Professor Sabir's Posse

If Fish can Walk, then I can Run




For so long I had been living this life not really knowing why I was living it. I had no purpose; or at least no awareness of one. A life without purpose is a strange thing. This person walks through this world kind of asleep with his cheap self constructed endeavors that are ultimately just flimsy excuses to be living. This meaningless busy-work that fills his life is only a hollow victory. These meaningless victories cannot amount to anything in a more grand sense. How could they? He cannot see too far: how far can he see if he can't even see his role in the grand scheme of things in the world that he has been put in? He cannot know too much: how much could he really know if he doesn't even know why he exists, where he comes from, or where he must go? He busies himself with things unrelated to these ultimate questions. This is the tragedy of it. In being ignorant to his purpose these questions forever remain unanswered. Without that, he is just a hollow body. He is a person at sleep; a king of nothing.


Not too far back I orderd this magazine through the internet from somebodey in England. The magazine featured Sade, best known as the popular singer from the 80's. For so long I've had the biggest crush on her. I laid down on my bed and flipped through the pages feeling light. She always could do that to me. Seeing her and reading what she had to say was like being dunked underneath water. There I am sort of just floating with this magazine in my hands still underwater. Bill Evans and Miles Davis are down in that water somewhere playing the same song as usual. I put it down eventually. If only just to take a breath I guess. I looked up and it was all gone. She was gone and I was alone again. I looked around me and saw so many things that filled my life. Video games, boxing gloves, comic books, some brand new shoes: all loosely scattered around the room. These things suddenly seemed so worthless. What did it all mean really, these things? Nothing, really. It was all I had. Did that also mean I had nothing? I knew then that I wanted something more than that.


I went outside a couple days later to take a walk. I had been subjected to only walking after getting an injury in my legs (shin splints) that comes from running on hard surfaces (like concrete) excessively in effect straining the muscles of the

leg to their break point. For so long I hadn't even been doing even that. I got so discouraged by the injury I pretty much just gave up on the whole idea of training. I guess I was bitter. Maybe I was frustrated. This walk, as marginlized as it was, was my first attempt at training again in months. I went to the beach because I figured the surface couldn't be too hard on that soft beige sand; not a bad place to start all things considered.


The beach is interesting. When you walk along the shore your line of sight is cut in half. On one side there is the land and on the other there is the water that appears so endless. This time of the year the weather isn't so great. The water was gun metal grey, emotionless for the most part, only taking breaks from this to appear discontent at something for reasons only it would know. The land was filled up by sandcastles - some new, some old - and people carving their names or other messages into the wet of the inter tidal zone with a stick probably. Eventually the water sweeps up and takes it all away when it feels the time is right. Walking along that thin seperating line between these two worlds you can't help but feel that you are being asked something by this scene. On one side there is evidence of life and on the other there is an endless void. Is it asking me which side I'm on?

So long ago our ancestors came up out that same water, that same endless void. They climbed up onto that same land and though it must have been hard they even learned how to walk. I guess thats what it all came down to. Just that one choice to change their lives forever. I had to climb out of that water too. I had to learn how to walk again just as they did so long ago. I knew I wanted something more than what I had. I just needed to know what it was I missing, to breathe in that purpose through my own lungs, and only to take that first step out.