1.4.24
On the Trail. Athwart my granite throne, busy Henry in attendance. A gray fog fills the valley like a teacup, so Henry and I feel alone amidst these mottled stones, disheveled grasses, leafless brush and, oh, that velvety ground-moss, knobby as a contour map, pleasant as a promise of spring.
Unseasonable drizzle makes this stretch of Trail emptier than ever. There should be snow this time of year – and ice – threatening this walker, not as spry as formerly.
The fog encases us. Tire squeals rise from the valley but mightn’t these be piped in to persuade us we’ve not been stranded on earth? Maybe the world ended while we hiked and nobody told us! How easily humans spook!
I’m in sunny mood. I wrote well this morning, which calms me. Scribo ergo sum! “Where do you get your ideas?” I’m sometimes asked. It’s not hard really. Nudge aside the dirt of dailiness and expose what lies beneath. Whatever you see, there is always something you have not seen beyond the penumbra of your sight. Venture there for a grand surprise. Some in Columbus’ crew dreaded tipping over the edge of earth but sailed anyway. So should we all, but we don’t, we cling to shore, protecting our complacencies with No Trespassing signs, shibboleths: “You can’t go there!”
My Celestial City is not yesterday but tomorrow, my ignorance my paradise. I yearn not for the good old days but the scary new ones, not for arrival but departure. Peer into that fog. Well do I know that valley, having gazed into it countless times -- white house there, red barn there, vultures’ hover, hoot of southbound train – I can draw you a picture. But maybe when this curtain rises – if it rises – the scene will have changed, as in a theater, for the second act. Maybe I only imagined those features. Maybe all I’m sure of never was, as in a dream.
One can divide mankind into those restless to learn and those who dread discovery. All are born into the first camp then gradually defect to the second. Learning is too dangerous. One might slip on the ice and fall unheard in an empty forest. We settle into our creeds as seabirds into their shore nests, weary of flight. I know who I am, thank God, please don’t wake me from my faith.
Trapped in trappings, I rejoice in not knowing. I write to find out: saying is my way of seeing. This was not a choice but who I am. Any answer is inadequate, at best incomplete. My parents and their parents got a little right – and a lot wrong, I no less. But I am not stopping here, only pausing for breath. Every claim is asterisked, pending further research.
Curiosity is the salvation of mankind. Different from brainpower, which calculates and memorizes, nosiness peers past the edge of the syllabus to where the decent don’t dare. Wonder is everywhere available at the trifling cost of inquiry. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” is no policy: always ask, always tell.
But who can rest easy, not knowing?
Who wants ease? Ease aplenty awaits. The stories notwithstanding, it’s easy being dead. Give me strife, panic, lostness, the fleeting satisfaction of a sentence – madness, if it comes to that – in preference to death.
The fog thins teasingly, exposing the far ridge and – can it be? – a khaki patch of fallow field – before overpainting the lines. Henry, never far, snuffles sopped ochre leaves – odoriferous rot! – as they soften into mud. The drizzle inspissates, dappling my ink. How lovable life, given half a chance!