A Sanctuary Now Impaled
I found a piece of paper today. How strange it has not been disintegrated by the rain—by the drops slamming down, worming their ways between its fibers, weakening and ripping them apart from the inside.
It bears the mark of THE PROPHET—a brief sketch. I stare at the rock under which it hid, and we begin to converse.
“I once had a house like you, in which I hid.”
“…”
“my ‘private free sanctum’ it was. Private from all the world’s eyes, ears, and reaching hands. Free from their influence and from the repercussions of my own influencing. A sanctum where I was at last not a part of the world. Where I could sit quietly, focusing in my mind on what mattered to me without external pressure. Thinking of who and what I wanted to be.”
“…” the rock stared at me, implacably—as rocks do.
“You know every day you go out; the world surrounds you with influences, molding your behavior, thoughts, and habits—until at last you are molded. Molded to the soul. Of course, it is a two-way street. You influence the world, changing it. And the feedback of those changes—the world’s reaction—gives your actions meaning they could not otherwise have.”
“…” a drop of rain glanced off the rock’s rounded face.
“That is true for you as it is for me. Though it may take ten thousand years for you to feel it—in a glacier a volcano, a river, or under a mountain. I feel it every day. But my home had given me the illusion I could cease it, denying the world at the threshold like a fairy or a vampire. Perhaps in a way I could. If that safety were not an illusion, did not have a lie put to it by the shape of the lifestyle I once knew.”
“…”
“Going out every day, I found myself molded, made into just another piece of the world. Though I could also carve out my place bit by bit, making an impression of myself—making myself in the only way that matters—I could not shake that feeling. The feeling that all my impressions, all my efforts to make myself, were themselves simply the cause and effect of the world playing through me. How could I know I was the one responsible for them? How could I know that the I who wanted to be me was not itself the pure product of the world; and my consciousness just a passenger along for the ride. Whether or not, at my core, I was a molded figure making its own mold by pattern, or a creator myself. So, I needed a place like you, where I could retreat—finally separating from the world—and reconsider it all.”
“…” the grey color reminded me of old stone walls and foundations.
“but as I sat there more and more I realized that I had no retreat. No sanctum. That I was not in solitude, empowered in separation, but that I had become” I looked down at the paper “that most meek, wishy-washy and milquetoast of states—the lonely observer. An influenced creature emptied of the capacity to influence in return. Are we not all lonely observers these days? Who in our privacy find the intrusion of a thousand other voices, whose stories, words, and mere presence are a thousand influences ripping into our sanctum. Yet at the same time we are cut off from meaningfully reacting to them. What we say they will not hear, what we do will be immaterial—receiving at best a delayed reaction sapped of meaning. The one who watches the public world without firmly participating, who hears voices pour in from every window of their ‘private’ space, estimates the world from that, and never has the chance to truly speak back. To make actions of consequence. Instead, submerged in an endless torrent of ideas washing away and away at the self.’”
“…” two more drops of rain slammed down onto the rock one after another, splattering me.
“and I know it all to be true, my dear rock. How different it feels to sit with a book, inviting the author into my private space for a limited time—as I would a friend—, to all these new entertainments. How ‘the muddy-booted crowd on social media stomps through my room, crushing my toes and ruining my carpet’ at the slightest opportunity. They swallow up the private intimacy of that sanctum so not even friends can sit with me alone. And I for my part, become awash in influences and forget my self.”
“…”
“‘when I am with a friend, either I will pull out my phone, or I will open the other app on it, and immediately be whisked from a friendly space, to a space where my friend brushes by amidst all these strangers desperate for my attention. The familiar feeling of people trying to scam you as a tourist, at last available in my living room! Even the not-friends I might invite in, authors and similar characters, they have all begun to clamor at me and harass me! I find them not amidst my shelf, but amongst a digital buffet of different and insistent simulacrums; threatening to drown me with the magnitude and consistency their ‘companionship.’ And so many of these authors seek to cut into the quality and conciseness of their presentation—for the mere sake of filling more pages, more books, more episodes! They make empty companions and carve that same emptiness into me. Damn them, I am not hollow! At least that’s what I say when at last I try to remember what was inside.’ And how hard it can be to remember that.”
“…” but the rock remembers, doesn’t it?
“Even as I decorated and painted those walls, outlined my threshold and put a latch on the door, I knew how failed my private space had become. Not sturdy like you, dear rock, but constantly skewered. Like a magician’s sword box. And me, poor thing, sitting inside; my self pierced by prying words and thoughts delivered consistently and accurately at my weakest points—they know all the weakest parts of the human psyche. So I was, bleeding out consciousness into the world to a lower and lower concentration… Until I, glassy eyed, melt into it all and forget myself as anything other than a responder to stimuli. One who is well aware they are being observed and molded, that their private space is no longer so, that their self is in a state of atrophy—but who really can’t be bothered with all that right now.”
“…”
“I miss my house, stone, but I do not miss this useless aspect of it. How much happier it is now to wander with no anchors.”
“…” the stone stood strong as the rain began to pour. It would be good to have a roof now I thought. Even if while inside influences pour just the same upon my mind.
