While all of this had been going through my mind, I could feel myself becoming more and more agitated, which was almost a new sensation. My passions were slowly returning to me out here in the real world, away from the cold, concrete world that had been built up by people. Out here I could feel the ground beneath my feet, and it was soft and moist. This was true freedom, not freedom granted to you by an overarching government, but this was freedom of spirit. In this wilderness I could truly do what I wanted without fear of anything happening that wouldn’t be the result of nature. In the day and age that I had been living, disappearing like this wasn’t really freedom because someone would report me missing and a search would commence, but somehow this was different. I felt that I was really free and there were no worries of ever being found, it was a feeling I couldn’t really explain, it was more of an instinct. Only when one experiences liberty of this sort can that person really understand the lack of it they have amongst other people.
The plants and animals will never censor the things you say. There are no children’s ears to “damage” with “foul” language. No subject is too taboo for the trees. There is no murder because, in nature, one must only survive. One kills only to eat or to defend oneself because death otherwise would serve no other purpose than to boost an ego, but who would that person be trying to impress except themselves. There are no crimes here, no judges and no jury; the human mind is the only thing that can act in this way because it is the only thing with the ability to reason. When one abandons this capacity, one loses the last limit on humanity and returns to the realm of the animals where instinctual morals are the only limits. When these are stripped away, one becomes akin to the plant life that does not have the ability to think or feel, as we understand it, and is free from these limits. Yet as one progresses upward in degrees of freedom in this way, one loses freedoms in other ways. As a tree it is limited by its inability to move or think and as an animal one is unable to reason, in both of these one loses the very thing that makes him human. One chooses to accept the limitations that come with humanity because he does not want to lose the ability to reason. This is why an escape to the wilderness is something that can be so helpful to people because one can return to nature without losing what makes him human. In death one finds true freedom. The sleep of death provides escape from the limits on everything living and one can truly say they are limitless with one exception. The exception is that one is no longer free to live.
Evidently all this thought had taken more time than I realized because a dull light began to pierce the darkness of the sky. I was not the least bit tired and I was able to make out my surroundings once again, so I stood up and began to make my up through the woods. The forest was very dense, so the going was tough. There was no real trail for me to make my way and I had to step along on the undergrowth, being mindful to not lose my footing. If I fell and hurt myself here, no one would be there to help me and I doubt I would ever be found. It was strangely quiet there, I couldn’t here any of the forest sounds that one would expect. There was no breeze, the air hung still and thick. The only noticeable noise was the sound of my feet, padding along the ground, but even this was only slight because the ground was plush. Finally, when I felt that I couldn’t stand this silence anymore, I could see a clearing up ahead.
I quickened my pace and made way for the sunlight. At the clearing, I could hear the sounds of nature once again. Birds were chirping from the trees and I could here the wind blowing through. In the center of the clearing was a small pond, and on the other side of the pond I could see a large cave into the side of the mountain. Just outside the cave was a fire pit that had obviously been well used. The rocks it was made of were all black and charred, and the ashes of an uncountable amount of fires lay inside. This was the first sign of human life I had seen since I left the truck driver at the gas station. Though I had been enjoying the time to myself, the knowledge that someone else was out here was a little reassuring.
I began to wonder what sort of person it was that was out here in the wilderness. Could it have been someone like me who was lost on the way to somewhere, or was it someone who left everything behind to be one with his nature? How long had this person been out here, could he (or she) have been living here for years? My interest was peaked by this last thought and I began to hope that whoever it was had been in this place for many years. If this was the case then I could ask him (or her) so many questions about what was seen and thought about in the solitude. Could this person still even speak with no one else to talk to? I began walking around toward the cave to see if I could meet whoever lived there, and I heard a noise somewhere in front of me. Out of the woods ahead of me came a wild looking man who didn’t seem the slightest bit surprised by my presence.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Out of Apathy, pt. 14
{So it's been a long time since I've posted anything. Sorry about that! I would like to regale you with how I haven't found time to post because I was busy slaying dragons and battling evil wizards, but the truth is that I just haven't posted. Ruby June and I did go Iceland however for 2 weeks, which was pretty epic and amazing! Seriously, go there. Now. On to the next part...}
Once I started walking the brilliance of the stag began to lessen and the sunlight passing through the trees became visible again. I could still see the stag ahead of me, bounding ahead and then stopping to watch me follow. My full concentration was on the animal and I no longer noticed whether I was going up or down hill anymore. As we proceeded through the woods I noticed the trees becoming less dense as I moved forward. Eventually the trees became sparse enough that I could see a clearing on what looked like a peak, and I concluded that I had reached the top of the hill. By the time I had walked into the clearing the stag disappeared somewhere and I was left alone again. It must have been early afternoon because the sun was just past its apex in the sky.
Looking back behind me I could no longer see the gas station in the distance, only a vast expanse of land. In the other direction I could see a low valley that led up into a range of mountains not too far away. Was this direction I was supposed to go? Surprisingly, this was the only question that entered my mind at that time. In my moment of doubt, I felt a low rumbling under my feet and I knew that it was a confirmation of my instincts. On the other side of the hill there was a significantly less amount of trees, so I felt more confident traversing downward. At the bottom of the hill, on the valley floor, the grass was long and lush. The ground felt very soft under my feet and I could hear birds cooing from somewhere. The whole atmosphere in this place was very soothing and began to make me feel quite drowsy. A sweetness filled the air and the smell not only excited my nostrils, but my taste buds as well.
This place was like nothing I had ever experienced before and my determination began to fade because I didn’t want these feelings to fade. My pace began to slow and the path I walked was no longer straight as I was letting my hands pass through the waist high grass. There was a single tree nearby and began to walk toward to take a short break from my journey. Beneath the tree there was a small pond with fish swimming in it. The tree itself was an apple tree and the apples all seemed to be ripe and ready to fall from the sinking branches. I plucked one from the tree, washed it off in the pond, and sat with my back against the tree to eat my snack. Oddly enough I wasn’t even hungry, but somehow the fruit from the tree was irresistible and I just had to have a piece of it. However, before I could even take a bite, the drowsiness I had been feeling became much more intense and my eyelids began to feel very heavy. It was a strange sensation because I never fell asleep, but I couldn’t move; I had fallen into some kind of trance and was unable to shake myself free.
Everything around me became distorted, as if the colors had all been pushed outside of their boundary lines. When the wind blew I could see the changing light patterns on the grass that was swaying. Besides this motion there was another movement, a dark shape moved across my field. I couldn’t tell what exactly it was, but it walked upright and was moving toward me. Finally it stopped right in front of me and seemed to be only inches from my face. “Lovely day, isn’t it,” the shape said to me, and I could only moan some sort of affirmation in reply. After my murmur the shape chuckled and said, “you do seem to be enjoying it. I would never leave here if I could, but I’ve got a job to do. Always work to be done.” The shape’s voice trailed off and it began to move away out of my line of sight.
After my brief encounter with that odd shape I could no longer tell how much time had passed. Time seemed to have no meaning in this place, things just happened as they did. There was never a beginning or end, so to make a temporal reference would be meaningless. One could certainly say that a patch of grass moved in a certain way before moving in another direction, but this observation was pointless because everything was in motion constantly, going back and forth. So perhaps a more accurate way to say it is that time was not meaningless, but just pointless. I would like to say that it was a very good feeling; however, this would be inaccurate. Things were not good or bad, they just were. Somewhere between the two extremes, without either of them actually existing. It was a constant middle state where no decision ever had to be made because none of them mattered. This place was apathy embodied in a physical form.
At some point during my haze under that tree things began to shift. Like someone adjusting the lens of a camera, things began to come into focus and there came a clarity like I had never known before. While I had good eyesight in general, this was a completely different sensation. I perceived colors like I never had before and I could pick out individual blades of the grass moving in the breeze. My eyes had become like those of the eagle who had guided me from the beginning. Then I began to notice sounds around me, not just those of the wind through the grass, but sounds of animals crawling along the ground somewhere in the distance and bugs moving about within the tree I was leaning against.
Just like the stag with its impeccable hearing, my hearing had improved significantly. Along with this sensory improvement related to my animal guides, my other senses had become heightened to an amazing extent. The sweet smell of the air was so intense now that it was almost unbearable, and smell found its way into my mouth, caressing my taste buds. The sleepy state that I had succumbed to before was now off of me and I felt invigorated once again. Despite the appeal to stay in this place, my drive was too much and I bounded off toward the mountains at full speed, dropping my apple onto the ground before I had even taken a bite of it because it suddenly lost its attraction. Only one thing mattered now and that was the path. “The path is forward.” Those words repeated in my head over and over again, they filled me with something that I had not felt before. All that apathy I had felt for most of my life seemed like wasted time with this new found enthusiasm.
Somewhere behind me I heard a voice calling me back, “why are you leaving? I thought we were just beginning to have some fun. Don’t go! Are you just going to leave all this behind? You’ll never find comfort like that you find here!” None of these words fazed me and I didn’t even turn around to see the speaker. The voice was just a distraction, just another thing trying to keep me from my destination. As I ran I felt my pocket and touched the square shape of the picture in my pocket bringing the image of the girl to my mind. Her voice from my dreams drove me harder and I ran faster and faster until the foot of the mountains approached so rapidly that I was unsure if I could stop in time before I ran right through them.
When I had realized how close I was to the thickening trees at the base of the mountains, I stopped running and stopped quite suddenly. The odd thing was that when I stopped there was no surge forward due to inertia; I just ceased to move, like I had run straight into a wall. However, the scenery around me took time to come back into focus and there was some reverberation back and forth when everything around me finally stopped moving. I looked up to survey the trek I was about to undertake and could see the top of the nearest peak at least a mile into the heavens. It was white against the blue backdrop of the afternoon sky and surely cast an intimidating shadow on the other side. The ground in front of me was beginning to climb up the slopes and I could see a dense forest taking shape along the way. Not wanting to become lost as I had before, I searched for a path into the trees.
Not too far away I could see a slight inlet and a clearing, and as I approached it I could see that it was actually a narrow path cut into the woods. The initial ascent was not too difficult and it reminded me of conquering the hill not too long ago, but as I progressed and the day wore on, the surface became much more steep. Eventually I was forced to begin climbing up large boulders. With the increasing darkness I was having a hard time seeing where I was going and was afraid I was going to lose my footing, so I thought I better stop for the night. I found a spot against a tree and leaned there looking up through the canopy.
Sounds of the night began to fill the air, there was the flapping of bats going through the air who were searching for their prey, nocturnal animals could be heard moving about in the trees and various other sounds that make many people nervous when they are all alone. There was no hostility here though; the sounds were actually quite calming because I could feel that life was all around me. No matter where I turned there was something alive, even the tree I was leaning against was alive, though it had ceased growing. I began thinking about the tree and all the things that it must have seen (if it had the ability to perceive). Inside its trunk there were countless numbers of insects crawling about in colonies, and surely in some of the higher parts were burrows in which squirrels hid their snacks. Birds built nests on its branches and gave birth to a new generation, which would continue their species. Around the other side of the tree was a hollow in between the roots; many animals of the forest had crawled into to spend their last days alone. Yet, they were never alone, the tree was there providing a quiet place for a peaceful death.
When the animals would die, their decomposing body would provide fodder for many of the insects living inside the tree and the waste of those insects would give nutrients to the tree. The breathing of the animals of the forest also provided life giving carbon dioxide to the tree, which would in turn provide oxygen for the animals to breathe. Everything out here seemed to have a cycle, and everything out here was dependent on each other, except me that is. I was of the species that left the forest and the plains, the species that tainted the lands. My species had lost touch with everything and began to consume more than it put back. This was the price my species paid for progress and technology.
When the people became comfortable in one place they propagated and began to destroy the land. At first the impact was not so profound, but as time wore on and the people became more advanced the affect became drastic. Suddenly there were talks of disappearing rain forests, global warming, and threats of nuclear war. Was the trade off really worth it? Are the comforts of entertainment and microwave dinners worth the loss of the land? Surely not, because one day the people will run out of resources to use up and there will be nothing left.
Once I started walking the brilliance of the stag began to lessen and the sunlight passing through the trees became visible again. I could still see the stag ahead of me, bounding ahead and then stopping to watch me follow. My full concentration was on the animal and I no longer noticed whether I was going up or down hill anymore. As we proceeded through the woods I noticed the trees becoming less dense as I moved forward. Eventually the trees became sparse enough that I could see a clearing on what looked like a peak, and I concluded that I had reached the top of the hill. By the time I had walked into the clearing the stag disappeared somewhere and I was left alone again. It must have been early afternoon because the sun was just past its apex in the sky.
Looking back behind me I could no longer see the gas station in the distance, only a vast expanse of land. In the other direction I could see a low valley that led up into a range of mountains not too far away. Was this direction I was supposed to go? Surprisingly, this was the only question that entered my mind at that time. In my moment of doubt, I felt a low rumbling under my feet and I knew that it was a confirmation of my instincts. On the other side of the hill there was a significantly less amount of trees, so I felt more confident traversing downward. At the bottom of the hill, on the valley floor, the grass was long and lush. The ground felt very soft under my feet and I could hear birds cooing from somewhere. The whole atmosphere in this place was very soothing and began to make me feel quite drowsy. A sweetness filled the air and the smell not only excited my nostrils, but my taste buds as well.
This place was like nothing I had ever experienced before and my determination began to fade because I didn’t want these feelings to fade. My pace began to slow and the path I walked was no longer straight as I was letting my hands pass through the waist high grass. There was a single tree nearby and began to walk toward to take a short break from my journey. Beneath the tree there was a small pond with fish swimming in it. The tree itself was an apple tree and the apples all seemed to be ripe and ready to fall from the sinking branches. I plucked one from the tree, washed it off in the pond, and sat with my back against the tree to eat my snack. Oddly enough I wasn’t even hungry, but somehow the fruit from the tree was irresistible and I just had to have a piece of it. However, before I could even take a bite, the drowsiness I had been feeling became much more intense and my eyelids began to feel very heavy. It was a strange sensation because I never fell asleep, but I couldn’t move; I had fallen into some kind of trance and was unable to shake myself free.
Everything around me became distorted, as if the colors had all been pushed outside of their boundary lines. When the wind blew I could see the changing light patterns on the grass that was swaying. Besides this motion there was another movement, a dark shape moved across my field. I couldn’t tell what exactly it was, but it walked upright and was moving toward me. Finally it stopped right in front of me and seemed to be only inches from my face. “Lovely day, isn’t it,” the shape said to me, and I could only moan some sort of affirmation in reply. After my murmur the shape chuckled and said, “you do seem to be enjoying it. I would never leave here if I could, but I’ve got a job to do. Always work to be done.” The shape’s voice trailed off and it began to move away out of my line of sight.
After my brief encounter with that odd shape I could no longer tell how much time had passed. Time seemed to have no meaning in this place, things just happened as they did. There was never a beginning or end, so to make a temporal reference would be meaningless. One could certainly say that a patch of grass moved in a certain way before moving in another direction, but this observation was pointless because everything was in motion constantly, going back and forth. So perhaps a more accurate way to say it is that time was not meaningless, but just pointless. I would like to say that it was a very good feeling; however, this would be inaccurate. Things were not good or bad, they just were. Somewhere between the two extremes, without either of them actually existing. It was a constant middle state where no decision ever had to be made because none of them mattered. This place was apathy embodied in a physical form.
At some point during my haze under that tree things began to shift. Like someone adjusting the lens of a camera, things began to come into focus and there came a clarity like I had never known before. While I had good eyesight in general, this was a completely different sensation. I perceived colors like I never had before and I could pick out individual blades of the grass moving in the breeze. My eyes had become like those of the eagle who had guided me from the beginning. Then I began to notice sounds around me, not just those of the wind through the grass, but sounds of animals crawling along the ground somewhere in the distance and bugs moving about within the tree I was leaning against.
Just like the stag with its impeccable hearing, my hearing had improved significantly. Along with this sensory improvement related to my animal guides, my other senses had become heightened to an amazing extent. The sweet smell of the air was so intense now that it was almost unbearable, and smell found its way into my mouth, caressing my taste buds. The sleepy state that I had succumbed to before was now off of me and I felt invigorated once again. Despite the appeal to stay in this place, my drive was too much and I bounded off toward the mountains at full speed, dropping my apple onto the ground before I had even taken a bite of it because it suddenly lost its attraction. Only one thing mattered now and that was the path. “The path is forward.” Those words repeated in my head over and over again, they filled me with something that I had not felt before. All that apathy I had felt for most of my life seemed like wasted time with this new found enthusiasm.
Somewhere behind me I heard a voice calling me back, “why are you leaving? I thought we were just beginning to have some fun. Don’t go! Are you just going to leave all this behind? You’ll never find comfort like that you find here!” None of these words fazed me and I didn’t even turn around to see the speaker. The voice was just a distraction, just another thing trying to keep me from my destination. As I ran I felt my pocket and touched the square shape of the picture in my pocket bringing the image of the girl to my mind. Her voice from my dreams drove me harder and I ran faster and faster until the foot of the mountains approached so rapidly that I was unsure if I could stop in time before I ran right through them.
When I had realized how close I was to the thickening trees at the base of the mountains, I stopped running and stopped quite suddenly. The odd thing was that when I stopped there was no surge forward due to inertia; I just ceased to move, like I had run straight into a wall. However, the scenery around me took time to come back into focus and there was some reverberation back and forth when everything around me finally stopped moving. I looked up to survey the trek I was about to undertake and could see the top of the nearest peak at least a mile into the heavens. It was white against the blue backdrop of the afternoon sky and surely cast an intimidating shadow on the other side. The ground in front of me was beginning to climb up the slopes and I could see a dense forest taking shape along the way. Not wanting to become lost as I had before, I searched for a path into the trees.
Not too far away I could see a slight inlet and a clearing, and as I approached it I could see that it was actually a narrow path cut into the woods. The initial ascent was not too difficult and it reminded me of conquering the hill not too long ago, but as I progressed and the day wore on, the surface became much more steep. Eventually I was forced to begin climbing up large boulders. With the increasing darkness I was having a hard time seeing where I was going and was afraid I was going to lose my footing, so I thought I better stop for the night. I found a spot against a tree and leaned there looking up through the canopy.
Sounds of the night began to fill the air, there was the flapping of bats going through the air who were searching for their prey, nocturnal animals could be heard moving about in the trees and various other sounds that make many people nervous when they are all alone. There was no hostility here though; the sounds were actually quite calming because I could feel that life was all around me. No matter where I turned there was something alive, even the tree I was leaning against was alive, though it had ceased growing. I began thinking about the tree and all the things that it must have seen (if it had the ability to perceive). Inside its trunk there were countless numbers of insects crawling about in colonies, and surely in some of the higher parts were burrows in which squirrels hid their snacks. Birds built nests on its branches and gave birth to a new generation, which would continue their species. Around the other side of the tree was a hollow in between the roots; many animals of the forest had crawled into to spend their last days alone. Yet, they were never alone, the tree was there providing a quiet place for a peaceful death.
When the animals would die, their decomposing body would provide fodder for many of the insects living inside the tree and the waste of those insects would give nutrients to the tree. The breathing of the animals of the forest also provided life giving carbon dioxide to the tree, which would in turn provide oxygen for the animals to breathe. Everything out here seemed to have a cycle, and everything out here was dependent on each other, except me that is. I was of the species that left the forest and the plains, the species that tainted the lands. My species had lost touch with everything and began to consume more than it put back. This was the price my species paid for progress and technology.
When the people became comfortable in one place they propagated and began to destroy the land. At first the impact was not so profound, but as time wore on and the people became more advanced the affect became drastic. Suddenly there were talks of disappearing rain forests, global warming, and threats of nuclear war. Was the trade off really worth it? Are the comforts of entertainment and microwave dinners worth the loss of the land? Surely not, because one day the people will run out of resources to use up and there will be nothing left.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)