Heaven’s Gate
Heaven and beyond — inspired by Mieko Kawakami’s novel
The night before going trail running in Auburn, CA, I finished reading the novel Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, which I discovered at the Daunt Books store in London and loved it for its poetic and philosophical writing style.
“We all see the world in our own way.” — Mieko Kawakami
As my friends and I climbed a steep hill towards the end of our 10-mile run — my calves tense from the climb, my lungs filled with fog, working hard to increase their capacity, I lifted my head and said to myself:
That must be Heaven’s gate.
A sturdy iron gate with utilitarian value at the top of the hill, but I tend to see the world in a more poetic way. A gate is obviously a way for egress and ingress, but it also means looking beyond and finding new secrets. Big enough to allow entry to hundreds of people, if necessary, I imagined the gate as grandiose enough for entry into Heaven.
Unlike the Heaven’s Gate cult of the 70s who believed in unidentified flying objects, my Heaven’s gate on the trail made me delve into the notions of Heaven and Hell, good and evil, and being and nonbeing.
“In which case, living is really just waiting to die. And if that’s true, why bother living at all?” —…
