Essay by Daniel Taverne

Walking Away

Contrary to my beliefs, the world is telling my family and I what to feel, what to wear, what to say, what to eat, where to go, and what to do! And because of this, my children are driving me crazy!

After preparing a home cooked meal, they’re always hollering at the dinner table, “Yuck! I don’t eat that?” Then, an hour later they have the nerve to whine, “I’m hungry, but there’s nothing here to eat!” Also, while getting ready for school, they disapprovingly whine stuff like, “These pants you bought me suck and I need new shoes to go with my hoody!” Even more unsettling, my older daughter is 3 months pregnant and talking about getting an abortion. Rather than deal with these issues, I’m going to walk away!

Walking away will make it easier for me to ignore her and her boyfriend drinking beer and smoking joints in her room tonight, and as long as she doesn’t come out of there hollering she’s hungry, my walk will continue.


I’ve got worries outside my home as well! For one, I’ve got a weird neighbor who appears to be one of those NRA nuts, and he’s always carrying a shotgun or rifle to his truck to go hunting. This is another problem I’m just going to walk away from. I mean, where is he really going? And will the news that he or his kid shooting up unsuspecting targets interrupt my walk? It’s surely happened before. Remember Columbine?

Something else bugging me is when visiting someone I expect to get treated as a guest, and offered refreshments and food and conversation. I’ll not receive these though from my oncologist if I make tomorrows visit. Instead I’ll get a needle in the ass and a bill for two hundred dollars. Fortunately, I’ll be a no-show because I’ll be walking.

Lately, I’ve been frightened by news stories telling me North Korea has nukes and that Iran is about to have them too. So when I come across these stories, I either ignore them and keep walking strait, or I turn and walk the other way. You see, the walking gets my mind off situations I can’t change.


Compounding my need to walk, my liberty seems to have been purchased and blurred by the blood, sweat and sacrifice of an unwanted God that I can’t seem to ignore. This God has interrupted every other walk I had ever taken; prodding me like a bully, willing me to bite, and I do. Time and time again, I bite.

Maybe this time I’ll be able to tune out that bully and walk away for good. If I can tune out that God, this walk will be easy. It’ll help make all my values fade, so I’ll not feel responsible for fixing problems, since while walking, they won’t matter anyway. Sadly, the more I think about these issues, the more I realize I’m tired of this town, this state, this country and this life. So I’m walking away.


I’m walking away, and all I’m bringing with me are muted, smothered, squelched and covered up conflicts the result of which, unabated, only serve to tear me up inside. Fortunately, walking reduces my problems to nothing more than whimpers, and I’ll be too busy walking to acknowledge such small sounds.

Will flies gather? Of course they will. I know they’ll join me, and when they do, it’ll be perfectly fine. By then, I’ll be clapping and laughing right along with everyone else since my accommodating nose will finally be unable to detect the dung that we’re walking in.


Another problem, when walking, I’ll no longer have to worry about whether or not our government is as crooked as the day is long, and I won’t be around to care about tomorrow’s illegal search of my neighbor’s home.


Oh I love being able to walk away so much I often make my three year old walk away with me. Even more often than that, I impatiently sit her down and prod her to walk in one direction, so I can go in the other room and walk someplace else. Some people say this is unhealthy for children. I say, if you’re not too busy walking away yourself, prove it!

© Daniel Taverne Jan 2009

"Reference: Poem "Bull Dung and Flies" 1999 Daniel Taverne.