The Reckoning of Jean-Pierre, Chapter 2

The Cabin

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I knew it deep within me. I could feel it in the marrow of my bones. I was alone in this world but I still had some sense of purpose. A prophecy to fulfill. I had no idea how I even ended up in this forest far away from the urban sprawl that I had just escaped from. I had no idea how my being was to be improved in this natural setting. I just knew that in my old age I wanted to become the Waldganger. The Forest Wanderer. I could feel that many had come before me on this path but that this last journey I was going to take alone this time. My sole journey, my only remaining pleasure left, this narrow path was my own. Like a long spindle of yarn unraveling each day unfolds. You are not here for no reason. This is all but the wool that makes up your life. It is providence. Watch for patterns in the tapestry it is weaving. They will speak to you the form of your own destiny. Lines will cross and intersect and create new symbols for you to follow. You will learn the truth in the end through slowly biding your time and by paying attention to what is truly important.

I am old now, having spent my younger days desperately searching in vain for something, although it remained hidden from me as to what it was. During all of that time this was always a memory I evaded only to search longingly for. This was the ancient dusty place I desired to find in the end. No, it is more than a desire. I asked and prayed to come upon this place. It is my only salvation left. And just in time as well, for I am almost at my wits end. Dressed in mere tatters of clothing, cold, with the shivers and shakes, wandering hopelessly across this barren hidden forested land. Through the thickets of brush and trees of life for far too long. The sleet and snow pelted and pummeled my bare skin. I am now drenched to the bone and cannot go on much further. Yet, I know it, I can remember it, somewhere in this forest was this old treasured wooden shrine of mine. I kept wandering and thinking to myself. Does it even still exist out here? Where is it? Was I lost? Was this all just a dream conjured up from the recesses of my old withered and demented mind?

Nay, everything I knew inside was so true. I could sense that out in the world things were going very wrong again. The misery in those around me was palpable. I had seen the signs before in my youth. Just after the Big Wars and all the ominous reverberations that War continues to bring into this World – although I doubt there will be a War this time to reshape humanity. Things are so much different now. Man has already been conquered by technology and industry. His spirit crushed to hell and back. People are so much more docile and complacent today. Some think we will see an inevitable collapse, I say we are witnessing and living in it.

What was just a simple technological trick at first, for just some simple mind-busying entertainment, quickly turned into a television screen in everyones home. Then in time the screen was turned into the Las Vegas Wild West burning in your hand, in your pocket, always online in everyones personal bedroom of the mind and space. Filling us full of propaganda obscuring our true destiny. Always ready like a drug for a quick fix. To think that we used to have a rebellious spirit? What future War is needed? Every generation thinks the last War was the final one but this time it really might be true. I think this time around it will just be the slow forever drip, drip, drip; death by a thousand and one cuts til mankind is reduced to a lump of vapid bromides and hopeless whimsical dribble. All chattel and sheep the whole lot of them, East to West. Like boiling a frog in cold water, they will not notice what is happening until it is far too late. Or am I just becoming the typical grumpy old man? Stuck and sick of the path of the future. Was it all real? Was the sense of despair I felt in all those I encountered genuine?

I swear I can see that some are bearing the brunt of modernities woes more prevalently on their shoulders – more so than others at least – they peer upon life with a more tensioned shape in their brow. Their faces take on an almost demonic look. They have grown scornful of those around them that carry no such burdens as their own. I did not want this to happen to the image of my face before I died. Man is heaping far too much of a technological burden on each other. It is ruining our soul. It seemed only a matter of time out there in that world. It was surely time for me to retire to the forest again and finish this book of life while I still retained some of the hopefulness and memories from my youth. I wanted my hands to stay clean of it all. They still looked like the hands of a young man.

Just last night I was at the terminal station trying to escape from the wrath of the city when the shoe-shine boy was in his corner muttering helplessly, “What are we all here for?” Back in my libertine youth I would have replied, “Buck up my fellow lad, you are but a child. You are here to shine shoes of course!” — but now one can only look back upon his fellow victims with such lugubrious sullen pity. Who needs him in the future anyways? Manual labor is going away. Service jobs are being replaced by machines. Where will these people find themselves in a decade? Even in just a few years? The world keeps changing so rapidly. Us old dogs have a hard time with all these new tricks. The older folks feel the changes even more acutely than the young. Who needs any of us anymore, bemoan the adolescents. Human commodification has begun. We keep searching in this life for a reminiscence, a nostalgic simpler time that came before, a place and time that we can barely remember anymore. A home? A process of empowerment? We have none. In todays hyper stressed society the past is only enjoyable as the past because at the present we are so focused on the swift electric drive towards the future. Like we are all barreling into a spiral only to be spun and squeezed through that very funnel to our own deaths. All squeezed together like a flock of stock wallowing at the end of a bottomless pit. But where is our place to call our own home? Where can we rest? Mother, Father, where are you? Did you have so many regrets like me too? Are you still trapped in the belly of the beast? Where can man find his home in humanity once again? I know where I seek to find it. Here in this forest I can still take cover and rebel in my own little way. I would rather die walking on my feet than to live on my knees as a technological slave. I kept on walking for a few more hours in silence.

I came to my senses suddenly. I could see in the distance over the next snow covered hill past a lone oak the treasure I sought. Its glimmering windows sparkled and glittered under the snowy moonlit night. What a sight for sore eyes! I smiled so hard I was grinning ear to ear. I smiled my old shriveled face for the first time in a long time. Was this only a dream? Was this a mirage? The darkened logs of weathered mossy pine. The roof made out of peat. The memories came flooding back to me! It is just as I had remembered it as a small child when I used to journey out here alone into this thick forest to admire this ancient hunting retreat. I knew not the current owner, but no matter, it was the end of winter. I knew no one from the village would disturb me here and I could and would surely write as I am sure to do. This was the perfect place to become a late in life magister of scholarship. A true dissident of the mind. This dark ancient cabin was the perfect place to become a prefect to my soul. And I must not be the first. This thought kept creeping forward from the mysterious depths of my brain. There is no chance that I, moi, am the first to use this cabin as my writers shrine. Yes, indeed, I could sense it deeply. Someone else had poured their heart out on paper in this cabin once before! Someone else had made it their magnum opus sacrarium. Someone else laid bare the soul of man in this very place. I say a tribute to this unknown warrior. Thank you old friend. Cheers and toast to a life well lived. Clink!

Now Dear Reader, do not let your thoughts betray you. I did not run away to this cabin. Oh no, no one was looking for me. I had commit no large crimes in society. No more than the small misdemeanors of speaking and acting the life of a specialized kind of dissident. Certainly not for everyone. I simply wanted some peace and quiet to weave my thoughts and to write about my tapestry of a life. To find which patterns connect my soul to my ancestors. For the record, I came here to this hidden refuge to identify the rotten cancers of a society that I could no longer recognize as my own. I had become alien to the world as it was, a foreigner of my own planet and species. This is a place to retrench my own beliefs. Not runaway. Regroup. I feel like I have spent my whole life running away from something. Oh No! I cannot do that again! This time I must face the music. I must listen to what the castanets are telling me. The world is but a fugue of the heart! Can you hear it? Let’s begin to play this hysterical tune together you and I. 1 - 2 – 1, 2, 3 now! Let it begin.

Do you think much my Dear Reader? About humanity? About salvation? About tradition? About all the ancient truths we have scorned, some rightfully, others wantonly, in pursuit of worldly pleasures. Can we even begin to imagine the spiritual bond that man had once felt within his natural surroundings? Has it all been but lost to the bonfires of technology? The questions make me dizzy contemplating them all. Concerned really. In deep anticipation of the crises of the coming decline of the future age. The implications in the answers that we have all evaded. Somber resolutions are needed. When you’ve lived a live full of comforts you fear death. You lack destiny. When you have lived a life of suffering you’re no longer afraid of your fate. We have been taught by our mass entertainment that life is but a fairy tale only to come to the end of a life filled with such regrets, afraid to face the music. Whereas people who have suffered and been tormented by the world are far too cynical to be afraid of the end of it all.

Exhausted from my long voyage I seemed torpid and suddenly taken aback with feelings of sleepiness. I had to steady myself but sensed no rock or foundation to hold onto my tired being. I felt faint and my head swam with the thoughts of my long life. I was still some distance from the cabin and before I could reach it I had failed to react to this feeling of a vertigo of my senses. A sleepy coma consumed me. A certain neurasthenia had taken hold. Thunder mixed with sleet & snow raining down from the mighty Heavens above kept me frozen in a steady terror. Soon I crumbled and fell into a snowy drift, conjuring into a deep hibernation, my face turned upwards towards the sky. I could barely breathe and felt like I was drowning in this tyrant of a nature of mine. I was struck at least once by a wondrous light from the fingers of God. I began to dream about my life while rumbling reverberated in my ears and shook at the fibers of my soul. Are you ready? Shall we begin this dream? It’s now or never.