Spit It Out
A lone traveler on an arduous pilgrimage, leaving behind his habits, his comforts, his futile certainties.
Surely it would be better to die as you have lived, in the company of your enemy, than to undertake a dubious trek over a hard terrain.
What could be driving him?
The need to wear down the accretion of self?
The need to escape self?
The longing for apotheosis? Rebirth?
Or just the chance to die if not nobly at least in motion?
No—the longing to be freed from pain has its own artistic completeness.
Not another human being, hardly any life at all beyond the occasional indifferent raptor in the pale sky, the flash of a rodent, the wrinkle of a snake, had he seen since the trailhead, with the mountain appearing closer than the four-day journey it would actually demand.
No one at all. That came with the package.
The first night he found shelter in one of the sporadic groves of trees, with their plentiful fallen branches for a fire. No need to fear betraying his position—there were no eyes to see, and how could his position be anything but lost wherever he was? The following days mirrored the ones before, except for a gradual thinning of the vegetation, and a surrender of the grassland to hard ground and rock. As he neared the mountain, the wind grew colder, sharper, the air thinner. Each step felt heavier than the last.
No one saw or cared.
On the third day, engulfed the entire morning in the mountain’s shadow, he began to notice a withering of the leaves on the stunted trees, like the early stages of a blight, and gradually the vestiges of green disappeared. At last nothing alive was left at all, just a sheen of something like grease or tar, puddled in low places, punctured by the stobs of dead trees. Walking became laborsome, and sometimes the knowledge that death is the true home in the heart of every living thing ran through his mind.
By the last day the tar seemed to coat everything, and either was or through the feverish work of his imagination seemed, malignantly alive—and he felt no relief until he began to ascend in earnest and the air was too vigorous for nightmares. Mingling his sticky footprints with the dried others on the lower rocks, he could see, as promised, the steep way of his path toward the sky.
He thought: I’ve put everything on this path, knowing I’m not the person I am but the person guarding the person I am, knowing it could fail like everything always fails, but it is all I have so for me it is all there is. One step, then the next—
The path, always steep and except for random eruptions of boulders or abrupt cliffs, mostly clear, led him steadily up, bent forward and in a constant search for handholds. Only occasionally did he pause to look down, seeing and smelling the foul valley below.
By early afternoon he felt himself nearing the top, then was confronted with a final near-vertical scarp which looked impossible at first glance, but with study—turning back not even to be considered—revealed narrow ledges for his feet, and a long jagged crevice for his hands. He first visualized himself doing it, then with a surge of adrenalin and without thinking, did it, scrambling to his feet on the crest. Before him lay a verdant, boulder-strewn caldera, and a single grazing cow. The cow gave him only one half-curious glance, as he stood there laboring for breath, vaguely wondering how the beast got there. The cow herself didn’t seem to be wondering anything.
Stable for now, he looked around and saw a faint path leading to a ledge of rock jutting over the rim. The last leg of his pilgrimage. He stopped in the center.
As he gazed over the oily landscape, a large black lake gleaming dully in the center, he felt a stab of fear. He fought it back. Too late for that now.
The sun was still fairly high. The wind swirled and the distant horizon melted into the haze.
He felt a little embarrassed.
Speak the truth to the air
That was all the instruction. The truth. The demon truth. Knowing that if you lied, a curse would fall upon you like the hammer of God.
The truth about yourself, your past, your deepest weakness, unspoken desires of the heart, opportunities refused, vandalism, regret, guilt, shame, humiliation, fear, loss. The unforgivable that you can’t say anywhere there are ears. Bring it out of the cellar of your soul and into the air of this place. The unspeakable truth that must be spoken.
The cold wind moaned against his face. He closed his eyes and, shocked by the puny, ordinary sound of it, said what he had come to say, then opened his eyes and looked around. No, there was no one. Nothing happened—he felt the place giving back the faintness of what he had given. He said it louder, like an actor on stage, shamed by the mortifying words that had no intention of losing their grip within him. And then he understood, as with any salvation, he had to go much deeper—as deep as he had feared then a hundred times deeper than that.
And let go.
Only a throat-shredding savage scream would do.
That resolution weakened the hold within him, and with a surge of pain he called up every detail of the demon that had deformed his life, and from the mountaintop screamed out the black cloud of the truth. It floated before his face and made a move as though lusting to return, but he jumped back a safe distance. Then the wind caught it and it drifted out over the ridge and began to sink.
He inched to the edge, peered over, saw it thirty feet down and falling now, toward the valley below.
He felt a lightness, like an old memory, turned around and wanted only to lie down in that cool fragrant grass. He found a suitable depression and reclined. The cow gave him one look, then went back to grazing.
The sun, creeping toward the western rim, warmed his face, and he had no desire to be anywhere but there. Really no desire at all. He knew if he didn’t leave now he wouldn’t have the daylight to make it down and would have to spend the night, which he predicted would be cold. And he would be right. But he didn’t care.
Could it be called sleep, that weightless excursion he took? What did it matter what you called it?
Deep in the night something woke him, and opening his eyes to a sky gorged with brilliant stars, he realized it was only the cold, another parasite, and he found he could, for long intervals, take himself where it wasn’t.
The sun rose early at that elevation. The cow was looking at him and in his mind played the vision of the creature picking her way up the hoofholds of that last cliff.
He saved the why for dessert.
January 30, 2022