25 Aug 2009
Leap
A long, tiring trek it has been. But it's not over yet. Twenty more steps to the peak, and the incline was at its steepest. Meursault felt weary in legs, muscles and bones, but he must reach the peak.
Nineteen done. The final step.
Done. Accomplished. Contentment. For now. With his eyes closed, he relished the moment. A quick smile later, he prepared himself to look at the world for, so to speak, one last time. The world he had lived in lay a few thousand feet below. The world thought he was a misfit. He thought he was a misfit, too. The world was a Rubik's cube, unsolved though, and he was a redundant micro-cube. Not even a cube, perhaps. A skewed n-faced, n-edged, n-dimensional piece. Maybe. An absolute misfit. He threw away the remnant of the fag and turned around. Curtains down. His back to the world. He looked at the expanse that greeted him. An expanse that filled the canvas that his eyes could see. And the tranquil waters a few thousand feet below. At the farthest point of his vision, the sky, the land and the water seemed to merge.
The waters, reflecting the blue of the sky, beckoned. The sun hid behind the lone cloud, fleeting past the top of a distant mountain. The playful cloud, the dreary Sun and the reposing mountain - the silent, uninvited witnesses to his stealthy but loud act of repudiation of the world. The breeze moved gently and the birds were returning in flocks to their homes, after another day's toil and play.
Meursault took a deep breath, looked at the waters, lifted his hands up, fingers pointing toward the sky, thrust his feet against the dry ground, and as his feet rose up, he let them go off the ground and leapt toward the sky. The sky would push him, the ground would pull, but he will float in emptiness, along the edge of the cliff, descending to the cold of the waters whose waves crash relentlessly against the immovable mountain. Moving downward in spite of himself, Meursault felt no sense of his self, as if the entity that his frame has embodied thus far has mysteriously dissolved into nothingness and vanished without a word, leaving behind no trace. As quietly as he wanted to walk out of the world.
The bamboo shadows move over the stone steps
as if to sweep them, but no dust is stirred;
The moon is reflected deep in the pool,
but the water shows no trace of its penetration*
All he noticed was the waters into which he will soon crash, the resounding noise of which will remind him of his existence. An abrupt, compulsive reminder. Yet again.
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* A Zen poem
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