Kiss the Ground
“Walk like you are kissing the earth with your feet,” wise spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh advised. “Print on earth your love and happiness.”
In high school, I made a short film showing people’s feet. There were no words, no music, just people’s feet.
“I would have made a film about hands,” a boyfriend said. “You can tell much more about a person’s life from their hands.”
Maybe. But I like to watch feet and imagine what it’s like to be that person.
Some plod. Others stridently march, so busy, so intent, so unaware.
Others don’t lift their feet much. It’s like they can’t find any more energy in life to pick up their feet. It’s all too much.
Some strut, like Lenny Kravitz cruising down Fifth Avenue on a spring Saturday in his leather jacket and tight jeans that hug his skinny hips.
When I bumped into Mick Jagger on 6th Ave., he bounced as he walked. Perhaps the swagger is only for the stage? Maybe he is naturally jubilant.
From the ages of nine to 46, I was uneven, one leg shorter than the other, due to an accident. I wanted to stride, but I waddled. The bullies in junior high school called me “penguin.”
When a surgery fixed my hip, I became even. This was about the same time I was introduced to Thich Nhat Hanh. In evenness I had choices: stride, saunter, march, stroll, shuffle, swagger. I chose to kiss the earth with my feet.
My feet kiss the sand at Town Beach on Block Island. I walk in the firm, wet sand past the dunes and clay cliffs, past the parents lifting babies up in the air before a wave hits. I look behind at the indentation of footsteps. A wave slides in and erases them.
We walk barefoot on the pine needles under the 250-year-old hemlocks on the shore of the lake in the White Mountains. Sap and pine needles stick to the soles of our feet as if the hemlocks have kissed us back.
We walk barefoot on the lawn on an early July morning; the chilly dew soaks our feet and wakes us. The summer sun rises like a heating pad on our backs as we bend to pull weeds.
He massages my feet after a day of hiking. Is the blister going to be a bad one? Will it need moleskin? Will I be able to hike? His hands soften my arthritic big toe. “Let’s not worry about tomorrow.” His hands kiss my feet, an intimate act that lasts in ways a kiss never does.