I sat at the table and poured a mug of water from the jerry can and drank it slowly. This would be my routine now. I would rise when I woke and dress myself and sit and drink a mug of water and look out of the window at the whiteness and everything would be still. And then I would slowly put on my boots and take my stick and pack my small bag and walk out and I would cross the moor and go to the lane and wait for as long as I needed to. I had all time if time was even passing. This would be my routine until I saw it again. What did I want to see and why? I sat and I drank my water and this wasn’t clear to me but it didn’t seem to matter. Not very much seemed to matter. There was an emptiness all around me and in me. I was sure I cared about a lot of things but I couldn’t think what they were. What was the great work of my life I wondered and was it underway?
It was a quiet day. Every day was a quiet day now. I walked steadily down the track across the stream up and over the moor. I reached the lane with no expectations. All was still. Today I didn’t enter the churchyard instead I sat outside with my back against the stone wall on the grass verge by the track. I took out my bottle of water and I placed it between my legs in front of me. I put my rucksack on the ground next to me and I folded my hands on my lap and I waited.
Everything was benign. I remembered the fear I had felt yesterday. I looked across at the same tree I had been looking at then but I couldn’t imagine how it had stirred those feelings in me. The huge whiteness of the sky curled over me like a dome and seemed to sit with me. Nothing would happen here I knew that now I had known that as soon as I had sat down. Nothing would happen here even I would not happen here. I would only sit in the whiteness with nothing around me. But I felt like I was happy to do that all day and maybe all year. It was so still. Nothing flowed through me or around me. Life was nothing and this was how it should be I felt as if this was how it should always have been. I would just sit here.
I had brought no food because I didn’t have any food I only had water now and anyway I still wasn’t hungry. Food seemed like a form of pollution. I drank water and this was fine. Perhaps I sat there for a couple of hours. I knew I would see nothing and I was happy about it. Nothing was fine. Nothing was good. This was how it was meant to be.
And then it changed suddenly just as it had changed the day before. I took a swig of water from my bottle and I closed its cap and put it down on the ground before me. When I looked up again I saw nothing that I had not seen before and yet none of it looked the same. This time I wasn’t frightened. Instead I felt despair settling slowly and gently down upon me. There was no panic and no urgency. There was nothing to run from. I accepted what I felt almost immediately. But there it was: a gentle, strong, loving despair enveloping me. I felt like the nature of things was laid quietly out before me like the wares on a market stall. For a moment the world cracked open and I saw myself as the wild creature I was as one caged wild creature among billions as atoms as meat as animal as prey. As another small victim the world would not mourn because the world did not mourn it just went on. The wheel of blood and sperm and death and life kept turning and none of it needed me none of it knew me for there was no me and never had been. I saw the abyss open up and I knew I would be swallowed by it and I knew that everything in my world everything I was and everything I thought and felt and cared about and refused to care about had been carefully constructed only to help me survive any glimpses I might have of this.
What was all this? Everything was so silent and still and sad. There was nobody here but me no creature no noise and it seemed clear to me in this moment that it was driving me insane. How could it not drive me insane? The silent hot white place and everything I had been drifting away on the stream so far that I could no longer see it. I accepted it all. It was fine. I had no desire to change it but at the same time I was clear what was going on. It was horrible. I was so alone. I was so alone and that was all there was and would ever be and there was nothing to be done about that now.
I got up and I turned and walked to the churchyard gate. I walked down the path and I pushed open the church’s wooden door which was ajar. The building was cool and close and immediately I felt different. The despair seemed to be hanging in the air outside like mist. Inside the building it dissipated. I sat on the very last pew at the back of the church and I held my cold water bottle in my hand like a relic like something that connected me to a world I felt I was floating away from. The whiteness came through the stained glass window at me. To make a window like that. To make this altar and these carvings and these windows to make a spire that points to heaven and to put one in every settlement in the land. What did you have to believe to do that and would it dissolve what was hanging in the air? Did beauty dissolve what was hanging in the air could beauty dissolve anything or was that a lie? Did people make windows like that anymore or did art die with God in the twentieth century? If a tower doesn’t point to heaven why build a tower? If your hands are not folded in prayer what are your hands folded around? As the white light walked through the many colours did it bring the despair with it and would it settle on me again? What did this window tell me as the light came through and this unknown saint rose in red and gold and pointed his staff at me? That there is art and there is god and everything else is a waste product.
I sat in the pew and I breathed and it was fine. It was all fine. Everything was as it should have been. How could I ever have thought otherwise? I liked churches. Eventually I rose and went back to the door which was still ajar and closed it behind me. Outside the despair was still drifting gently around in the air. This was a waste of time. It was obviously a waste of time to sit here waiting for something which would never come. I didn’t mind that I had wasted my time. I didn’t feel that I had anything better to do. But I didn’t feel like wasting any more of it so I put my pack on my back and headed up again onto the moor.
On arriving back at the farm the first thing I felt was a strong urge for a drink. But not water. I wanted beer or whisky or wine but of course I had none of these. I filled up the lone mug on the table from the jerry can and drank more water instead. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d wanted a drink. Now I wanted to be drunk. I wanted to be pissed for days. I wanted to fall onto the floor and have visions and wake up sick. I wanted to pick up a dirty woman in a bar and fuck her upside down in a car down some filthy lane. I wanted to smoke weed and fly and curse and sing I wanted to run screaming through neon streets I wanted to sit in dark corners in underground clubs I wanted to puke everywhere and bounce off the walls and go to sleep forever. All of this whiteness all of this silence.
I drank two more glasses of water and took a number of very deep breaths. It became clear to me what I needed to do. I needed to create a system. A system would lock out the fear and the silence and the despair and the whiteness. I needed a curriculum to follow. This sitting this aimless sitting day by day it was getting me nowhere and there is madness in nowhere. That is where real madness is to be found in the middle of nowhere sitting in the whiteness unthinking that is where it all breaks open. Nobody can survive that. You need to run from that when you see it coming over the hill.