What do you see
when you walk through the streets?
Do you notice the old couple,
holding hands, quietly moving forward—
consumed by the experience of the performance they just witnessed?
What stories do you consume?
What stories do you become?
I walk these streets,
breathing in the fresh air,
letting the crispness of the weather settle into my skin.
I show up for myself—
even when the weight of a difficult disability pulls at me.
I follow my own pace.
I watch.
The energy of kids playing football,
their voices rising as they argue passionately,
each eager to share what they know.
The coconut tree sways,
playing hide and seek with the sun.
I feel the warmth it gives.
This is my weather.
I could watch this all day.
And so, I continue walking.
I notice how the light dances with the old lamp posts
on streets whose names I don’t need to know.
No map is necessary when I walk with awareness.
I love having found my way of just going with the flow of the present moment
A vintage bookstore calls to me,
the scent of old paper lingering—
I breathe in just enough before slipping out,
careful not to awaken the migraine that is quietly asleep today.
And suddenly that made me more aware of the pain that begins to stir in my shoulders.
Abhigna, be aware of how much you must push yourself.
So, I slow down.
I walk in silence for a while,
I experience my breath grounding me.
The Gothic Quarter feels like a place that doesn’t need to explain itself.
The stone walls rise up around me, uneven and chipped, like they’ve stopped caring about being perfect. The ground is uneven, but my steps adjust without thinking.
It’s quiet but not silent. A kind of quiet that feels full. Like the walls are holding onto every conversation, every footstep, every moment that’s passed through here.
Light barely touches some corners. It spills in only where it wants to, catching on rusted balconies and tangled wires. I don’t feel the need to follow any path. The streets curve and narrow, opening when they feel like it. I let them decide.
There’s no performance here. No need to look for something beautiful. It’s all here in its own way—worn, real, breathing.
I keep walking. Not searching. Just moving through it.
And somehow, it feels like the city is moving through me too.
And then—
a woman dancing in her balcony window.
Unapologetic.
Present.
Giving everything to the way her body moves.
I reach for my phone,
drawn to capture this moment.
As I walk on, the image of her stays with me.
Pause.
Later, sitting here at this café, words flowing through my fingers,
I remember the book—Kinfolk—I skimmed through yesterday.
Reading between the lines, I wondered:
How do I already know this without ever reading it?
How do I already live this way?
Slow living in the past year has taught me to find calm in every corner of myself.
I move through immense pain, yes,
but also through deep seeing.
And maybe—just maybe—what I see
comes from knowing carried over from lifetimes before.
My breath holds that knowing.
That is the mystery I seek—
to understand what my breath remembers,
how it might be consuming something
that all the next lifetimes will know.
So, I unlearn what today demands I know
and instead, consume what the present gently offers.
Each layer of existence unfolds,
and with it, the gift of speaking with more clarity, writing more honestly.
To find a calm pace in life—
this is what resonates.
This is what Kinfolk calls travel.
A journey inward,
to discover what life offers
when I allow myself to simply flow—
becoming both the story I consume
and the story I become.
Am I Unlearning to learn Or learning to unlearn?
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