Tracks

“Come in! What are you doing out there. No one ever comes up here. This place is miles from anywhere. That is why I come here. I can be alone. No one around, can hear yourself breathe, think, scream if need be. I don’t get visitors. Few if any know this place is here. How did you find it?”

If it hadn’t been for the car stalling, and in my haste to be someplace, anyplace, but where I was, this place would have remained his exclusive secret. And yet my arrogance brought me to his door step. I’ve always believed it possible to accomplish anything if you simply believed.

His words came like prayers from a prison, distance separated from time, freedom, only by imagination. I felt like I am on Mars or the moon, looking back through weightlessness at a vague remembrance of what was, what used to be.

It wasn’t until I found I was lost, or believed I was, that I began to experience fear. Fear is something I’ve found to an irrational emotion, that does nothing but confuse the predictability of our actions. But it wasn’t until I found my prints in the snow, I realized I had walked in a circle. I had heard, or read, someplace, that we tend to walk, if right-handed, in a clockwise direction until we end up where we began. It is true, my foot prints prove it, at least to me. But then isn’t belief a supposition of what could be, should be?

When I saw the light through the trees I thought I was hallucinating. A light out here in the middle of nothingness, in this remote area of a landscape, that only those driven from a pack would inhabit. And yet, here I was, here it was, and now I feel as though I have been saved, but from what, and for what purpose. There is always a reason. Fate always offers a choice, although not always an opportunity to choose.

I can’t remember why I felt the need to leave, but it was more than impulse. It was a feeling, a premonition of danger that made me forgive my suspicions, and listen to my instincts. 

“Please, take off your coat. Sit by the fire, warm yourself. You look nearly frozen.”

Salvation is a strange feeling. I have never felt the need of it, and yet here I am benefiting from its existence. I had never thought of being saved as a human condition, but then I had never experience what I interpreted to be certain death. 

It is not that I’m afraid of death, on the contrary, it provides a destination, that because of its fearful prophesies, provides an illusion of change that I find stimulating. Nothing worse than boredom, or worse, the feeling that comes into life that you have reached the pinnacle of your achievements. You will no longer light up your own world with your inventiveness and prowess, but will stagnate, become no more than an idling machine, stamping out sameness and conformed stares.

“Can I get you something warm to drink? Tea perhaps, Brandy.? Are you hungry? I thought I saw you out there in the snow, but no one ever comes here, especially in the winter. But then I heard the wolves howl. They are my doorbells. They let me know when something different has happened. You see this is basically a bubble, a sealed dome, where nothing changes from the normalcy of everyday beginnings and endings. You are a diversion in that normalcy and bound to attract attention. I’m surprised they allowed you to enter. You must have a certain something they liked. It is unusual. Brandy?”

Again, his words like bullets fired from a loneliness, or possibly a certainty, that he has the answers, the power. A reminder to not fight, argue, simply accept it as discriminately as one accepts the cold, a breath at a time.

I don’t remember anything of what happened. I don’t remember how long I was out there. I don’t remember a bird, a noise, and certainly not a wolf’s howl. Only the tracks in the snow. But then, I assumed they were mine. But they might not have been. I just assumed. Being alone in the cold distorts the reality of the cold. I stopped feeling the burning of my skin, the numbness of my feet. I stopped feeling, I stopped thinking, I think I may have stopped living. But that is impossible, I’m here.

“Where is this place?”

“Where would you like it to be?”

“I know you said this is your secret place. Your place to get away, but it must be somewhere. I’ve forgotten where I was going, why…”

“Yes, that is what happens here. You forget. That is why I come. I come to forget. You can be anyplace and remember, but a place where you can only forget…well that is a miracle. Do you remember your name?”

“Why certainly, how does one forget their name.”

“Tell me, tell me your name. I’d really appreciate knowing.”

I heard, or read about hypothermia. It does something to your brain. They have found people frozen solid who had removed all their clothes. Apparently you begin to feel as though you are boiling in your own skin. But that is impossible. I would have remembered that. No one would or could freeze to death without remembering. And yet I can’t remember who I am, or even what I was called.

“My name is John, no Andrew, no, John Andrews. That’s it, John Andrews.”

“Why does it say William on your jacket?”

William? I don’t remember. I don’t think I know a William. I’m sure my name is not William.

“Just because I’ve got a name on my jacket doesn’t mean anything. I told you I had to leave in a hurry, get away. I probably took this jacket by mistake. I don’t know any William. My name is Andrew Johns, I told you that. Don’t you believe me? You tell me you come here to forget. Well then, what is your name?”

“I told you when you are here, you forget. That is the purpose of this place, the reason I come here. You will learn to accept it.  It is remembering that causes all the problems in the world, in life. We are taught all sort of things that we should forget, but can’t. Hate, prejudice, lies, anger, you name it, we will remember it. I don’t have any of those feelings when I’m here.”

“How long have you been here, where ever here is.”

“I would enjoy answering you, but I can’t. I simply can’t remember. It is not that I don’t want to remember, or need to, I just can’t. It is part of the deal I’ve made with my landlord.”

“You have a landlord? Who is it? Am I going to be a problem. Am I going to be forbidden from remembering?”

“You aren’t forbidden from anything here. You just can’t do certain things. It’s like the sun coming up in the morning. You don’t expect it to, you don’t wish it would, it just does. You don’t think about it. Here you just are. You cannot be who you were, for that would require remembering. You can’t remember here.”

“Am I dead?”

“Why, because you can’t remember anything! What do you think?”

“I can’t”

“Nice feeling, don’t you think? It is like getting to know who you are, and why, without the inheritance attributed to a past. Each day, moment, is like the frozen lake after a new snow, perfect, clean, undisturbed. You’ll get used to there being no tracks.”