‘I mistook stars reflected in a pond at night for those in the sky.’
Sapkowski, Andrzej. The Time of Contempt (The Witcher Book 2) (p. 144). Orbit. Kindle Edition.
I walk with careful, rhythmic steps. My feet fall on smooth stone, pebbles and the occasional patch of grass, with a doe-like delicacy. Before me, the landscape is laid out like a painting. Grey mountains rise from a plane of rock, their peaks barely discernable against a grey sky. Every edge has the muddled carelessness of thought splattered on canvas. And then there are the stones: the great grey boulders that dot the plane, hover in the sky, and no doubt rest beneath the earth. They are barely visible to my eye, mere wispy remnants of the brush, but the shapes of voices point the way. Flitting from stone to stone, they form around me an ever-changing constellation of sounds. Each begging me, again and again to turn my eyes and my heart to them and only them, and by doing so to fix us both into concrete being. To turn to them, and with my sight make a singular axis along which I may be drawn, as if by gravity, so that both of us can become beings of certainty and substance. The whole world of murky reality would then drop away as both of us are spun and enchanted by the lovely siren song of belief. But I am animated substance. They are certainty, concrete perspective never changing. We are not to meet. No, I am the Wanderer. I walk on.
I am never still. Still, I hear them call, seeking to make me, to convince me of what I am. To give in to one voice is to be a certain kind of person, and to be so unequivocally. It is to be cleansed of all potential in favor of being. But those sacred rights are not for me. I will not be spared the anxiety of my natural movement, or have my soul speared by unnatural axes. I will not be made, as Eliot puts it: “formulated, sprawling on a pin…pinned and wriggling on the wall.”1 No, I am the wanderer. I walk on.
But they too, beg for formulation, for my judgement. They wish to be singular things in my mind as they wish to make my mind singular to their purposes. They beg my eyes to make them whole by being seen, my ears to make them heard. For what is a voice without a listener? Together they are whole. I will not give into temptation. I will not let my soul’s longing make me give in. I will carry the hole in my heart through mornings, sunsets, and afternoons. Through day and night. On and on bearing the anxiety of an unknowing heart to the destiny of its completion: that day I fill doubt with uncertainty and nothingness with the work of my own hands. Yes, I am the Wander. And I walk on.
I walk on, past the rocks and down the slope, careful of my step. The way is steep now down this lovely mountain. After a time, I come to the base, to the border, to the edge of the water. On the opposite side the mountains rise again, and to either side the water stretches on and on. Below its surface lies a reality as deep and infinite as the one above, where the mountains stretch into the clouds and mists beyond determination. It is the fjord: half is the world above, and another half the world below. I stare hard at the water. I see my own image, made wrong by its imaging. I see the reflections of the mountains, the world, and know it is also wrong. Gone is the mist so essential to its being, the water makes it determinate. Makes it what it is not.
Below the water is the infinite other. The valley to the mountains. The flip of the world above. I know it waits there, beyond reflection. The murky blue makes truth just as the mist above. But I know not its substance. To know it truly I must jump in. I must breath water instead of air, an impossible giving up of my own reality.
I am the wanderer. I dive in, cutting a swath along the surface of the water. Ripples and splashes break momentarily the power of the reflection. Uncertainty returns in my presence.
I coast along the surface, looking down into the depths without fear. I have accepted the mists above, the uncertainty of my own reality. I now look at the mists below and see again the uncertainty of another reality. I see also what can be seen with clarity: the first meters of the above and below, and from these I can guess at a complete picture. But I know that it will never be more than that. Some new feature will rise from below or swoop down from above, and my world will change. I swim in contentment that what will change will change, and that what is beyond me is beyond me. I do not seek formulation: a total and complete view. That view was when I stood on the beach and stared at the reflections in the water. That view was when I for a moment believed the mountain peaks to be just as the reflection said, and the world below to not exist at all.
Only by cutting the surface with my body, have I gained the truth: difference is not difference. Total truth is ignorance of obscurity. A precise reality is a reflection, a fiction easily disturbed. Only through a great blindness could it be maintained.
I must cut the place where reality is made and accept its precision as fiction. I must embrace uncertainty and cut back my certainty to only what is truly apparent. Above all, I must reject the clear path of safety and certainty, dive into the other, and cut without fear or relent my own path of certainty by the work of my own hands. Such is my duty, such is my strength.
1T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, Poetry Foundation, accessed 7.28.2020
