Existential Crises

         After hearing Brooke's story about standing upon the top of the mountain and looking out over miles of unbroken mountains, I couldn't help but to think of a similar story that I had once written.  This story, which was printed in the Summer edition of Outside Bozeman magazine reflects many of the same realizations but takes it in a different direction.  Interestingly--or perhaps not interestingly at all--I happened to find a similar passage in The Magus.  In chapter 49, since we all seem to have different paginations, Nick reflects, "Under the silver nailparing of a moon, I felt, though without any melancholy at all, that sense of existential solitude, the being and being alone in a universe, that still nights sometimes give."  (Not to mention the not-so-veiled comparison of Nick to Hamlet that takes place only a few pages before the quote in question... But I will save this for another discussion I intend to have about Shakespeare and The Magus).  These seem to be three meager examples of people realizing their places in the 'scheme of things,' but I would suggest that everyone is capable of coming up with realizations of their own.  I also think that these experiences, as in the cases mentioned, are not necessarily negative as they might seem upon initial reflection.  Perhaps this is little more than a vocalization of inspiration; when one realizes how small, how insignificant, he truly is, he becomes liberated.  Only after someone has been liberated is he or she truly capable of taking the risks necessary to be truly great.  By facing insignificance and accepting it as a matter of life, can someone become an artist (in any sense of the word).  The knowledge of insignificance helps to reassure one of the repercussions of failure and precisely how nominal those repercussions are.  If I am nothing, then so to are my mistakes, my failures, my misunderstandings.  From this freedom, the artist, then, gains the courage to touch the pen to the page, the brush to the canvas, the bow to the strings.

     Since I have not yet finished The Magus, this is only speculation and one needs not worry about my spoiling the ending intentionally, but I would suggest that we will see more of this kind of realization on the part of Nick Urfe which will ultimately lead to his telling of the story that we are reading.  We will, then, complicate the story even further by having to decipher from Nick the Pilgrim and Nick the Poet.

 

The River’s Edge

        From time to time the river would expel a pronounced ‘gurgle’ as water would rush into a pocket created by the infinite droplets moving in their mysterious ways.  She listened from the bank and watched the water pass by.  Where it came from, she knew not; but she supposed that before long, it would reach the ocean and the cycle would repeat.  She leaned back; laying in the grass, she closed her eyes.  Her mind wandered back to the river’s edge and perhaps in an attempt to test the water, it trickled in and was carried along by the steady current.  At first, her vision was distorted by the water but before long, her sight became clear and the chill of the water faded from her limbs.  As she was moved down stream, she was stricken by the stone mosaic which paved the riverbed.  The irreplicable pattern paralleled the constantly distorting surface from the start to the finish, never repeating but always the same.  This was a masterpiece that could only be created by the hand of God.  She was carried farther away and here she began to take notice of the life all around her which was not visible from the surface.  At first, she saw the fishes contenting themselves to pockets of still water or holding steady under a riffle or seeking shelter among the stones, nearly invisible.  The mosaic of the river-rock continued onto their backs; every one was different and the same. But even these could not draw her attention away from the continued multitudes of creatures that followed her down the river.  She began to notice the insects that passed through the water with ease and the algae which was forever to be subject to the current’s will and the aquatic plants rooted to the riverbed perpetually waving ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ to anyone who will notice.  She passed by, unseen and unheard: an extraterrestrial visitor in this strange world.  As she gazed upon these unfamiliar forms, she was struck by the mystery of it.  Not moments before, she was sitting, just above the surface, a stranger to this whole world which was mere inches from her.  Everything seemed so changed; the blindfold has been removed; the light turned on.  How could she continue when such universes exist, unseen, below her very nose?  How could anyone contemplate the infinity of the Cosmos when that very infinity was present here on Earth, contained within the head of a pin?  From under the water she heard the river gurgle louder than before; she stirred; her eyes opened.  ‘I must have fallen asleep,’ she sighed to herself; the sunny afternoon had nearly given way to the dark of the evening.  She rose and made her way back to the path from which she descended down to the water’s edge.  The river gurgled on behind her, as steady as ever.