Meditations After The End Of The World

Together the crone and I walked in country by sea an afternoon late that summer. Having left through a pass in the southern hills we started out not long after dawn. The sun in our eyes and harsh bearing upon us. Along past the winding hills turned northeast down a disserviced road; an hour later cleared a wooded area, diverged onto a rubble backroad and started coming back closer to the water.

The age-old route was a sea-gazing, seafarers’ lane; I imagined shepherds of old guiding flocks, hoplites mustering for war, livestock-hauled wagons carting produce, wandering Peripatetics with animals at heel, lovers and friends abound, families headed for the shore who happily meandered these picturesque avenues. On one side was a field of withered yellow stalks, other sparse woods with crooked trees and vibrant flora. We could now vaguely see the waves through vined snares, brief flashes of white-tips which sparkled like diamonds, combusting hydro-bulbs of radioactive energy powered via sun. Sometimes lawns bordered the lane, grasses burnt and gravel of the road a chalky beige colour. Bright the sun shone in sky azure-blue, fleeced with wisps of furrowed cottony clouds, drifting with the ease of tide in subdued current.

Beyond that penultimate avenue, eastern terrain became hilly, densely wooded, sole darkness cast over wild stalks afield. No longer we sighted sea, yet scented salty moisture of water, felt breeze flush upon flesh. Walked until a woodland afore interminable ocean of vegetation, shrivelled stalk surrounds; silhouette of a much farther treeline stood out distant and, from way we came discolouration of faraway mountains.

It felt calm passing within the crooked trees nighttime dark. Passage through the untamed wood went arduous, without discourse. Its timber were beech, oak and pines which were tall and straight, dirt of the forest floor littered with pine-needles. The woodland path winded on a wide curve, downhill simultaneously within the sprawling woods. When straightened out, yielded naught more than an acre of shallow decline to the beginning of road.

Upon horizon glinted blonde light spelled overtop the treetops, reflection of rays dazzling off truculent, greenery-adorned bowers. Moss, lichen was matted on yellow-brownish grass, only a few droppings of pine-needles, pinecones blown astray in the wind. We sighted a dirty, rubbly country lane reformed not far before us.

‘Thirsty?’ the crone asked, once at first stretch of the long road.

When the wind in flight ceased scouring afield, only palpable sound haggard draws of breath against hot air. Stopping she reached back, swung a leather satchel about and, putting arms through the straps drew it against her chest.

‘I’ve not walked like this in years,’ she said, sharing the water.

‘I’m indebted to you - thank you. I have not hiked in too long.’

‘Henry believes this is my fault, I think. Nurturing you too well. Growing lazy.’

‘Then let it be known: your fault equates mine salvation, home my haven.’

‘This I know is true. Good man, Mr. Owen.’

Farther down broad lane the sun had gone away a bit, still burning. A degree of shade, given displacement of receded light made the wide grass ocean appear darker, flowing eerie in the airstream. Ahead road went far out before us, extended grey, long like body of the Leviathan, subject to constant templates of miraged heat shimmers.

‘I’m glad to have you walk with me,’ she said.

For a brevity in silence, route led upon cedars, junipers, cypresses and a plethora of bushes sprouting up nearer gap in the treeline. There were even scores of myrtle and oleander plants, beautiful soft white and pink flowers like delicate, hand-crafted satiny silks, lacy, ethereal amid the wilder fauna.

‘I’ve thought of something today: what is your name?' I asked her.

‘This does not matter, the name of a bent sickly woman.’

In minutes we were about halfway down the golden lane, everything so burnt, bronzed as though the plants and grass were formed of smelted ichor, handiwork of great metallurgist Hephaestus. An avenue of mythic proportions, it seemed to be. All felt nice, inert despite the heat exhaustion. Sweat poured along face, soaking pallid skin.

‘The sun renders your eyes bluer,’ she said, ‘like O’Toole’s in Arabia.’

‘Maybe I’m sick, too.’

‘Are you burning?’

‘Indeed, a good bit. Yes. Quite a damned lot.’

‘Go only with ease,’ she told me. ‘Allow a moment for rest.’

I ceased at side of the road, in shade underneath tall shrubbery; junipers, cypresses ran aside the lawns in columns along the road, both sides perfectly rowed. I wiped brow, balanced with hands on knees whilst doubling over.

‘Your sun is a bloody bastard,’ I said.

‘The only sun. There is but one for this planet. Singular. Masculine.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘You dare call it a bitch?’

‘Nay, only rather austere. Pressing. Relentless, as women are - girls, sisters, mistresses, wives, mothers, aunts, all the like.’

‘It is masculine,’ she confirmed, feigning disappointment with grimace. ‘Indeed, it doth provide amply or scarce owing the basis of seasons, looks over all those in its due charge. Yet does so mercilessly, indiscriminately, without mitigation, nor slightest concern for repercussions. Also basks in glory of its self-supposed magnanimity, ignoring any consideration for woe or trauma it inflicts. Masculine.’

Trying to moisten, I coughed up phlegm, ‘Do women not also abide by a similar code of conduct?’

‘Women have played by the rules set out best we could in a male-dominant world. And we were left to consider the rest that man did not ever.’

‘Alright - so what of the moon?’

‘Come now, heatstroke can’t mean you’re wholly subdued.’

‘Indisposed - I might be.’

She denounced me with a word, ‘Moon, sweet darling, is feminine. It veers about in the shadow of the sun almost perpetually. At other times it cannot be seen at all, although remains powerful, present. While the sun threatens to consume it regulates. The tides. Menarche. It is there providing when the other has walked out, albeit alone, handicapped, yet always bold, bright-shining. You ought to know this - your matriarch was a single mother, no, required no glory?’

‘For the most part, correct.’

The crone leaned over, patted me solidly between shoulders. She peered into profile and dribbled water onto the nape of my neck. Immediate I felt reinvigorated, straightened up, and we started out.

‘Water wasted on weakness,’ she said. ‘Alas a crime.’

‘I’m glad you committed.’

‘You perpetrated, viz forcing my hand - I was merely accessory.’

‘I think we shall avoid indictment, at least for this crime.’

‘You plan to commit many more?’

‘Undecided.’

‘Should you concede, make sure they’ll count.’

The gale flew stronger as we got closer to the sea, constitutions of cedars, junipers, cypresses slithering wildly. Wind continued to swim through the grass lawns.

'The sky,’ I said absentmindedly. ‘Masc ou femn?’

‘Sky is neutral. Ungendered, asexual. Like the stars. Sentries to day and night. Contingencies. Catalysts. Crucibles.’

We had gone far enough upon the avenue that a wide bar of shimmery white light expanded above the dirt, where the ground lifted, slanted on the horizon. It dwarfed the scenery closer we came, nor did it disappear, as in actuality it was the sea.

‘Do you still burn?’

‘No. Only thine brain.’

‘Beset with flames.’

‘What?’

‘A rhyme. Your brain already is long been aflame. Alit. Alight. Yes?’

‘That is for an old lady to think.’

‘This much I know.’

The span of sea between us and the clearing was now a turquoise ellipse kissing beneath the sky. The tall, columnar shrubs along the roadside gave way to smaller shrubs spread sporadically. The rest of the way always had been wild, uncultivated and its forests genuine, untouched wilderness.

‘What were it set our minds aflame?’ I postulated.

‘This question is too big for an old pagan.’

‘Was it truly the one-percent who mucked everything up for everybody else?’

‘Men,’ the crone replied. ‘During adolescence, every man is faced with an imperative decision. Genetic. Profound. Conditional. Retain truth of self or become man. Men choose to become man so as to not be themselves. Mainly because of way things are, have always been.

‘It was masculine who learnt to kill long ago, and feminine which counteracted for survival. Millenia later when men were told not to kill anymore found different ways to do so. When there were to be no longer any omnipotent kings of men, and men were newly equal, those with predisposition adjusted the operations to rule over us much in the same. And men will let them, fight the wars, fan the flames of fascism.’

‘Fascists, communists, socialists, capitalists, ilk all the same,’ I added. ‘Could women have done any better?’

‘Maybe but it could never have ever lasted. Never. Could not.’ She smirked. ‘If humanity on Earth was once governed by females were made to relinquish domain long ago. Just as if dominion of heavens, netherworld and sea ever were subject to primary rule of goddesses, in lieu of male gods. The male masculine takes whatever ends desired from its opposite - an appropriation without recourse.

'Look,' she said, opening the heart-shaped locket around her neck to reveal a photo of a thin dark man. 'This was my husband. It has been an age since he passed, though he was taken from me long before then. I keep him here as a reminder that what goes external can vastly overpower what lies inside. That is why we must respect darkness as much as we prefer the light, and appreciate them as equals. No good or bad, just seasons of being.'

A sandy beach rose into sight down a steep, slight inverse. Blue sea spanned bright, wide beyond like a glassy curtain. The sun hung far-off, light dimmer a little. Cormorants and gulls crowed in the air, sailing o’er on the wind, necks craning above the surface.

‘What’s the cause of any of it?’

‘Do you pique a pagan’s brain to tease her? The answer to your query is war; is greatest symptom of condition of men, manhood, manliness, masculine. Without being able to plunge swords, riddle with bullets men perceive would become castrate.’

‘But war is a symptom of something else entirely - is root cause not, if we consider power a primary source of evil then the deceit that rested within those who always had or claimed power for themselves?’

‘Corruption was most honest thing we had in politics, at any epoch in history worth counting on. This evidently is true, especially throughout the history your homeland.’

‘America is not my country.’

‘The same.’

‘Earlier, you spoke of condition of man as genetic?’

‘Do consider that in-womb female and male are as one. Therefore, no masculine nor feminine precedes birth.’

‘I agree, though mustn’t there be dichotomous predisposition?’

‘We cannot know this.’

‘But in nature. Feminine as nurturer, caretaker - men as hunter, gatherer?’

‘I am tired. I do not know.’

‘You love to talk.’

She smiled sidelong, a wry wink, ‘Women must always talk. It is left for us to do, divine right and material obligation. It could not change. None were aware of their follies for the longest time. There were no longer ethical codes, moral boundaries. People were too ignorant to confront flaws when thinking, belief systems became constructs of doctrinal conditioning. There were none to amend, nor mend what was broken.’

The Aegean was fully in sight, stretches of sandy beach expanding before us. We were almost at the end of the lane, where it dipped on a decline.

‘What remains about the rest - how to reconcile so our inability to comprehend incompetence with the rapacity of those who controlled us?’

‘Easily,’ she said back, ‘civilization was man in control of the talisman if all which bears and blesses life remains she.’

Come upon the end of the lane, at the crest we looked out over the beach. Groves of evergreens stood at the brink of the sand. There every tree was dead or dying.