to go on a walk in bulgaria.

to go on a walk in bulgaria means that Nuka calls to me though my window. we walk nary 10 steps and call for Sabatka. while we wait for our friend we converse with the women sitting outside the closet size store on multicolored plastic stools. then we proceed another 30 steps to another store where Nuka buys a bag of sunflower seeds. with the packet of seeds pushed tightly in Nuka's pocket of the brown columbia fleece that i gave to her last byram and the rest evenly distributed amoung our hands we proceed down the road. as we walk in the evening light the mountains pop out like carboard cutouts in a storybook. kids weave and bob on bikes, babies get pushed in stollers, men sit on benches, and women gossip in the cafes. we gossip too. sometimes i imagine Nuka and Sabatka when they are 80 years old having the same routine talking about those weird days when the American joined them on their walk. the pace in which we walk is painful. it is the slowest walk capable of womankind plus a mandatory shift of all bodyweight to the back heels, thus, making it even slower. it is the anthesis of exercise especially when eating a bag of sunflower seeds. but the point of the walk is not exercise. the point of the walk is to have something to do; to talk about what has transpired since last nights walk and if nothing has happened to talk about the romances on one of the many turkish soap operas. the walk is a ritual in bulgaria not meant to be done alone and never for fitness' sake but only meant for the sake of doing.