Silent Answers

Silent Answers

Samuel Bird

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Silent Answers

Samuel Bird

Impossibly small pressures build and mount over time until we find ourselves with a desperate need for an outlet. The small habits, as innocent or nefarious as they are, that we use to respond to the pressure, begin to not be enough. Small infractions by those around us weigh on the heart. The wear and tear of having a body in a limited world weighs on our frame. The questions we have begin to weigh on our minds. Perhaps this strange experience I have is normal, or perhaps some failing about me makes me more prone to it, but there comes a point that something within me yearns. I can ignore hunger, cold, and sleep, but this deep nagging at the core of my existence begs and necessitates a response. With it, questions arise. The questions struggle to find themselves in words, no matter how hard I try, but I push nonetheless. Something about the question asks about the specific and unique ironies that make life painful. Something asks for what is good or true. In whole, this question that blossoms and bursts from within me seems to ask in such a way that I find my being the question. This problem that I am, needs its obliged solution. I can only refuse these thoughts that press against the wall of my skull wanting release for so long. I have found a pattern of how I respond to it. 

A knife, a jacket, and perhaps a firearm for the larger beasts that lurk, are packed away as I feel the swelling of this question within me. I begin my journey away from the world that my kind built to the one that built my kind. Even as skeptical as I am, it seems justifiable to see myself as an organism that comes from an environment it no longer is in. This variance between the fjords and mountains my ancestors traversed to the paperwork and conversations I do, points to something that could be the well-needed remedy to this suffering and its implied question. I pick a mountain, a river, or a trail and begin my expedition. Sometimes I know where I am going, and sometimes I simply wander off the well-traveled road to a place where human feet do not tread. Such was the pattern for me on the day of question. This place I was going was no strange land, but one that was a home with no walls. The early years spent in these woods gave me a familiarity with this wilderness that I do not feel in a society completely alien to me. With what was needed in tow, I set off on the many-mile trail to go to a place where I seemed to belong. The snow slipped and crushed beneath my feet, forcing me to expend more energy to make it to where I was going. The land has been touched by time, but yet still unchanged as I saw the same setting to important memories from a time I forgot. 

Finding myself at the mouth of the canyon I would make my bedroom in this forest that is my home, I begin the arduous process of setting up camp. The sun and corresponding temperatures are dropping fast as I begin to cook a meal and have my bed ready for me. Wood is gathered, the shelter secured, and my pistol ready for the packs of wolves that wander through these woods. Looking into the flames, as the weight of pulling the sled is traded for the questions on my mind. I scan my problems to become more acquainted with them. Perhaps seeing them better will allow me a view that answers itself. Instead, I rather find myself stolen from where I am back to the place I ran from. The flames flicker as I realize there is no one near to lie to. Excuses fall on deaf ears as I am left to realize the tremendous fault and responsibility I have for my life. The past takes a misty shape as it becomes clear where I went wrong, but how to know what wrong will be in what will be to come? My dilemmas swirl around me as they coalesce into a single problem. The small pains and the needed issues are well and fair, but this deep hole within me seems without need, and with it, I wish it away. So the solution to this problem that is so much of who I am, I can simply define it as me, what would its solution look like? What series of words could save me from my failings and bridge me to a life fulfilled? The problem goes unresolved as my aching body goes to rest. In the night, the cold and snow conspire against me as I wake in the late hours to find breath stolen from my chest. I thrust myself forward to throw the piled snow off and pull in cold air. Something within me years for life without any concern for how life is. 

The sun crests the walls of my shelter as I find myself without water and in desperate need. I started the course toward the springs that quenched a younger thirst I had. The bitter and sharp smell and taste of the herbs pull back memories of a younger me with all the same questions. Now, I had better tools to answer, but the questions still had no resolution. I made my way back to camp and looked over another place that felt like home that I would be leaving. In the back of my mind, it was the place that I felt away when I wasn’t there. Like every temporary domicile, I scan it to get a sense of if I had really pulled every good moment and trace of beauty from it while I was there. Still, the coming storm reminded me that my sentiment would have to give to my survival. The trail weaved through the snow-covered pines before a small patch of white aspens came into view. Storming into the grove, a vision of a younger man came to mind. I looked at what he left behind and was reminded I was part of that same legacy. I thought back to the questions he asked, and asked alone. I had no answers but wished to offer a consolation as old as words. Still, the storm was coming, and I had to be on my way. 

Miles, mountains, and meanings seemed to float by as my mind turned first off, and then to other things. I held the pain that only time can bring. This weariness from nothing and particular, but culminating from so many particulars, came to the forefront of my mind as I pressed on through the trail. Here I was. I seemed to be on the cusp of something, and something more. I had faith from an induction of past experiences, that I would find something between these woods and myself to answer me. Parts of me seemed to not want a resolution and were bitterly content in their excusing wallowing. I decided that this thing I sought for, was something I really wanted. Parts of me aligned with this desire as I became ready for something. Not something from my mind alone, nor from the world, but from the meeting of both in beauty. My hood covered my wind and sun burnt face as my entire field of vision was the snow my boots glided across. I trudged along as I began to process the information at hand, make sense of it in structures, and make meaning from it in how it related to me. The sun was beginning to slip back into night, so I lowered my hood to see the horizon to be trekked. But then, there it was. 

It stood before as a part of me I missed and yet something independent from any prior contamination. A sense of the sacred lowered me to my knees as I tried to simply behold it. I tried to see it as it was and as I am. From both, I found its randomness beautiful. My heart’s weight came to the focus of my senses as I held it. All these thoughts and memories had to go somewhere, but where could they go? I stared off into the sky before me as I had a guess. Before me was the ineffable. This was the brink I came to in my mind many times and stared out into. Its nothingness seemed to have properties, but none that my reality-centric language could grasp. I stared into it with its deep mystery. It was what I ventured into in all my writings. Past the well-traversed ideas, I found myself in this field without ground. This is where I ventured to wrestle with pure concepts and attempt to bring them back into the land of language. It stood before me as no lone conclusion but as infinitely possible. Staring back at it, I was reminded of what Esse Maxim taught. There was not some sole thing I missed to exist well, but to exist well was the sole thing. The definition of a problem was complex enough in trying to relate it to my experience, perhaps so was a solution. And the question that seemed to pull on me, perhaps it was not the begging for an answer, but a prompting for me to start answering. Past words and ideas, sat this world where pure thought rested. In its deep mystery and complexity, it offered one thing that was my remedy. Not certainty, but possibility.