Farther down
Personal Readers,
I am at a tiny bottom. The “bottom” is a small ledge halfway down a canyon. I don’t know when I fell into the canyon, but I think perhaps I scrabbled on one climb and slid down. I don’t see any handholds, ways up, or other ledges around. There is nobody else down here, and even if there were, I would feel bad for them because then we’d both be stuck.
I think there may be a few people circling around up top waiting for me, maybe coming around occasionally to look down and make sure I’m still here, but it’s just a suspicion; it is hard to make eye contact with small dots of color. I don’t have hope they can save me, even if they tried. I think we all believe — and they are expecting… I think they are expecting me to climb out on my own, and I desperately want to prove them right.
But even if they are there, those tiny dots of color, they are too far up to hear me so I swallow my voice. I’m not sure what I’m saving it for. I don’t know what I would ask. If I don’t know what to ask (for), why cry out? And if they can’t hear me anyhow, what’s the point. At most I think they would hear a small, muffled sound. They couldn’t make me out.
When I look around, I try not to despair. But the reality is this: there is nothing to jump for. All the formations that surround me (far off, still) are thin headless peaks that vanish into the sky, much like a line that’s been lain on its side. There is nothing to grab for and nowhere to land; there are no midway points or platforms on which a human could stand.
I am bordered, simply, by tall columns of space, and past the space, walls. That is what I see. If I jump for anything — the fake things, the nothing — I will certainly fall, and (this is fact, not feeling) the only way to fall is down….. This is certain.
But. Maybe, _wherever I fall, who knows_ wherever I fall, there may be handholds back up, or new paths leading out, from that place: farther down. ….. What to do?
There is nothing to do but plan a jump.
Night falls, the moon hides, I nestle into a ball on this lonely ledge of mine in this vast unexplored canyon and try to look up so the starlight can touch my cheeks; maybe then I can sleep.
Signed,
R
from R World
5:45 am
July 19, 2017
