The Climb
Somewhere along the way, when he wasn’t
paying attention
And when no one was around to notice
He lost his way.
Not all at once, it was an erosion
Of understanding
Of purpose
Of identity
Of care
When he ceased to care about himself,
he couldn’t care much for the world.
And when he stopped caring about the
world, it seemed the world did not care about him. At least not the parts
that mattered.
And so without knowing it, he found himself
in a sinking into a void.
Into a hole so dark, he could not tell
the direction of the sky from the soil.
Introspection lead to further his
depression of spirit.
He no longer identified as a man, or
even a human. A different kind of creature, the rules of humanity
did not apply.
No laws did.
No longer bound by time or physics, he
fancied himself a powerful beast.
Unrestricted, he was free to
indulge. Free to destroy.
The beast pressed forward beyond the
edge of reason. Beyond the edge of existence itself.
Willing to perish for his ideals, he
sought likeminded souls with whom to share them.
And so he set out on a quest into the
darkness.
Fulfillment always just around the next
corner, yet too far from grasp.
And on it went until the beast
realized, that there was no match.
He was one of a kind, and therefore
doomed to solitude of spirit.
The quest had run it’s course.
The well of purpose now ran dry.
The pain and confusion were unbearable.
There was no longer a point to any of
this, and so the only reasonable choice left was to leave this existence.
And so it was clear. The road had
ended for this being, who no longer fit with his own universe.
The only peace that could be found was
in oblivion.
But, something odd lay at brink of this
dead end.
Unrest.
He was not ready for the road to
end.
Banging his head against the wall, he
screamed at his inability to make the final step.
Destruction was supposed to end his
feeling of lack, and wanting
but in the end he could not crush his
desire to survive.
He could not deny the very value of his
own existence which he sought to destroy.
He could not deny his soul.
His steps retraced
back up the road, back towards a
memory of light.
Of what it once looked like.
It seemed he spent years climbing out
of the hole.
Sinking was so quick. Climbing
was painfully tedious.
but he pressed forward, until at once
he awoke and real light emerged.
At first as a sliver.
He paused.
A tear welled in his eye.
A beast like himself was not permitted
the emotions of a human, so he quickly wiped it away.
And yet he continued to claw and
scratch his way.
Slowly the hole filled with
light.
He clawed until his fingers bled, but
the physical pain was worth the worry.
As the sun grew brighter, he found
himself laughing
Which was an thing odd for a beast to do.
For days more it seemed, he climbed
with his head down.
Noise echoed throughout the hole
constantly; sometimes sobbing, sometimes laughter, sometimes even song.
He hurtled his body over a high
crevice, and all at once he could no longer move.
There was nowhere left to climb.
His eyes adjusted, and he looked around
at a familiar site.
He was back on flat earth. In the
land bound by laws.
Laws of physics and of men. Laws
that seemed like shackles.
He was at once filled with dread.
He looked back down the hole.
Stepping forward to the precipice, he
longed to return to the darkness.
To escape this dread in his
heart.
Sitting on the edge filled with utter
confusion he wept with his face in his hands.
Finally, when he lifted his head he
found himself surrounded by creatures waiting for their turn to descend into
the hole.
One of them cried out, “Are you going
back in there or what? We’d like to come too.”
He stood up, and wiped his face.
“No” he said, startled by the sound of
his own voice
“No I am not. None of us
are. I have already been there. This place here is for us.”
And, with that said the beast lead
everyone away from the ledge.
Back into humanity.
-Wes Wiles (March 2013)
