And at last I resolved to scale that tower, fall though I might; since it were better to glimpse the sky and perish, than to live without ever beholding day.
-- H. P. Lovecraft, The Outsider, 1921
The only problem was, I fell.
I too had once grovelled at the base of the monolith, cursing the darkness, tempted by the promise of light. The jagged silhouette, deeper black against the sooty sky, was as sickeningly familiar as the fetid smell of decay and it was all I knew. For a long time, it was all I ever wanted to know.
There was never a satisfactory explanation for the un-ease, the dissatisfaction that crept over me, exacerbating the distaste I'd experience at the stupidity, violence and brutality that surrounded me. Instead of mute acceptance, I'd begun to cry out "Why? even if it was only within the silences of my soul. There was no answer, never an answer, only that vague, indefinable yearning for the heights above that grew ever stronger the more I tried to hide it.
Rationalizations ran around in my mind like squirrels on a wheel; the surcease promised in drugs only added illness to my discontent. I began to feel a pull, resisted it, could not keep myself from glancing upward, could not ignore the wrench of fear in my gut when I did.
My mind, ever an unreliable thing, somehow turned the arguments against the climb into arguments for it. The answers were there, at the top of the tower; I became convinced of it. At least I would know why this was happening, I told myself. If I died, well, death would ease that unknowing too, and with a finality which could not be argued.
Somehow, even my dim and half-coherent ideas about death now seemed infinitely better than a continuance of this aching desire that tore at me worse than anything I'd ever known. So was it simple desperation that prompted my ambitions? Or pitiable innocence?
I too began that awful climb, soon encountering evidence of the others who'd gone before me. A lock of hair caught between stones, a scrap of fabric torn away, scrapes in the masonry -- these became symbols of my hopes. Others had tried this too, they had made it this far. Maybe they now had the answers for which I too now searched. Keep going, find another fingerhold, wedge the toes in one more crack...
I don't know how long it was, truly. Time is measured differently in the ascent. At times I forgot everything else, clinging to the dank and rotting stones as the wind tore at me, forgot love and life and family completely. I even forgot why I was climbing for a time, grimly putting one hand above the other, knowing only that to let go was to perish and stubbornly refusing to give up on the reasons for the climb... assuming I could ever remember them...
On the climb I learned more about death, saw it implied in the pale fingerbones wrenched into the crevice beside my own. They were all that remained of some other climber, yet another feckless fool who'd gone before me, searching for answers when even the questions were
irrational. Just fingerbones, dead and dull and motionless, curved a little as if they'd only just begun to relax their grip when the rest was shorn away. I looked down again at the nothingness below me, tried to remember my life before and what had driven me to this. Unable to summon any recollection, I forced my other hand upward, finding the next handhold.
I climbed into a deeper darkness the higher I went, and experienced true despair for the first time. Was this truly all there was on this impossible journey, the weight of sorrow, grief, bitterness, abandonment? Was this my reward for tenacity and grit? Despair hollowed out the depths of my soul and filled it with salt-tears -- why was I clinging to this travesty so desperately?
It was then I felt the seductive pull of the depths below.
The first wave of vertigo swept over me, the yearning to fall born in the now unfathomable drop beneath me. I was terrified out of self-pity and almost too terrified to notice how sweet the yearning was that was just beneath it. Almost. You learn how to fight off both though, when you're clinging to a rock face and unable to see anything above you, or below. You fight off everything and you just keep climbing, because to stop is to die, and death has just become a horrifying consequence.
Then the second wave hit me. My calloused, bloody fingers softened their grip on the rocks and my whole body, gaunt and spare from the climb, now felt soft and heavy, like a gravid woman ready to give birth. The flush of promised relief danced at the edges of my consciousness, fighting for a foothold in the same way my
physical feet struggled to cling to the slimy rock. The wind sang in my ears, a tune of the unending peace in drifting away, drifting down, softly falling into nirvana, into bliss...
This went on for some time. With each recurrence it became harder and harder to resist. There was no end in sight, no hint of surcease or respite in the climb above. And who was I anyway, to attempt such a thing? How arrogant was I, to think I deserved answers or could even find them on this impossible quest?
Vertigo whispered constantly in my awareness. I wanted to fall into its embrace and forget, forget... forget answers, forget questions, forget despair and most of all forget the bright promises of love, peace, joy. I don't know how I held on as long as I did, so fierce that onslaught became.
I have a clear recollection of the moment I finally let go. As the stone ore itself from my numb and clinging fingers and I plummeted into an abyss unforgiving and inevitable, I wondered if it were mere optimism or blind desperation that had originally impelled me upwards? Or perhaps mere naivete made me believe that the courage to make the attempt would somehow protect me from the dangers inherent? After having ascended to a great height, knowing the feel of the masonry beneath my hands, courting the vagarities of wind and rain, having learned to navigate by instinct and inferrence alone, was it the
arrogance of mere accomplishment that blinded me to the power of the seduction of the fall?
Was I betrayed? Or did I betray myself?
There are still no answers. There never have been. I doubt there ever are.
I drift now on unknown winds and feel no sorrow, no joy. The days are grey and uniform and if I have no bliss, at least I have no despair.
Like Eurydice, I hear the call of my Beloved still, a tantalizing Orpheus who promises much more than he can ever deliver. Like her, I resist it -- please don't call me back to that pain and suffering, I whisper. Just leave me here, where I can find contentment of a sort. The price of bliss in your arms -- it was more than I could bear.
Don't ask me to try again. Don't ask me to face that failure.
Not again.
