This is the story of a road, of a race; of a Rucksack and a Pen. Reader, treat it with care: fair or ugly as it may be, it is my story.
I run to escape.
There is no contentment for me, no point of arrival. I am a nomad, both inside and out. The consequences of this cruel game are that my knees ache from running, my hands are numbed by the icy night and my heart is torn by an obsessive quest for answers. “Run, run, run,” l repeat to myself, as if it were a mantra. This categorical imperative moves apace with my progress, ceaselessly treading on my thoughts, permeating them, agitating them, turning them upside down. I turn and, like a crazy person, smile. The Pen laughs and tells me to stop it: “You look like a fool!”. Fortunately, the Pen itself, thanks to its splendid colour, makes up for the grey of the asphalt. The road I mean to follow with tired legs cuts a solitary figure off in the distance. Reader, you need to know: the road along which I crawl, walk, run and fly is no ordinary road. My life is one long flight, an endless struggle for survival and self-affirmation. A tumultuous, incoherent forward motion lacking any core stability.
I run to win.
I hold a baton that I desperately need to pass on, in order to flow into the flood waters of the river of great men, in order to lay a brick in building the temple of existence, in order to imperiously recite my role. The road along which I lumber is paved not with people but with words to be shouted.
I run because I have something powerful to say.
I squint in order to see something behind me. The Rucksack tells me: “Put me down on the ground. You are not very smart. You will have few chances to be free of my weight… best to take advantage of them all.” And so, I place him on the ground, that I might rest. The Sack talks too much, but that is to be expected.
There is nothing inside the rucksack but words, more words and still other words. Off in the distance, there is nobody to be seen. Except for the unmentionable one. Just him. He is always there. And he runs much faster than I. He is strong and tireless. A slick thief capable of rapid bursts of speed, unbeatable with his endless experience. One by one he steals the races of the past, piling them up as gifts to his brother, ultimately to wind up trapped in his grid of space and time. He hides the beauty of things in a veil of dust, rendering all acts of rebellion pointless.
Desolate is he whose life slips away, transformed into a shapeless mass, without anyone to suck the nectar out, down to the very marrow. Desolate was I before making the acquaintance of the Word. Until I began to caress it and pray that it would pass on to me what I considered to be a timeless truth. I began my desperate race against the unmentionable one armed with nothing more than the worn-out soles on my feet and with Words. The running was supposed to still a whirlwind of questions: what will be left?
What will be left of these days, of this maelstrom of moments?
What will be left of this life that flows dense and bountiful through the veins, that surges immense and powerful through the hands, the eyes, the heart? “A savage strength”, I thought to myself, “has always throbbed inside of me, keeping me from being torn apart by him”. The fear of him, so strong that his name cannot be spoken, closes my heart in its steely grasp, casts a grey pall and takes the breath from my eyes. It drags blocking the way through total paralysis.
I run to keep from slowly dying.
The idea of not being a key part of something larger, of not contributing to sending out a single, momentous ‘message in a bottle’ to those in need, is intolerable. “I know not what it is,” I say to myself, reflecting on the all-consuming fatigue of the endless race, on the massive strides taken to gain ground, to arrive at a more clearly visible horizon as an award, to establish a new outlook to be shared, an idea to be shouted from the top of the world.
“Maybe it is an innate human fear of disintegration, or merely a physiological need to somehow be admired and applauded, or simply a natural inclination for giving”. I think of the maze-like thickets of inconclusive thoughts in which I run aimlessly, and still I smile in the light of a sole, complete awareness.
I run to give.
I stop to reflect. The Rucksack and the Pen confer with one another. The Rucksack winks knowingly at the Pen, who supplies the Rucksack with the ink for the words. Meanwhile, I say to myself, “This bench shall be the throne upon which I engage in contemplation,” before laughing at my own melodramatic vein.
The rush of the race exhausts me, so that, at times, I can think of only one thing: blessed lightness. I would like to stop and glide over things from above, with the wings of a gull, caressing what lies below me with the eyes of a child able to be newly astonished every day, without the oppressive presence of the unmentionable one. I wish to be reborn in the probing, unfolding light of a tenuous dawn, in my small, unadorned moments of reflection, in the sweetness of a hawthorn blossom found along the side of the road, in a hand held out to provide assistance. All I wish to do is pirouette on the rippled surface of the water, taking bold, vigorous leaps.
That is what I would like. But I wish to avoid the gut-wrenching longing to delve ever deeper, to push my lungs to the limit, obsessively striving for the sense of things. I wish to love but not to understand, so that the race might prove less intense, and the gift more spontaneous and genuine. I wish to live, but without the malady of the pained feeling that weighs me down like a curse, a sin with no possibility of pardon.
As I run, I lean forward, to the point where my own weight often brings me to the ground. This is when I begin to crawl, to draw myself ever further away from the unmentionable one. I would like to follow a road that is a treasure trove of the eternal essence of things. I would like to follow a road that is pure light, though I know that light only exists in the form of darkness. Here is what I would like: to run wild and free, in perfect solitude. With an end to all thoughts.
I get back up on my feet. The pause has been so brief that my condition is no better. I am exhausted. I wish I could lay down in the middle of the road and wait for someone to come along and say to me: “Get up. The world is over, you’re free”. Once again, I look behind me, and I am struck by an awareness that no, it will never end. I am destined to go on running forever.
I run to assert myself.
And to assert myself, I need to live. And in order to live, I must never allow myself to be ground down by the unmentionable one. This is why I return to my running, picking up the Rucksack and the Pen. I search for words in my Rucksack, attempting to combine them in unique ways that will sow messages along the road.
I am comforted by the idea that the unmentionable one shall swallow up everything but the words. I have always held that the eternal essence of things is to be found in words, which sit firm and unyielding, like a Buddha in the lotus position. You surely agree, dear Reader, that to bestow upon you the gift of my thoughts (however banal and superfluous they may prove) is one of the most exalted forms of love. To give is to receive. I never stop running, so that I might give, all the while receiving in exchange the hope of somehow proving useful to you, in this way escaping the damnation of memory. In the frenetic course of my running,
I attempt, using the only weapon at my disposal, to smooth the wrinkles of a soul too long coiled up in a spiral of silence, to reveal to you the mixed, contradictory blood in my veins, to painstakingly place the truth in your hands. In this way, I hope to win out over the unmentionable one while aiding you with the gift of my hymn to life and hope, so that you can learn the art of moving forward by taking small steps.
I run to teach you to run.
I wish to give you a feel for the intensity of life, to bring to the fore the love and pain in my words, to let you see the small possibility of goodness that is in me. I shall run for as long as my wind holds out, though I realise that I have once again lost myself in the tangle of the thoughts inside me, while outside it has begun to rain.
It rains quite often here. The days move slowly, each foreshadowing a storm that appears on the horizon, until, following an angry explosion, the light once again cascades gently downward, and all is quiet. Beneath this gauzy light, I shall rest. I shall open a good book while sitting with my back propped up against a tree and I shall blot out the surrounding world.
“If only my life were not one long escape,” I bitterly observe, as a lone tear hurriedly slips down my cheek, hidden and protected from the rain. I feel a suffocating sense of responsibility. I come close to falling, weighed down by the titanic effort towards which I have set my path in life. With unstinting dedication, I give my all to the goal. I have strayed from every plan and rule, I have shattered my moral compass.
It no longer shows me the true north. North is simply straight ahead, no matter what the direction, without any care for where it may lead. All that matters is that I run.
I run to go. To go is enough.
The Rucksack full of words weighs heavily upon my back. At risk of falling and slipping, I feel the laboured breath of the unmentionable one on my neck, his attempts to oppress me mentally, to dissolve me. The Pen seems worried on our behalf, seeing what it takes for me to move forward. It keeps telling me that I seem to be in agony. Whether or not that be true, I have a desperate need to run.
This is my woeful story, which could end right here, at the start of this third, tattered sheet of paper. It is a slow, steady story, dear Reader, without any grand gestures to narrate in exhilarating fashion, no tales of a thousand and one nights. As I warned you from the start, I carry very little with me. And please do not imagine that I have hidden the identity of the unmentionable one simply to draw your attention. That is not the case.
The problem is, I am afraid.
But I know that now, thanks to those of you who have listened to my words, who have given meaning to my running, the time had come to tell you who he is.
The brother of Forgetfulness, that is, the one whom I hinted at earlier: Time.
My race was destined to fail from the start. It was a race against time, a desperate, obsessive attempt to claw my way into the world, to plant a seed that could go on existing even once I no longer did. Time is on my heels, constantly. Time is an obsession. I know I am destined to fall short. Still, I am determined to get as far as I can, to sow as many words as possible along the way. I walk with the Pen in my hand, and the Pen keeps saying: “Squeeze me harder! I believe in you!”
And though I love the Pen, it is also my eternal damnation: that which creates me, destroys me; that which holds me together, breaks me into pieces; the Pen both forges me and melts me down. But I am unable to break away from the Pen, for by now, the Pen and I are one. It is my medium. Dear Reader, believe me, I am not mad, but I do have a dream, and the line between the two states is often quite thin.
I run to make my dream come true.
The Rucksack, referring to the words it contains, says to me: “I have the winning cards. Now it is up to you and the Pen to play them”. And I do just that.
I run to play.
Time will devour me, I know. The mere thought makes me stop and lift my eyes to the sky, in the hope that my tears will meld in with the rain. But this, dear Reader, is the destiny that awaits us all. There is no escape. All we can do is to decide not to stop, to make every effort to leave our mark along the way, as engravings or smoke signals or messages in a bottle.
In short, to keep running. For who is to say that one day somebody might not happen upon them, grasp their deepest meaning and draw on them in order to run in their turn, in a never-ending flow.
Indeed, this may have already happened. It could be that, as you read this, I no longer am. Time may have already arrived for me. But please feel no sadness for me, Reader. Wisdom lies in understanding when something cannot be changed. Wisdom lies in accepting that. I know the Rucksack: it is unable to accept things. When Time will have done away with me, when I shall have become nothing but dust and wind, the Rucksack will go on its way. The Rucksack and its words will look for another runner just like me, for someone willing to dedicate their life to giving the gift of the message.
The Rucksack has done the exact same thing since the dawn of time: it searches for someone with a vocation for giving, and when it finds them, it gives itself to that person. I accept the Rucksack. I am neither the beginning nor the end. I am nothing more than a tiny tile in the eternal mosaic, part of a superhuman project meant to bring together all men who have ever existed, all those who currently exist, and all those who will exist in the future.
It makes no difference.
I fight Time with my writing. I shall die one day, but my Rucksack and my Pen shall render me eternal.
I am part of a Magnificent Story, and I am grateful for this.
The story of a road, a race, and a Rucksack and a Pen.
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