The Path

An open road stretched off in the distance. The end found itself at the beginning. A circle. The circle. Iterin walked along the path, passing landmarks and sketching them into his black-book. These days Iterin felt unsure of where he existed in the world. He always assumed there was more, that a discovery lay just over the next hill or just under the next rock, something that would slide the last puzzle piece into place and complete who he was. As Iterin walked and aged he became scared of that never happening, and terrified that feeling was one of greed and distraction all-together. Iterin finished sketching a collection of massive rocks in the distance. They stood hundreds of steps tall, piercing straight up into the sky. Other massive rocks torn and shaped by the wind hung off them at inconceivable angles suggesting rock-roots that reached deep into the earth. Iterin watched them as if they’d move; hoping they’d move, so he’d have a reason to chase them. But that would mean leaving the path, nobody left the path. Iterin’s mother told him horror stories of people who did, stories of hollow souls walking into long grass and never returning, stories of wayward children thinking it a way to escape their adolescence and break free from the direction the path blessed upon them. None of them returned. Those that stay on the path are sure that their end was nothing less than horrific and painful. Their lives depended on it. Their happiness depended on it.

“Ho there, stranger!” Iterin turned and smiled, another wanderer.

“The path is right and good, my friend.” The stranger nodded in his direction.

“Praise direction, brother. Shall we?” As was customary whenever passing another wanderer the two began unpacking to accompany one another in feast.

The stew cooked over the fire as Iterin watched the stranger across it. This man was considerably older than Iterin. He had the obvious signs of ware about his face, but where you could tell age were his eyes, old and knowing, like his gaze disappeared into you, his stare didn’t stop at your pupils.

“You walk alone.” The stranger said from across the fire. “That’s strange for someone your age.”

“Do most you see my age walk with others?”

“With other, yes.” The stranger replied as he stirred the contents of the pot.

“Most your age run the path, never bothering to plan or remember. The past stays the past and the future is merely the next moment. They partner, then partner again. It’s the way of adolescence. As we age we slow, begin to take our time. The path is only so long.” Iterin looked self-consciously at his black-book, should he be doing more running? Should he find someone to share his direction with?

“Your black-book there, what’s inside it?” The stranger asked, still stirring the pot.

“Nothing, notes.” Iterin replied, grabbing for it defensively.

The stranger sat back from the pot, enjoying the heat of the fire.

“I’ve seen those only a handful of times. Never on someone so young. Many go through their entire journey unable to imagine such a thing but here you are, with one at such a young age”

Iterin looked down at his black-book, running his fingers over engravings thoughtfully.

“I want to know where I’m going.” Iterin said without looking up.

“Well that way.” The stranger gestured towards the path ahead. “You don’t need a notebook to remember that.”

Iterin looked at his direction, his future in the path. Why that way? He thought. The answer already rang through his head, hammered in by his mother's voice. "Because that’s the only way", she would say. How did she know?

“I thought it would be easier to tell where I was going if I better remembered where I’ve been.” Iterin chose his words carefully, thoughts like these were better caged in his mind than spoken of for others to interpret freely.

“So where have you been?” The stranger said.

“That way.” Iterin gestured to the other side of the path that sat illuminated by the moon hanging in the night sky. The stranger didn’t catch Iterin's slightly annoyed tone, everyone came from that way. The stranger didn't answer Iterin. Instead he stared at the fire.

“I have walked a long way. Passed many landmarks. I had a book like yours once. I would look at things around the path, beautiful things, things I wanted to chase. I would dream of running free, leaving direction, joining journey. Finally deciding, for me. I would draw, I would write, I would hope. But again and again I would wake up to the ridiculousness of those fantasies. The things out there are built to tempt the weak of mind and dull. They’re meant to look grand and irresistible so those that seek them succumb to failure. The peaks are only so wide. The higher they are, the less space there is to stand. It’s physics, a universal law.” Iterin absorbed the words, words he’d heard many times before. The path is the way. The only way.

“So then where is your black-book?” Iterin asked.

The stranger shook his head “Gone. Long forgotten. It’s better that way, I think.”

At that the stranger turned his back to the fire and wrapped himself in his blanket, allowing sleep to finally take him.

Iterin stayed awake awhile longer. He felt his heart beat against his little black book that separated him from the path better than flesh or bone ever could. The conversation with the stranger disturbed him. Not the warning of a wasted life or the spite which he associated with his black-book, but the way he spoke of it. Yes, honesty dripped from his words and emotion touched the corners of his eyes but they weren't emotions of sincerity, they were emotions of loss. For in the reflection of Iterin's eyes the stranger saw himself and what the path failed to give him. In his words Iterin heard advice disguised as warning from a man who only sought to sooth his own regret by legitimizing his choices through the instruction of others. Like a lemming charging for a cliff he followed someone who knew no better of what lay ahead than he did, and before he could turn back he found himself falling towards his grave with everyone else who made a similar choice. In that moment, it seemed the right choice because of popularity, doubly so with the rush of life flying past him as he descended towards the rocky bottom. Iterin saw in a man that the descent from a cliff can be mistaken for flying until you realize you can’t stop its impact.

Iterin awoke, again alone. The stranger had packed up and moved on, leaving the scraps of food left from last night's dinner. Iterin ate those and washed the morning from his eyes. He shouldered his pack and made sure the fires coals were religiously extinguished. As he moved to continue along the path he noticed something on the ground. Another little black book, left in place of the stranger. Iterin bent and picked it up, eyes shining with wonder, he had never seen another one just like his. Iterin flipped through the pages and found wondrous things. Drawings of trees the size of mountains and flowers of every single colour, meadows of pure green and white that stretched for what seemed like forever. As Iterin flipped through, the drawings got less and less vibrant, the lines got more hastened and sketch-like, colours beginning to drain. Where the hands of child-like wonder once drew the seriousness of adulthood began to take over. Perspective became dull and the subject of each image began to sink back into each drawing, appearing further and further away. Iterin finally flipped to the last page where the collection of massive rocks was drawn. They appeared small and simple, seeming to lack anything noteworthy or special. Iterin opened his black-book to compare, where Iterin drew big sloping lines and massive rock fused to the side of the monolith the stranger drew short and quick circles that only suggested its true size. Iterin's drawing filled the entire page while the strangers barely filled the middle. Iterins hands dropped to his sides and he turned to look at the rocks off in the distance. Still big, even from here. “How could the size be so different if they both drew from the same place?” Iterin thought, how could the stranger not see what stood ahead of him?

It clicked with Iterin then, that last puzzle piece found its way into his heart and filled the corners of his uncertainty. Ahead of him lay not a path, but a cliff. A drop into everything he sought to avoid. The stranger drew just as he did. Saw, just as he did. But where he failed was not away from the path but along it. His perspective was worn down and shrunk by inconsequential possibilities. What waits off the path is largely irrelevant to the decision of leaving it. To others our black-books may contain what we see, but to us they are how we see, and rest assured, Iterin hasd never drawn anything that lay along the path. His attention always wandered to that which lay beyond.

Iterin dropped his bag then, placing the strangers black-book where he found it. He walked towards the edge of the path, towards a vicious and painful death promised by those who only wanted the best for him. Iterin now knew the only painful death existed ahead of him on that path, in the heart of an old man and in the pages of a lost book. For no matter how painful the end that awaited him in the unknown, he would die knowing he chose it.

Iterin clutched his little black book to his chest and stood at the edge of the path.

He then stepped onto green grass and into the rest of his life.

For however long that may be.