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Feb. 28th, 2014 12:05 amWe stop to continue, they explained, smiling. They had walked farther than the others because they had not strayed from their first path. They were stopped now. They stopped just often enough, just long enough to progress steadily. All had been planned. Though they knew I would never join them they told me all this in happy pride. They liked to repeat it. They liked it so much they didn't care that I disliked it.
I told them that from my perspective they merely continued to stop. They would never get where they wished, so what did it matter that they'd gone further, would go further than anyone? In this direction there was nothing, or at least nothing in seven human lifetimes. But I didn't say any of that, just that they continued to stop. They smiled the same smile when pitying my lack of understanding as they had in their pride.
When meeting people like that I of course always wonder what they know. Do they see that the end in their minds matched no spot on a map? Did they care? Had they snipped a mental tendon so as to walk over and over one small circle, rename that the world? Or is no decision needed, perhaps possible, when what we want fits what another tells us? The right another or right number of others, say. You'd think some original must have come up with this another way, but having met so many I now wonder if they were already walking, following not one another but some riverbed, some crevice, and just began to talk about what they were doing. Described it to one another. Began to venture why. Guessing the reason for doing what all had always done as a game, at first, then a competition, then increasingly as an obligation as better and better sounding reasons were found. Reasons demanding completion, champions, the silencing of questions. Demanding to unite as one reason only. The only reason that could ever have been.
And if ever you kidnapped one in the night and dragged him to the ridgetop to show him the nothing he strove toward such that he found it impossible to doubt you, would he not say then that the world is too large, that it was never about the impossible long walk but the small one between the necessary stops, the finding of human-sized truth with the help of an endless lie?
We will never convince them until we can show both a home on the horizon and a steady pace held toward it. I wonder if the intervals will match.
I told them that from my perspective they merely continued to stop. They would never get where they wished, so what did it matter that they'd gone further, would go further than anyone? In this direction there was nothing, or at least nothing in seven human lifetimes. But I didn't say any of that, just that they continued to stop. They smiled the same smile when pitying my lack of understanding as they had in their pride.
When meeting people like that I of course always wonder what they know. Do they see that the end in their minds matched no spot on a map? Did they care? Had they snipped a mental tendon so as to walk over and over one small circle, rename that the world? Or is no decision needed, perhaps possible, when what we want fits what another tells us? The right another or right number of others, say. You'd think some original must have come up with this another way, but having met so many I now wonder if they were already walking, following not one another but some riverbed, some crevice, and just began to talk about what they were doing. Described it to one another. Began to venture why. Guessing the reason for doing what all had always done as a game, at first, then a competition, then increasingly as an obligation as better and better sounding reasons were found. Reasons demanding completion, champions, the silencing of questions. Demanding to unite as one reason only. The only reason that could ever have been.
And if ever you kidnapped one in the night and dragged him to the ridgetop to show him the nothing he strove toward such that he found it impossible to doubt you, would he not say then that the world is too large, that it was never about the impossible long walk but the small one between the necessary stops, the finding of human-sized truth with the help of an endless lie?
We will never convince them until we can show both a home on the horizon and a steady pace held toward it. I wonder if the intervals will match.
