Nietzche
Bluelighter
“I used to consider myself indecisive,” I told the brownman, “now I am not so sure.” The long stretch of highway spread out before us like and interminable waterway. The horizon and highway appeared to be interconnected like some clichéd metaphor. From here one could only tell that the highway lead to the sky. Only something so vast and mysterious could have justified such an expedition. But dark . . .?
How many times has this trip been repeated? How many have made this trip, so habitual to us? The trees, the houses, the overpasses seem charted onto infinity, and although every time I return I know not what I am returning to I can rest assured that the same landmarks will be here to great me on my way. If only a friend were so true, so consistent. Yet I know that when I make this trip ten, perhaps twenty years from now, the landmarks will have changed, it will not matter because I am returning to the same spot, the same singularity, the same heart of . . .
The brownman was our guide and our host. We had pulled over to visit a rest area at the brownman’s request. The three of us stood back and gazed affectionately as the brownman peered into the same horizon that had welded the highway and the dark expanse of the sky into one. “Oh yes,” I said to my self, “this is our highway.” The recognition was unmistakable, like a son and his mother, I relished its nurturing darkness. But in the strange condition of the setting sun the appearance that the highway now lead to some thing else vexed me slightly. An heterogeneous mixture of eternal sameness and vast difference was beckoning me. From here, where the highway pointed, into the infinite future, the universe remains cold, dark and dismal. The landscape around me had suddenly taken upon itself a primordial quality from which the brownman emerged. Hauntingly I saw in his eyes a savageness which I had tried to repress, but which seemed to have over taken my brown friend.
“Are you not well?” I inquired to the dark beast which stood before me. Overcoming this bizarre ascetic aspect which had come to posses my brown companion was a bond far stronger than any other force in our universe. We had been betrayed, by ourselves and others. We had seen and encountered the same, but it had remained silent. The unspoken was what held us together. I knew that he saw the same savageness in my eyes, for I felt it penetrating his being, as his eyes repeated the trick like a mirror. We knew that when our shared encounter was spoken the bond would be no more, the understanding would no longer be unique. When its power could be shared by all it will become weak and far-reaching. It would rejoin the vast expanse of infinite loneliness from whence it came. I recognized that our understanding was profound, that it tapped into a force I could not conceivably understand nor would I want to. Our understanding was archetypal and universal but the act of speaking would transform it and mask its power. It was the spectral other that haunted the truth. The ephemeral nature of concepts we clang to with all our might would be exposed with its attempted utterance. Lurking at the center of it all was a singular being we had encountered, a teacher, an educator that came from the cave; the prophet. Madness and savagery clang to its teachings and inoculated those it had taught. And we may try to hide what we had been taught but its lesson was inside us all. Some of us would never encounter this teacher face to face, but this was good, because for them they never would have been able to handle the specter. Its lessons are too destructive to the truths they will cling to.
And the highway lead us straight to the lion’s den, straight to the cave where the feeble hide in their darkness. To them it was comforting, but to us it was suffocating. Escaping the cave is what we had been taught to do. We could always return to it, and that brought comfort to us travelers. But the light of that strange, inarticulate truth we harbored was too bright to be disguised. We were different, as different as darkness is to light. I may speak in clichéd metaphors, but it is these that are able only to convey our shared experience effectively. They have become clichéd for a reason, a universal reason and purpose: to convey, to teach, to expose that primordial being and gaze that inhabits us all. We may think we are the only ones that harbor this light . . . but we know we are wrong. We posist untruths to hide us from the truth, to obscure its crushing reality for once it has been experienced it need not be encountered again. This is why we feared speaking our story, we would have to return to the cave of darkness that gave us our light.
The highway would return us to the spot, this Jewell in the rough, the cave in which we had been taught. And the highway would return us to our teacher.
I used to be indecisive . . . now I am not so sure . . .
To be continued . . .
How many times has this trip been repeated? How many have made this trip, so habitual to us? The trees, the houses, the overpasses seem charted onto infinity, and although every time I return I know not what I am returning to I can rest assured that the same landmarks will be here to great me on my way. If only a friend were so true, so consistent. Yet I know that when I make this trip ten, perhaps twenty years from now, the landmarks will have changed, it will not matter because I am returning to the same spot, the same singularity, the same heart of . . .
The brownman was our guide and our host. We had pulled over to visit a rest area at the brownman’s request. The three of us stood back and gazed affectionately as the brownman peered into the same horizon that had welded the highway and the dark expanse of the sky into one. “Oh yes,” I said to my self, “this is our highway.” The recognition was unmistakable, like a son and his mother, I relished its nurturing darkness. But in the strange condition of the setting sun the appearance that the highway now lead to some thing else vexed me slightly. An heterogeneous mixture of eternal sameness and vast difference was beckoning me. From here, where the highway pointed, into the infinite future, the universe remains cold, dark and dismal. The landscape around me had suddenly taken upon itself a primordial quality from which the brownman emerged. Hauntingly I saw in his eyes a savageness which I had tried to repress, but which seemed to have over taken my brown friend.
“Are you not well?” I inquired to the dark beast which stood before me. Overcoming this bizarre ascetic aspect which had come to posses my brown companion was a bond far stronger than any other force in our universe. We had been betrayed, by ourselves and others. We had seen and encountered the same, but it had remained silent. The unspoken was what held us together. I knew that he saw the same savageness in my eyes, for I felt it penetrating his being, as his eyes repeated the trick like a mirror. We knew that when our shared encounter was spoken the bond would be no more, the understanding would no longer be unique. When its power could be shared by all it will become weak and far-reaching. It would rejoin the vast expanse of infinite loneliness from whence it came. I recognized that our understanding was profound, that it tapped into a force I could not conceivably understand nor would I want to. Our understanding was archetypal and universal but the act of speaking would transform it and mask its power. It was the spectral other that haunted the truth. The ephemeral nature of concepts we clang to with all our might would be exposed with its attempted utterance. Lurking at the center of it all was a singular being we had encountered, a teacher, an educator that came from the cave; the prophet. Madness and savagery clang to its teachings and inoculated those it had taught. And we may try to hide what we had been taught but its lesson was inside us all. Some of us would never encounter this teacher face to face, but this was good, because for them they never would have been able to handle the specter. Its lessons are too destructive to the truths they will cling to.
And the highway lead us straight to the lion’s den, straight to the cave where the feeble hide in their darkness. To them it was comforting, but to us it was suffocating. Escaping the cave is what we had been taught to do. We could always return to it, and that brought comfort to us travelers. But the light of that strange, inarticulate truth we harbored was too bright to be disguised. We were different, as different as darkness is to light. I may speak in clichéd metaphors, but it is these that are able only to convey our shared experience effectively. They have become clichéd for a reason, a universal reason and purpose: to convey, to teach, to expose that primordial being and gaze that inhabits us all. We may think we are the only ones that harbor this light . . . but we know we are wrong. We posist untruths to hide us from the truth, to obscure its crushing reality for once it has been experienced it need not be encountered again. This is why we feared speaking our story, we would have to return to the cave of darkness that gave us our light.
The highway would return us to the spot, this Jewell in the rough, the cave in which we had been taught. And the highway would return us to our teacher.
I used to be indecisive . . . now I am not so sure . . .
To be continued . . .
