The next morning was dusty. The old man was gone.
The road stretched out through the fields and curved away. Alone, I walked in silence and remembered my life, and those memories took the form of a prison in my mind.
I remembered the sadness I felt as a child. How I had looked into the faces of so many who had looked away. I remembered the house, the wealth of its trappings. I remembered the family from which I was estranged.
I remembered the loss of friends, and I saw the moment of my greatest emptiness, as I had turned to look for something they denied, though it was something I felt, something I trusted more than their skepticism.
I walked past cotton clouds of white and blue. The wind strummed the trees, quietly, easily. The silence was a clarity of the air.
I realized that with no one to talk to, it wasn’t possible to know who I was. That without others to provide me with an experience of myself, I was empty-a mirror in a storefront with no passersby.
I saw, in the darkness between the trees, many forms I did not fully grasp. Some appeared as animals. Others as twisting and writhing fears. A few were smiling, and seemed to wish me well. I asked them what they had to say. This is what they answered:
“You see us because we have permitted it. But a day will come when you will see nothing. When you will hear nothing. Learn all you can now, so you will be able to stand that embrace. At the other side of it is a sacred field.”
“Regard the blue sky: it will teach you honesty. Regard the dark soil: it will teach you your value. In this way learn to recognize yourself after everything else has fallen away.”
I looked on the fields and saw white clouds. They were dragging heavily across the land. The lakes reflected them and the geese flew between. The sun seemed to whisper.
I do not know what it said.
I thought of the old man and the things he told me. How his kindness had been lined with steel. How the light in his eyes had been flecked with lightning.
The trees thinned out and there were fields, then marshes. I came to a large village at the edge of the sea. It had painted buildings of white, blue and pink. They sat on terraced outcroppings against a background of blue waves. There I met a woman, and decided to stay.