Neatened things
Sleep-deprived
Knees intact
Hallucinate
Ruin-wished world
It’s nice in here
Boiling bird
Disappeared
Train of thoughts
Wait a while
Cracked cement
Vilified
Neatened words
Dream-deprived
Not so easily
satisfied.
Bottom of a well,
body of a being,
it must be alive but who is to tell, splayed out over the well-bottom floor, barely crying but anyway some sound. “How did you find yourself at the bottom of a well?” Silly thing, wet and cold, ran away or fell during play. “How am I supposed to get you out? Help isn’t so easy to find these days.” No answer. Next morning (bad night, an awkward reawakening, language comes slow some days), again this body, in that well. “I should have brought food. I’m fasting. I’m sorry.” No reasons not to hang out for a little longer.

Sitting there, the sun climbing higher, the well-bottom creature might have been speaking, but who is to tell. Depriving itself of food, a body becomes fulfilled with its denial, the mind generates self-obsession. Possessed by an absence, speech makes no sense. “How did you get there, dear? How are you going to get out? I should get help.” I tried crying over sad things, but I couldn’t today. I imagined many games that would lead to the bottom of a well. I don’t like games, in general. The one below didn’t speak – or I couldn’t hear, who is to tell. By now I was almost sure it must be human, but let’s wait just a little longer with naming. Traps, gaps, bridges, arrows. The first task in solving a problem is naming it, but I don’t like my name and you wouldn’t either. “I come back tomorrow, I promise.” When we call things into existence we hasten their doom.

Pondering at night, where are the practical truths? Risks are worth taking, fortune favors the brave. The usefulness of a cup is in its emptiness. I closed my eyes and tried to move away from understanding. Next day excitement woke me up precisely at the right moment, later than usual, the sun already high enough for maybe a glimpse of it, on my daily morning walk along by the well. Until now, I had only seen its shadow. Today also, I bring food. For myself and for the mystery at the bottom of the well. And thus, I walk there and peer: “I came back, as promised.” I listened, but no sound returned but the echoes of my longing, chased by scraps of food. I only give it scraps, I don’t know its desires, no point in wasting the best parts. I sneezed. Allergies are getting worse these days, sickness has come here to prove a truth, not to be healed. My sneeze also echoes well into the well. Patience overcomes me. The unknown is normally merely the not yet known. It belongs to the same realm as the known, as its task, its promised future. But down at the bottom of the well lies a true mystery. For a moment there, waiting is enough.

© Carly Rae Heathcote

Yet then again, craves of understanding come back, crazy-making. “Why would you want to stay so hidden deep down in that darkness, well?” Belief in prophecy needs belief in fate. But in our age, one must believe in one’s own agency: take your fate in your own hands! Therefore prophecy becomes something tragic, comes anyway despite our very denial of it, a looming trauma of sorts.

Next day back again, ask seek knock, and you will find. Hands reach deep into the darkness, try to grasp, anything. Wear and tear began to be seen, where this grasping had day after day taken place. As signs pointing to something, some solution I hadn’t thought of, for a problem I didn’t know. “Don’t forget you are always on my mind!” Wind blew dirt into the well. A little rock. And it woke up. Just like that. Nothing said. Happened fast. Couldn’t see. Little life. Happy me. Cried a little. Hoped so much. Then something changed. As it spoke to me:

“Hello up there, can you hear me? I don’t know how long I’ve been here for. Do you think you could fish me out?”

Oh!
“But how did you manage to find yourself at the bottom of the well in the first place?”
“A leap of faith. I could really use a hand.”
“I’m certainly not sure I can be of any help to you. I’m a bit short on limbs.”
“That sounds to me like you could be trying harder. I must say, I took you for a more eager-to-help-person at first. I feel comfortable in your presence, like I know your voice from long before.”
“That is true, I thought so too, at first. But somehow, something has changed.”
“Please, it gets quite cold down here.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you now, but tell me, how did you get there? What are you doing there exactly?’
“What do you expect me to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wanna make a wish?”
“No, I think I’d better not.”
“Find a coin and toss it my way.”
“We all know everyone gets screwed by wishing, you can’t fool me.”
“Ah, a clever one.”
“What’s the point of wishing anyways? There’s too much that’s appeared already.”
“No silly, you can also wish things away.”

They speak in ways, in maze, the well-being and the wanderer. They wait a moment in silence.

“Are you okay down there? Are your limbs intact? Did you fall?”
“Why would you ask me that if you’re not going to help me?”
“I’m sorry, I just want to know.”
“It’s not yours to know.”
“Please don’t be angry!” A little whimper.
“Okay, it’s okay.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s been so long since I have been able to speak with an other. It gets quite lonely here.”
“I can imagine!”
“So please, I don’t want to beg.”
“Yes but I just can’t, I must be on my way now. It’s getting cold, must go home before darkness.”
“No wait!”

What a pity, they don’t seem to really find each other. The one seems to be searching for revelation, but the other knows that revelation has been reduced to debunking. Like stones that go a-dumping and a-clunking while horses are a-show-jumping for the young-king. The course and order of hidden things can never perfectly be known to any mortal creature.

“Hello, did you not come back to save me?”
“No I can’t. I just… came to check on you. Please don’t be angry. I don’t mean to upset you.”
“Why do you only throw food at me that’s junk?”
“I thought it would be nice if you woke up surrounded by comfortable food, to keep you cozy.”
“I need your help, not your comfort, and not your junk.”
“How should I know what you eat?”
“Oh forget it.”
“I walked here wondering if you’d still be awake, and there you are.”
“Ah, so you’re a walkerperson?
“Excuse me?”
“You’re not a runnerperson or a driverperson, you’re a walkerperson.”
“Sure, most of the time. What are you then?”
“You could think of me as a spokesperson.”
“So you mean I could think of you as a liar?”
“Why should that make me a liar?”
“I can’t think of a single spokesperson who isn’t busy bending the truth.”
“Ah but you see, everyone is bending the truth, truth is itself incredibly elastic!”
“So you don’t say… you try, tell me the truth, why are you there?”
“No, no, why do you think I’m here? You must’ve come up with an idea by now.”
“No don’t be silly, that would be a story and nothing more.”
“That’s all there ever is and ever will be so tell me, what did you see?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“Stop being so boring, play along, it’s just a game.”
“I don’t see the point.”
“Point, point, you can point all over and never figure out what you’re looking for, just wander in your mind a moment.”
“Okay, I will wander then.”

© Carly Rae Heathcote

A zooming-in occurs:

Is there a plot?
I wonder, there’s always a plot, no? You have the this-people and the that-people and something’s always happening whether you want it to or not.

I just love that for us.
I don’t know about an ‘us’. I’m not sure I can keep coming back, it just makes me so… I don’t know, so… sad to see you alone down there, it’s tearing me up inside.

That’s rich, and who are the characters?
Well, there’s the one-who-searches and the one-who-speaks; the walkerperson and the well-bottom thing… I think, yes. Maybe someone else.

And what is it the searcher seeks?
When I’m walking these parts I’m constantly thinking how painful it is to see everything so intact, everything is a disaster and yet we patch up the facade, call it new. And I guess I want to see it all for what it really is.

I wouldn’t know, I don’t exactly have a clear perspective from here.
You know, it’s just as if we’re in denial, denial of the very buildings around us being tired, ready to collapse, the forests too, we keep forcing everything to go on and on, stay existing.
So when I walk, I whisper to the bricks on the house and the asphalt on the street and the bulbs in the streetlamps, ‘go on now, break down already, you don’t have to hang on any longer, we’ll just have to get on without you.’

We are caught in a net of information, a cage of belief.
I want to shout out until buildings crumble and we talk in ruins, but we won’t know how to talk since our words will have crumbled too. Actually, scratch that, I’m just rambling on, otherwise I’m afraid I’ll lose your attention.

And when your words fail you, how will you keep everything under your control?
“I have to go now.”
“I pushed too hard, silly walker come back again.”
“No that’s no good, you’ll have to make do.”
“You are cruel to me, you tease and you know it.”
“Goodbye.”

Oh, little ones, so repulsed by their own curiosity. But the curious tongue finds its way. Sweet smells come up through cracks, the tongue twists and turns. Words become rocks in the mouth, unpleasantly definite. Hand in a slit. It’s all just a skit. We won’t just admit. Using all of our wit. But first, we must try and understand.

“Ah there you are.”
“Yes… here I am.”
“We weren’t through with one another yet, I felt it.”
“You make me sick.”
“Well, I’ve died.”
“No you didn’t, stop it already.”
“Oh but yes I did, look at me.”
“Leave it be, just take a deep breath.”
“It’s there locked inside you too, your own dying.”
“My own dying? No, I am stuck here as a living symbol.”
“A living symbol of what?”
“A symbol of desperation, someone who seeks truth and is ruined by their quest, a walkerperson that can’t decide if they’re a believer or a cynic, I’m off in my own world crushed between the possibilities.”
“We’re gonna need to reconnect to the thought that we live in a common reality.”
“A common reality? Reality has been splintered since I’ve known her.
“You mean you think we’re stuck in a bit?”
“I hope not!”
“In a way isn’t everything a bit? I do my bit, talking to you mysteriously from below, you do your bit pretending to be the antsy confused one who wanders above.”
“You have a point.”
“The signs all say that ‘the future is now’ and I am pretty concerned.”
“I prefer the future to stay in its place, far far ahead of me.”

Everything around is saying look, look carefully, you are missing something. Listen, listen well, the shadows are taunting you, waiting for you to forget about what you’re searching for. We’re nearing the end, but know there will be no revelation, not yet. My hair is gray, I have acquired all the knowledge of the world.

“Hello again.”
“Hello.”
“You’ve finally decided to grant my wish, to fish me out?”
“No, I won’t.”
“And why is that now?”
“You must stay there, you are the voice of the well-bottom, your purgatory keeps my searching alive, your prayer alone might maintain my cosmic balance. Through exhaustion, through sacrifice, the world runs onward.”
“What is it that you’re searching for?
To justify the unjust?
To sanitize the polluted?
Never an answer.
The unavailing desire to know, when objective truth can’t be obtained.
A hunger shared by many, indeed.
And these are the slivers of insight,
as the world was all this time just an illusion.
Do we live in bad faith and take this as the measure of reality?”
“Dumb one you think you know so much better and maybe you do, but you’re still stuck at the bottom of the well and I walk away now.”