Impasse and Exit [draft 20]

I don’t know how long I have been in this cold and dark and rain. I walk a flat grid of streets, which recede into the four directions, but direction does not matter here. Sidewalks line the streets, but only the poles of dim streetlights are there. Buildings stand behind the sidewalks, and are all alike, six stories high, made of dark brick, and shut tight. The upper stories have windows, but they are dark, closed, and there is no way up. There are some doors, but closed, locked. Doors are good to huddle in, to keep at least partly out of the drizzle which falls here – the constant cold hiss. If I pick a direction and walk, I can count the streets passed, as if the count or the time walking matter at all. The scene will not vary except for the few piles of soggy trash.
I don’t know why I am here. The buildings bar entry, and the streets lead away, but everywhere is the same sameness. I see the drizzle drift through the glow of the streetlights, see that glow faint on the dark, wet brick, on the pavement. Can there be another place? There must be another place and a street leading to it. Choose a direction, yes, that one, though any other direction seems as good, or as bad. Is this better than aimless wandering? Now will be an eon of walking, a universe of walking.
Later. In the dim light, a wall comes up. A building? I had not been paying attention. Here’s something new – a street end, with brick walls on three sides, and buildings joined. Only this street? I backtrack, run left around the corner, left at the next corner, and up the block to be stopped again. Backtrack, turn left, turn left. Again, again – count the number of streets closed off. Soon, I am walking parallel to all the joined buildings, and only glancing to the left at each street-cross to note the wall, and up the count. What is on the other side? Anything? For that matter, what is inside all these buildings?
Later. There is no change in this change. Surprise and hope of something – anything, have lapsed into familiar monotony: walking, looking, and counting, until my street-count reaches five figures. Later, a part of me which urges a turnaround, wins out, counting back to my starting point, and looking to my right. A few thousand street ends later, there is something faint, but different. For the first time since the beginning of this diversion, I turn in for a closer look. Odd, how I ran when I first found these new walls, but now my walk is slow. In this wall is something like a window or a door, but not shut. A hole! I look around. So many doors had been locked against me that I had ceased to try them. So many windows had been dark that I no longer looked up much. The far side of the hole is even darker than out here. I go through.
The hole is tight, and the bricks of it are rough, but I push into a large space. Dim light comes in past the hole, thinly like the drizzle. Drizzle – it is dry here, like the back of a doorway. I like that – inside, inside! There is trash here, but not soggy. The feel of it is new, also the sound of it when stepped on. There are stacks and piles of things here - what are they? I take time to dry out and to handle things, look at things, but I don’t know what they are.
In a corner, the floor rises like curbs on top of curbs. I step up on them through a very large hole in the ceiling, and the ceiling becomes the floor of another space. I find more curb-stacks and go on up, counting floors in the dark as I go. The fifth floor has a little light again, coming down the curbs, and I find it so bright behind a door on the sixth floor. Locked? I try the knob. It opens! It closes – the light is more than open eyes can bear.
Later. The light behind the door is dimmer, so I open the door again and step out, on a street again. The buildings here are different from each other, and there are open spaces filled with green stuff. As soon, I see that the light is coming down from the sky. I stand at the door for a long time looking around, as the sky-light fades, and the streetlights come on, very bright. Later, the great light comes from the sky again, but my eyes do not pain me this time.
I pick a direction and begin a street-count as before, but warm and dry. Later, something more unexpected than my hole – people like me! I stand a long time looking at them move along distant streets. I go that way too. When near, I ask where is this? The City, they say. No one knows about the dark place. They do know about the sky-light, the green stuff, lots of things. I learn through many questions and pay for them with long looks and shaking heads. I don’t care, needing to learn about this new place, and bursting with new knowledge. Later, I think back to my building, my hole. Oh! I talked too much, didn’t pay attention, and now what’s the direction or the street-count back? Lost again.
Later. No one cares about my progress out of the dark, or my restlessness. They have been here a long time, and go about their routines. They say I need one too. People tell me life here is good, and I thought so too, at first, but I sense as time presses flat the memory of weeks, months, and years, that life is little better than before. Is this really what I went to find?
Later. There have been so many errands, so much running around in places where inside seemed to fold into outside. Sometimes, I wish I had a doorway to sit in, but here doorways are for slamming thru on the way to somewhere. A little rest is mine here at the head end of this trench I’ve found. It’s maybe forty feet wide and deep. The sides and bottom of it are made of the native dirt, loose, sandy and reddish. A spring comes up just below me, the water pours out clear, and flows out of sight with the trench. The water takes up no stain from the soil – it does not look like ordinary water. I want to be with this water, flowing away from here unmuddied. I’m about to go down to it when a voice, not heard with my ears, tells me that it is not time yet. I walk away.
Later. I’m driving around in my car with my best friend, and thinking about maps. The dark place, the land of no differences, did not need them. We could use one here, but none are available. Is it so we won’t find our way out of the City? The streets are not marked – we navigate by rumor, by trying streets one by one. We have heard about a high way, which might take us west, and out of the City. West – vague rumors also of prairies and mountains. Empty places and big hills, they say. The terms are little more than empty words, for we have met no one who has been there, and most tell us we’ll never see them. No one knows how far away the high way is, or if it’s to the north or south – no surprise. We try to the south, but most streets here are short, dead-ended, or make loops back to the same area. Progress is slow and unsteady.
So here we are cruising down a residential street. The pavement is pot-holed and strewn with trash. The houses are small, in need of paint, shingles, and repair in general. The yards have as much trash as grass, and are decked with broken appliances and rusty cars. Few people are around – maybe they got out a long time ago, or have given up. I’ve seen too many neighborhoods like this, and feel hemmed in. The yards and houses behind the ones, which front on this street are strangely difficult to see. The next streets over are not visible at all. It must be the lay of the land - or is it? We reach the dead-end and turn around to go back, but now I’m scanning the far distance, the view having opened up as we top a hill. There it is – a street on pillars, far away. Could it be the high way? We may need hours or days to reach it.
Patience is ours from long practice, but this drives us into going too fast. It grows to our approach, and we move to the west, looking for a way up, thinking of driving freely up there. After a long time, we see a ramp going up, and we ascend it eagerly. What’s this?! A huge block of concrete is closing off the top of the ramp. We roll to a stop and stare at the obstacle, not knowing what to do, for the car can not get by. After a while, a man walks past us and the block without a word, and proceeds down the high way. What’s the point? On foot on a high way? In a car on these tedious streets? It makes no sense. There is nothing to do but to back down the ramp. However, I wonder - have we missed something?
Later. I stop the car and get out. There’s not a building in sight! Looking around, there’s just me, the car, trees, empty meadow, and the road. I’m told that’s what a street is outside the City. Also, the prairie is near – the meadows are little pieces of it. I am drawn to open spaces on this long journey, but see, the locals do not press on, for they are content to be here where life is so much better than in the City proper. I’m half inclined to throw in with them. There is something else – my friend is not here. We found more ramps up to the high way, but they were all blocked. We moved west, finding work and always looking for another ramp. The right direction was not enough for him, as he became convinced that access was certain at the eastern end of the high way. One day, off he went on his own. Soon after, the City, my friend, and the high way were all behind me as buildings thinned out.
This road is the border of the prairie, or rather, a creek which runs just to the west of it. No City there. I was told the creek could be forded here where I’ve stopped, but there is no way over by car. The bottom ground is disturbed, with dark dirt thrown up in great piles. Between them, the ground is so soft the car would sink to the axles. The far side of the creek is a bank of dirt as tall as me, and beyond that, a dense treeline. I’ve been up and down this road, and no other place looks better. Money and gas are almost gone, but not the bad information. I remember another obstacle the car could not pass, and…yes, we could have followed that pedestrian. There’s nothing to do for it – I take my hand off the fender, and walk toward the creek. It’s easy! I glide between heaps of dirt, expecting a boot to be sucked off in the mud, but leave hardly an impression. The creek water is very clear, not muddy at all. Stepping over, I don’t see my own reflection. I climb the far bank and enter the trees without looking back. A few yards further, the trees end and there is prairie to the horizon. This is my exit - what I walked so far to find.
Walking until nightfall, I stop and turn around to see a smudge of light on the whole eastern horizon – the City. I recall the people there, the few times they were good to me, the many times they cheated me, lied to me, gave me bad directions. I hated the City when I was in it, but I had to go through it to be here, so the bad things no longer matter, not even the loss of my car. I shout, “I forgive you all!” No one can hear me, but it is important to say it.
I walk for days across the prairie, enjoying the openness and emptiness - sunshine too, soft and cool, seen only rarely in the City’s grey skies. Now something appears in that sunlight to bring me up short – a town. It looks too small to be oppressive or to get lost in. I walk directly from the prairie into an alley, and the other end puts me on a sidewalk of the main street. Set into the street, just past the curb, are the tracks of a narrow-gauge railway. To my right is a streetcar, with a few people stepping on. Does it go west? I begin to walk toward it, but before the distance is closed, the streetcar jolts forward. By the time it passes me, it is going too fast to get on. However, before I can decide that I’ve been left behind, the streetcar stops several yards past. Arms are waving from the windows. A couple steps onto the rear platform to beckon to me. “Come on!” they say. Disappointment is gone. I’m running. I know this streetcar will take us all the way to the mountains.
Later. Time and the prairie go by. Trees are few. The rails winding off east and west carry the eye far away. We are all far from anything we have known, but we have time to talk. Most of my fellow passengers came out of the City, some much as I had. Some had been in the dark place as well, but we had never met. It must have been even larger than I realized. In the end, we had all wandered into the prairie, found a town, and met up with the streetcar. As we go on, there are more little towns, and people board by ones and twos.
One man who came on after me had a different story, not of the City. He began in a grand palace that had held him as long as he knew. It was made up of rooms without number, hallways and entryways, but no doors or windows – no way out. Walls, floors, ceilings, all were made of grey marble, polished and beautiful, hard and cold. His life was taken up in wandering through rooms and halls, and engaging in endless, pointless conversations and disputations with the many people who lived there. He tired of it, even of the luxury, began to imagine another place, and peeked behind tapestries, under carpets, poked everywhere. Long wandering brought him up against a wall beyond which was no hall or further room. He traced out its extent, its limit to movement. He told others, but they avoided him, called him crazy, leaving him alone a lot in rooms next to his wall. “Just another wall,” they said. Frustration set in until he took a small sculpture off a shelf, and hurled it at his wall. He expected it to shatter, but it went into the wall and disappeared! How odd. He tried another – same result. He emptied the whole shelf, and felt better. Touching the wall now, it felt less hard and cold. A difference! He proceeded to slip into unoccupied rooms to steal any such small objects. Suites and whole districts were emptied. He hurled out of frustration, then curiosity, and now fascination as his wall came to be less substantial. A light began to shine through it. Things took shape beyond it, but he did not understand them - an uneven floor covered with green stuff, and far away, sloping walls rose up, but met no ceiling. Over it all was blue with drifting white things and a great light. The wall dissolved until he was able to step through. Looking back, he saw only prairie.
Later. Hills are in the west, later yet, mountains behind them. We all stand, taking turns at the forward windows, looking at it all. The motorman tells us the end of the streetcar line is near, and that the far country we seek is over the mountains. We will find it he says, but I wonder if it has really found us. We stop at the final town, just into the foothills. We visit the shops, but there is nothing we want or need. Most of the wares are junk, and there is little money between us - just like in the City. We leave. The trail is next – it leads us off the far side of the town, up and across a slope of stones and brush. I expect the walking to be difficult, but it is light, like crossing the creek. My boots hardly seem to touch the ground. The town falls behind, is lost to view. As we move higher into the hills, our trail and our little group join others. The mountains call us.
Later. The trail makes a circuit around the rim of a huge hole – it must be half a mile across. The bottom is lost in darkness, the last we will ever see. People are taking off their packs and pitching them in. Other burdens go in too, the last of my money and other few things. Lighter now, we go on up. Our needs are few now, anyway. None of us are cold here, or hungry, or thirsty. We need and have only each other and our Destination. We go on up, among the bare rocks under the lovely sky. We did not know at the beginning to what we were all drawn, but know now that God himself will meet us a little later. Soon, we will be home.
Later. The mountains are far behind. Life is in this lake of warm water, deep as my chest, as my heart. The water is clear and colorless, like the creek, like the spring. It returns no reflection, and is almost not there. I can see every grain of white sand on the bottom. I push off from the near shore and see the far shore, but there is no hurry to get there. I will live in this water forever.