ii. Hedgehog’s Dilemma


She approached a hunched figure clearly in pain. She was the first one to see him, otherwise others would have gathered around him to offer comfort. ‘What happened?” she asked. I jumped from the top of yon roof and twisted my ankle, he said. She gathered him close to her arms. She wondered if there were others near the area, close enough for her to send out thought energies and summon help. She tried anyway, she felt his answering gratitude to this.

“Why did you jump?”

“I wanted to test how much weight the impact could take versus the height of the building.”

She smiled at this. “You like the feeling of falling.”

“Yes, that too…what is it you thought of just now? It was something significant, I felt it.”

“Yes, it is very significant to something I have been trying to figure out. There are memories you see, of another place and I remembered the people in that place. How they live together for so long and still be apart from each other. If you and I were both there right now in the same situation. I would have hesitated helping you, I would have put myself above your pain and there would be so many conditions I ask myself first before helping you, it will not be inherent that I do.”

“This place does it still exist?”

“I am not sure. Perhaps no longer. They, we, lacked the capacity to think further than the given moment we were in. They were not able to summon kindness even to save themselves. Right now I am helping partly out of kindness, but also because we are one and we understand the irrefutable logic of that. Anything that benefits you will one day benefit me too, for you are striving to perfect yourself, so am I. One day perhaps you will be instrumental to complete the missing piece that made my life incomplete as yet. I do not know this as a fact so I am covering all bases. Plus, it feels good to feel needed.”

“Perhaps that one day is now.”

She smiled at him suffused with love. They were walking slowly to a nourishment station. A girl approached them with a water flask, he took it and touched the girl’s hand in thanks. They continued on, but he stopped when they reached a pond. They sat down by the edge of a pond and he submerged his swollen ankle, letting the water cool the hot pain.

“Tell me more about this place,” he said.

“People talk to each other differently there. They veil the real meaning of words. They use uneeded words too, and they use words at circumstances when the opposite of it is needed,”

“How so?”

“Right now for example, it would have been appropriate first that I say something about the weather, since I have just met you. It would be odd talking to you with this level of familiarity already.”

“But we do not want to talk about the weather, we have questions that needs to be answered?”

“There are norms to be followed, in order to get to the bottom of things. It is like a labyrinth, you have to go through first before you get to the essence.”

“Is it not more logical one goes directly to the root or essence?”

“Yes it is, but intentional pain inflicters exists in that place. One cannot ascertain who they are unless one follows these rules and rituals. It is dangerous to trust so easily. It will cost you your light, or pain and even the taking of your life.”

“These are very primitive life forms then. Such system does not assure continuity.”

“Yes. Still there are exceptions. There are some who are evolved enough to surpass the limitations of their habitat. When you see and meet them, you will be deeply moved. It is like seeing a lovely blossom grow amidst the marsh.”

He stood up and offered his hand to her. He wept a little and she understood. He was breathing in the gift of the wordless here because there is now the comparison of another place so polar to where he existed. He also realized that entropy could also decay the wordless here and could change it to that other place. What ensures the state they exist in is this great love that envelops them. The perfect synthesis of it. Like the planet is a pulsing, beating place with a vein being fed by the vitality inside them. This that animates them and lives behind the orbs of their eyes.

She stayed with him even after he was nourished and carried to the healing place to have his ankle treated. She is uncertain if she will ever see him again but that is irrelevant as he now occupy a permanent dwelling in her memories.

10/22/2023

Posted on 10/22/2023
Copyright © 2024 Johanna May