake the itchiness.  I wasn’t born into it, and I don’t think any of us are.  If John Keats’ name was writ in water, mine was writ in dirt.  As much as I enjoy the fruits and pursuits of civilization, on a cellular level, something in me calls for the outside.  Where there are no walls.  Where I can make noise.  Where there are no rules but the voice of nature asking for the simplest of tasks: awareness.  Where everything else that is good can follow, because the inevitable progeny of awareness is kindness, empathy, belonging, and freedom.  Freedom from everything, including myself. 
 
Ultimately, maybe it comes down to that.  Because as much as I love so many things, to do so many things – my many passions are pursuits of desire, of longing, of gluttony, of distraction.  It is my ego, stamping out adjectives – climber, artist, crusader – because existence needs these anchors.  They are, in some ways, just how I bide my time.   

Being outside is different.  When I’m outdoors, sometimes I will lay in the dirt for an hour waiting for my turn to climb, and I won’t feel the time pass, because time has become immaterial.  All I will know in that moment is sun, or perhaps wind, certainly heat or cold, maybe a little discomfort where the grit of sand is digging into my arms, maybe the start of a pleasant ache in my hands.  There is nothing else.  I melt into the awareness of everything around me and my mind goes quiet.  I am free from rules, from ideas, from my very notion of self.  I am, once again, just a bit of organized earth with a heartbeat, that’s it. 

Photos by @bmcornelius and @girlwhoadventures on IG.