It's December. Soon I will climb into a sterile and pressurized flying box, doing away with space and time by sitting down for 22 hours or so--over a distance that would take me perhaps years to swim.
It makes me think back to Zhongdian, when I took a day hike up an odd dirt path into the mountains. I had originally set out for one particularly beautiful peak, but once I got close enough to see the chair-lift arching up its' side, I chose to take a route up to a nearby ridge, one with nothing but a small dirt path. Why? Sam, are you trying to play the lofty purist? The chairlift was right there, and you could've probably seen everything from up atop that peak...
But that's not the point. The meaning of what is beautiful, and great, and magic, is not to seize it. You cannot control beauty. You cannot pick it apart, understand it, replicate it, morph it to your ease--and that's why it is what it is. The reason why I first saw that peak and thought it beautiful was because it was something of its own wonder, something that could've never been made by me, or any other human. It was beautiful because it was real, and because it represented more than the small world of society that we've all been raised in. There's more out there--there's always more out there. There's always things that are greater than us; there's always things that will be just beyond our comprehension.
To hike up onto a mountain is to see, smell, touch, feel, and yes, in the air (or if you happen to trip) you taste it as well. The elevation changes the very pressure and level of oxygen in your blood. The sun permeates your skin, and gets to know you beneath it. As does the cold, and the snow. And to climb a mountain is never to "conquer" it--to believe so is to be seduced into an illusion. To climb a mountain is to be a visiter, and, more importantly, a communicator, an understander.
But to take a chairlift is nothing like this. It's like cutting to the end of a book without reading the rest of it. It's like forgoing the journey to reach the destination. It's like getting your pay and rest at the end of the day without arising from your couch for hours. There's a reason why work, effort, trying even, feels good and right. And when you take that away, you may think you're getting your exciting conclusion, your paycheck, your great view at the top of the peak--when really the reward you've received has been stripped of its very essence.
And so I think back to the plane ride that comes ahead, and how it doesn't seem right. Sure, I'm not going to get all righteous and idealistic and start paddling across the pacific--but all this makes me wonder. How great are we, to have defeated time and distance, to have sliced through the fat to get at the good meat, to have eliminated so much discomfort. But what else have we defeated in the process? What gets ground up beneath the wheels of cars? What gets ripped to shreads in the turbines of a 747?
To tell the truth, it drives me into insanity. An insanity that grips me by my rib cage, and shakes my very heart out from its comfortable nook, so that it pounds up against the walls of my skin as if to strike me as hard as it can in the direction of what is real in this world. And I know I cannot escape all of the architecture of society and civilization and culture--nor would I want to, I think, for it is that which keeps me together--but god damn me if I don't get out into the world and feel it, breathe it in, taste it, wherever I can find it, be it good or bad, exciting or mundane, beautiful or beautiful in its ugliness. I want life. I want time, distance, and place, and the love of everything that comes with them. And when it comes, I will want death too. And it will be just fine. In fact, it just might be great. And I hear that there's no chairlift that goes there.
-s
p.s. and so ends the blog-off. I'm sure I'll post more, but this is it for the day-after-day challange. Many thanks to Katelyn and her wonderful blogging.
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