Soldier of the Mist

 

At some point it occurred to me that the things that we use the symbols of faeries, dryads, nymphs, and mythical sea monsters to describe were still real. I don't know if those symbols are literal, but they are indicative of a reality that is still in existence. And we can't seem to interact with it. There's this moment when I'm talking to someone and I can feel this moment of both of us being cut off. Over the months this horrific knowledge has possessed my mind: we can only interact with a tiny amount of reality at this point, as moderns.

This started when I went to the Gulf of Mexico. I was playing on the shore with my firstborn, which was awesome. He enjoyed the water, I enjoyed the water and got to enjoy him enjoying the water, it was amazing! What people don't say about parenthood is that the joy of your child is your joy, at the same time. You basically double-load on joy, and it sometimes is so much that you wonder if you'll crack open and the light will spill out. This was one of those times. I was just overcome with joy at watching my son interact with the ocean. But children burn out very quickly at times, and this was one of them. He went to play on the beach and I stood, up to my waist in the surf.

The water you are in has been in the Marianna Trench.

A Flow rushed through my mind, and I reeled a second. This water had been everywhere: the Bermuda Triangle, the Beaches of Normandy, the Galapagos Isles, the list could just go on. And here I was, standing in the world itself. Basking in the water simply because it felt good. I don't know why, but that struck me as wrong. Something about what I was doing was superficial, cheap. I was a tiny little dot in a freaking infinity, and as I looked right and left I was struck that no one else was feeling what I was feeling, as I was feeling it. The arrogance we were all displaying collapsed on me. This wasn't something to just feel good about, it was an event, and how short we were in actually enjoying it!

You'll notice I said we, not they. 

When I left the water ten minutes later it felt like I was closing a door, and behind it waited... something. Something old, frigid, chthonic. I've no real words beyond that. I'm not sure one could make words for what I felt, but I've been wrong before.

Whatever that feeling was stuck with me. And it grew. At one point on this blog I wrote about standing beneath a tree and wondering if the dryad within it needed other trees to wake up and be fully functional. And I started to ask why we, as a race, could no longer intuit this reality. 

I am not claiming as to the literalness of the symbol dryad, let's not get that confused. I am asking why we cannot seem to intuit that the tree is aware of us and what we do.

And then I stumbled acrost Wolfe's anthology of his Latro novels. Latro was a man who had sustained a head injury and had lost his short memory and was forced to write his thoughts down on a scroll taht he'd have to read every day. In exchange he gained the ability to see the gods.

I tried to resist getting it. My house is overfull of books.

But every time I've read something of Wolfe's I've learned. Most people who read Wolfe seem to have a "I must pick this apart and understand it" reaction. And I get that. But my response to every Wolfe work I've ever read has been "How. The hell. Did he know. About that." Reading Wolfe for me is like realizing that I've been on the edge of the Marianna Trench and that I've been too chicken shit to go in. 

I had to know. I had to go back in.

And at first it was everything I really wanted it to be. I started to devour the first book, Soldier of the Mist. Like I'd said before, this was like what I had experienced in my life... but more. A lot more. Not since Clannad had I found such a powerful commiseration, but this time it wasn't with a character, but a writer. Latro was honorable, good, strong. And he was loved. And he saw none of it. He just wanted his memory back. The gods and other creatures he ran into, the marvels he encountered... Latro didn't want those things. He just wanted his friends.

As I continued to read my family went to southern Oklahoma, to a tourist site where there are freshwater springs. It's an incredibly beautiful place, filled with water that is totally clean from our.. interference. I put my feet in the cold water with my sons and wife.

I come from places you cannot imagine, under the earth. Nightmares and beauty are what I flow through.

You are a blip.

You are not welcome.

I looked at the beauty surrounding me and felt a chill. I had the feeling that we were being watched, and resented. We hadn't come to sit with nature, we'd just come to feel the water on our bodies. That feeling of cheapness overwhelmed me. The place was crawling with people, who had no intent to do anything more than... well... what they were doing. And the same went for us.

I shrugged. Nothing I could do about it, and I wasn't going to let the resentment of the land get in the way of enjoying it, however limited and cheap it was. It was what I had.

We made our way down to where two creeks intersected. I looked out at the trees, and felt we were not alone. And for a second I found myself asking, in my mind: Why don't you come out? So we can see you? I felt an immense longing to see, to understand, something.

Do townies hang out with the tourists? Came the reply.

What if I seek to understand? What if I want to understand things as a "townie"?

Then come back at night, and keep going. And going. And going. Until you are lost. Then you will find us.

I knew that to be a trap. Crazy as this conversation sounds, understand that as I heard these words in my mind it was on the point of overloading. I knew it could not be happening but it was. And I almost did it. I looked into the forest, longingly. I wanted to understand. The whole world has felt wrong for years and years and years and I needed to know why. 

I'm not bringing my wife and children near any of you. Came the reply from the depths of my soul.

A shame, we love children. There was a dry chuckle that rumbled through my mind, shook me with a casual cruelty that I've only encountered once or twice in my life. 

I kept playing in the water, laughing and enjoying my family. We were watched. And I didn't care. What could they do to us? If they were going to do it they would have already. But that was the day I learned they weren't my friends. Whatever they were.

But still that yearning persisted. I wanted to escape a reality that continued to prove itself to be more and more artificial, more and more just a construction of people desperate to close themselves in. And I found the closing in so destructive that I am practically allergic to it at this point. Whenever everyone is saying something in the same tone of voice with the same words and their eyes go just the right shade of glassy something is wrong. And when I look in the mirror I see it there as well. 

Understand this isn't me standing around and throwing shade on others. When I look in the mirror my eyes are so glassy I can barely recognize them.

Last night I finished Soldier of the Mists. I did not like what I found, but in the same way someone doesn't like having cold water dropped on them when it's time to wake up. See, Latro gets what he wants, but not what he needs. He's duped. Ignorant of those around him that love him, Latro keeps reaching for the impossible, keeps begging to have something that he can't have back (his memory) restored.

And it ends so badly.

Because the gods are not to be trusted. They are liars. They do not share. They do not care for us. "How strange the ways of the gods. How cruel they are!"

The gods, dryads, nymphs, and somesuch were not forgotten. Our race didn't forget.

We banished them.

And what if that wasn't a bad thing?

What if I don't want the dryad in that tree down the street from me to be anywhere near me?

But to know they're there is part of opening the container. Is it close-minded to not want them? So much misery is the result. 

The world is fallen. I've never understood that like I do now. The world itself is fallen. We are living in something that should be wonderful and beautiful, and it is filled with horrors.

And yet I can't look away. I feel the pull of my mind, complaining about the strain. How is any of this relevant? Can't we just stop?

What the hell is wrong with me?? That's probably not the right question, but it is the question I have in my mind, as I look at the world around me.