A physicist

I haven’t given it enough thought, but if our walking sprees continue, I should get myself a proper pair of shoes. After all, my pedometer tells me that I’ve been walking more and more these past weeks—something unheard of, considering the sedentary 9-to-9 school routine that I do.

There is something uncanny in the way you walk, I told you that night. Your steps are out-of-rhythm, and the front of your feet hits the pavement first, making this sharp slumping sound against the pavement. I always brought it up whenever we would fall silent during our many long walks, whenever words would fail to the moment.

You never liked walking, especially late at night. But we have no choice as Ikot would already be unavailable past 9 p.m. The day’s exhaustion would hit us when we get to settle down after a long day’s work. But, for some reason, that feeling of heaviness and emptiness at the same time never seems to hit me whenever we walk home.

I remember my first therapist, in 2019, advising me to walk whenever anxiety visits me. She claims that walking, for some reason, forces the brain to be okay (whatever that means). It worked. Then, the pandemic happened. Then, everything fell out of order. Then, when I returned to campus, I’d already forgotten the beauty of using your own two feet.

A few years ago, before the world crumbled due to the pandemic, I used to walk from the temporary Collegian office in Sampaguita Residence Hall to Quezon Hall, every morning before my Bio 11 class, to ward off my sleepiness from the overnight presswork. I enjoyed the comfort that a cool and foggy Academic Oval brought me. I would encounter maintenance staff using their leaf blowers to clean the road, and some other joggers. During those times, I would mostly find the oval to myself only.

Walking conveys a lot of circumstances, in the many dimensions of my persona. Walking is staple in every mobilization that the Collegian covers. Walking meant sprinting through the biology forest as I shuffled through my first-year classes at the National Science Complex and Palma Hall. At the same time, walking has been my refuge after failing an exam or after a source had turned me down. Walking across the University Amphitheater on July 30 is also something I will not be doing as I’ve been unable to complete my thesis manuscript on time.

No thanks to you, though, I’ve rediscovered the pleasure of long walks. I don’t understand why you find walking home difficult when your place is just four alternating right-and-left turns from where you disembark the Ikot jeep. You’re not street smart, you told me, and so I made it a point to learn the labyrinthine road network of Diliman for our late night strolls.

In many ways, you’ve learned to navigate through my inclination for insularity and opaqueness simply because we need to talk about something whenever we walk–your endless juggling of org works, and my unending rants about physics, health, friends, graduation (and my lack thereof). Precisely because of our strolls, it has never been a struggle to share our frailties and longings.

Sometimes, it would get too personal. Sometimes, we’d just fall silent because we don’t know what to say. We’d stutter. You’d grin behind your mask, but your eyes are too expressive for me not to notice your reaction. “I will place you in a precarious situation” was my go-to phrase for self-censorship when we touched on arrangements that we shouldn’t be considering in the first place. When silence falls, our footsteps reverberate more.

Our ecosystem can be too cruel at times, to the point that it crushes our basic ability to feel empathy, care, and affection. It is dehumanizing. Yet our strolls have been an awkward yet worthwhile voyage into self-discoveries, even if it forced us to run in circles.

I always told you that I longed for predictability and routines, as someone who lives a life of outliers and surprises. Yet you showed me that stability is possible even during our darkest and vulnerable moments. There is calmness in sitting quietly at the Sunken Garden. There is tranquility in calling and petting the cats on campus. There is peace in walking with you.