life is moving through what we can’t define
experience without context, feeling without sight
we don’t remember the beginning, we can’t see the end
all we know is the in-between
Running one hand through straight, short-ish hair, Damian put the fountain pen down on the small writing desk with a sigh, and switched off the lamp. In the dull, grey light of winter morning he reached for his jacket and keys and headed for the door. The creaking floorboards signalled his passing.
Outside the studio apartment the air was chill and damp in the way that threatens rain without promising snow. The normal bustle of people and business was temporarily suspended by the quiet of Sunday morning, broken only by the occasional group of church-goers making their way to, or returning from, their place of worship. What do they find in religion? he thought to himself. What is it that they hold on to? Is it ‘real’? Or maybe it doesn’t matter, as long as it helps. And, after a pause: helps what? to pacify the questions? to deal with the pain? To feel some security? As he passed by the steps leading to an ornate cathedral, he began phrasing the words to another song. The music would never be written, but sometimes he could hear it in his mind.
the words we use, the thoughts we abuse
to avoid the pain of not knowing
this certainty of belief constrains our doubt
it fills the empty spaces in your heart
Back in the apartment (coffee maker dripping, nothing else for breakfast) the answering machine interrupted his thoughts. One message from a magazine: another rejection. Various manuscripts, most camouflaged with coffee stains, littered the room. One from a telemarketer who didn’t realise there was no one on the line. Finally, one from an old friend: “Give me a call sometime, let me know how you’re doing, OK? I hope things are working out for you.” Why does he keep calling? The question irritated him. The coffee maker stopped dripping — but Damian stood by his single window, silently gazing, for a long time.
It had been 6 months since he finished his degree and moved to the city with dreams of getting published. Why did I do it? The question hadn’t occurred to him between then and now. Life had made more sense then; in the company of friends, he was almost happy.
That’s why. I needed to get away. To be alone. I needed to figure things out. Turning from the window, he gazed around the room. Where has it got me? His eyes paused on the corner of a piece of paper protruding from a pile:
the noise of life distracts me
when my mind is empty I am free
in silence I see things as they really are–
only in silence
6 months. 153 days of little food and less sleep. Countless crooked lines of ink on paper where exhaustion took over. Despite his effort, everything seemed opaque as ever. The endless lonely hours did little except focus and underline the questions that both demand and refuse to be answered– Who am I? What is the point of any of this? And his writing suffered. It was confused, unclear, lacking direction. Each sentence was an exercise in frustration. Is this it? he mused, staring at an empty wall with peeling paper. When the illusions disappear, is there nothing left? The wall remained unchanged, each detail distinct and unresponsive.
Two weeks passed, and Damian had stopped writing altogether. In large letters on the top-most page on the small desk was a single line:
As I watch, the words vanish from the page–
He opened his eyes after several hours of half-sleep and stared at the water-stained ceiling, haunted by the feeling of being swallowed by something too large to escape and too nebulous to define. As happened so often, he slid on shoes in the dark and, without thinking, moved towards the door.
The sidewalk, originally flat concrete, had been transformed over the years into a topographical maze of miniature mountains and valleys. Damian’s feet navigated them in the night with the ease of familiarity, while his mind wandered elsewhere. His thoughts were growing increasingly vague, wordless even, as distant as the world of normalcy he had left behind and as aimless as the direction his feet were taking him in. Hands shoved in pockets, face downcast, he continued on without understanding his purpose or destination. This is life. This is my life. There is nothing else. The illusions are gone.
Eventually he found himself walking on a dirt path alongside the now-frozen river, overhung with trees which made themselves known as dark silhouettes. Park benches marked the borders of the path at regular intervals. Crunching through the frost, Damian absent-mindedly moved to one and sat down, shivering slightly. The air was deadly quiet except for the sound of his own breath, which made clouds in front of him that dissipated slowly. His thoughts became lucid for just a moment, as if to make a final summation: This is the darkness from which there is no morning.
The next thing he was aware of (after a long spell which brought the frost onto his jacket) was a sound on the path behind him. Turning his head, in the darkness he could barely see the small, hunched figure shuffling in his direction. Her head was covered in a tightly-knotted scarf; one hand wielded a rubber-ended cane while the other clutched a stained and faded jacket over her chest. Snow boots scraping the brown, frozen leaves, eyes fixed on the ground, the elderly woman made her way purposefully towards him. Without a word, she sat down on the other end of the bench and gazed towards the frozen water, wheezing slightly.
Her voice startled him when it appeared without warning: cracked and feeble, with a European accent he couldn’t place.
“It’s closer than you think.”
Damian blinked in surprise. After a pause, he replied, his words slurred by the cold. “What?”
She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and issued a chest-wracking cough before turning to face him. Her eyes, sunk deep in wrinkled sockets, sparkled like small black crystals, though he could still barely see her.
“I said, you are closer than you think.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you.”
Damian pulled his jacket tighter around him, feeling the cold for the first time. He knew instinctively that she knew exactly what she was talking about, which made him distinctly uncomfortable. For the moment he decided to postpone the questions of how and why.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course not. But there it is, just the same.”
He didn’t know what to say in response, and the old woman sat unmoving, gaze fixed directly on him, without any visible emotion. He looked away to ease the tension, and fumbled for words to break the silence.
“I’m… just trying to figure things out, that’s all.”
Still without moving, “Now, what would you try to do something like that for?” Then a coughing spell that lasted several seconds, which make Damian wince.
“I can’t help it. I need to find some kind of answers for my life, some reason for being here.” Damian felt himself engaging with this strange woman, almost in spite of himself. His thoughts seemed to be coalescing into concrete forms, where they had previously been so ephemeral. “Otherwise,” he paused for a moment. “Otherwise, dieing is the only thing that makes any sense at all.” Is that it? He thought, and it bit him harder than the winter air. Have I been thinking about suicide?
Her voice again broke into his thoughts. “Stupid boy.” Her emotionlessness was momentarily replaced by a mixture of pity and contempt. “There are no answers to life, yours or mine. Life is the answer itself. Either take it or leave it.”
Damian was again lost for words. He didn’t understand what she said, but it seemed to nestle in his mind like a small seed, waiting for the right conditions to come to life. He simply sat in silence and absorbed the sound of her voice as she continued, until he sank into unconsciousness from cold and exhaustion:
“Understanding is just illusion, but life is real. Wisdom is weak, but life cannot be broken. Darkness and silence are emptiness; emptiness is death. But sound and light have come into the world, and emptiness cannot overcome it. You are the light, and the sound. That is your answer, my child.”
With a start, Damian woke up. The darkness of the night had been replaced by an orange glow in the sky in front of him, reflected back by the ice below. He turned to look at the bench beside him and wondered where she came from, where she was now, and how she survived her wanderings through the winter night. Her words and her voice were etched in his memory, and somehow they offered him strength.
In the growing light, he noticed a spot of yellow on the ground in front of him. Bending forward and pulling back a leaf, he was surprised to see a small flower, something like a buttercup, pushing through the heavy frost. How is that possible? Somehow it seemed to be an echo of the old woman, one no less miraculous then the other. Maybe she is right. Maybe there is life that can’t be destroyed. Maybe that miracle is the only thing that matters. He again had the feeling that these thoughts were seeds in his mind that would begin to germinate in the months and years ahead. He began to write a new song, and this one he determined to put to music.
life is moving through what we can’t define
and the movement is a dance
when we decide to put our questions behind
and we see that all faith is blind
As he sat in the winter morning, the light increased around him, and Damian watched the coming of the dawn.
