To Walk with Nothing

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Last night, my medium-large purse and I went to Amsterdam. All the way to Amsterdam, just me and the medium-large purse. Three a.m., I got up and sleep-drove to the airport. If I'd been awake, I would have packed a purse of practical things: a toothbrush, a combination lock, pants. But I wasn't awake, and so several grocery lists, three old New Yorkers, and my favorite lip gloss were all that came with me to Amsterdam. When I got there, it occurred to me that the purse was kind of useless. Why would I read about a city where I’m not, and who cares if your lips are shiny, anyway? So I chucked the whole thing in the Singel and walked along Raadhuisstraat, inward toward the center, toward the Dam. Just me and the pants I came in.

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I have three lifelong dreams: to host a party on a rooftop, to travel West in a covered wagon, and to walk with nothing. It’s that third one that throws people off. (Surprisingly, they tend to be understanding of the second.) But – to walk with nothing? What does that mean?

To me, it means exactly what it sounds like it means. I don’t remember ever having done it before. Maybe as a kid I was able to walk with nothing, but probably for only a few short years. When I was still young, I was given an allowance, and then I walked with quarters. That was the start of gathering things. I was shy, but I grew to be a little less so, and then I walked with friends. We built forts out of blankets and drew with chalk and jumped rope, so we walked with all of that. We fought, and so we walked with high drama. We played Animal Hospital and walked with toads.

I got a little older and the load got heavy fast. I went to school and walked with books. I wanted to learn how to do new things, so I walked with soccer balls and ballet shoes. Soon, I was walking with bigger, more serious books, and it was a much longer walk. I tried more new things and walked with the painting supplies and play scripts that weighed me down like I thought art was not supposed to do. Did I have it all wrong? For two weeks, I walked with a flute. It never stopped. High school, college, world. Like a Dr. Seuss character, I walked with an armload, cartoonishly piled to the sky, waving precariously in the wind. Eventually, I put some things down. But.

There’s a new thing to walk with when you’re grown up, I've found. It’s the must-have grown-up accessory. It’s called expectation – everyone is walking with it! It sounds like a light thing, but, you know, it isn’t. I walk with apples and try not to walk with cupcakes, and I walk fast, faster than you do, because I think it means I’m better than you. Later, I feel badly because that’s not true, and guilt isn’t a light thing to walk with, either. Then there’s hope, heaven help us all, which doesn’t always float as promised. It seems like the only thing I never walk with is a map, and let me tell you, it’s exhausting, walking and walking nowhere like this.

That’s why I dream of the glorious walk with nothing. When I imagine this walk, it's in a place with nothing of mine. I think a mesa would be perfect. My medium-large purse would be left in the hotel room, because there’d be nothing to buy, nothing to do, nothing but air. I would amble around alone, swinging my empty arms, feeling, as they say, on top of the world rather than under it. And it would be very cool to be, for once, inside the definition my mind would file under freedom forever and ever, amen. Being me, of course, I would probably be bored in ten minutes.

But think of those ten minutes!