H. Adler - The Journey

Everything has turned heavy and cannot move by its own strength alone, but nonetheless they are driven onward, the shouts spilling out continuously, yelling at them to hurry as long as the heads are still upright, craning themselves with their last strength, if only to protect the spirit’s shrine, even if the heart has long since rotted and dried up. Heartless pillars of concrete are chased toward higher ground. All that’s needed is a strong reminder, the crutches jumping at the ready with a powerful lurch, making sure only that the heads don’t fall off. A careless lurch would mean something could happen to your head. No one would dare bend down to save you. Who could afford to lift up a head and set it back on top of its crutches in the middle of such haste?

Yet the heads also change, because they have to think about flight and ascent, while their usual wishes and desires are eradicated. Thus they become bird heads with bristled feathers, darting glances, and protruding crooked beaks. Around each head grows a bright feather ruffle that appears vibrant against the backdrop of the bleak concrete. The beaks are sharp and open themselves now and then as if they want to bite, but then they close again without snatching a morsel.

The untouched splendor of the fields and meadows is trampled by the reckless strides that hurry to climb the heights. We are men, these wild monsters think; we are erect ants, we are warriors who have been called to battle. We are surrounded by enemies whom we do not know, and who don’t know us, neither having ever done anything to the other, but that’s war, in which we do nothing to one another. We know nothing about you, you know nothing about us, yet between us seeds of hatred are strewn by which we are both ruined. Orders fall upon us like a hail of stones, and we squawk like crows and peck out one another’s eyes. And yet we have no idea whether it will come to this, as we never meet up with one another, but instead hop on and sharpen our beaks. If you should happen to be armed, we are lost, doubly lost, for no one has entrusted us with weapons or trained us. We’ve only been gathered together out of the rubble, the women having scraped off the mortar from us. We were pieced together from the walls that were demolished, put together like we once were, like we still existed, and now we are put to work once our will has been broken. Now we are nothing more than implements of an endless journey, having long ago said good-bye to our own natures once there were no longer any buildings left.

In the air a rattling and whistling began to rise; perhaps it was little birds, sparrows buzzing above our heads on the tail of the wind. Instead it was the all-powerful voice of command, and everyone fell down without knowing why. Then a new transformation begins. The head bends forward, but there are no more crutches on which it wobbles, but rather an extension, an appendage that is quite flexible as it twitches and twists. For now they are snakes with endlessly long tails. The poisonous fangs have broken out, and there is poison within them and they have to drink it. They soon feel awful and experience pain that had disappeared when they stood erect. And yet the snakes have become immune to harm. They are consumed by burning pain, and yet it does not affect them.

What are soon in danger are the changing voices that tirelessly shout their commands; at least this is what the snakes believe who do not know that the commands prevail even when they encounter enemy fire. The commands can be pierced, but they cannot be brought down, for unknown powers maintain their timelessness. As long as these commands do not yield, freedom is denied, even power’s own freedom, for there is no longer any sense of power, it exists without any sense of itself. But where all feeling dwindles, freedom loses all sensibility and turns away from reality. Freedom is unknown, a dream from a golden age, man having erected powerful memorials to both time and freedom. Yet along with time, freedom has been absorbed by them, the memorials themselves unable to resist the all-powerful onslaught of the passing years, and so everything is absorbed within them, such that not even memory seems believable. Now only blind reverence maintains their abiding artifice, for they are not freed of their duty.

But you all want to continually ask whether or not there is anything left of you that is recognizable, because if there is something, then the flames of your will must still exist, you would not have become snakes, but rather remained birds, and your crutches would turn into feathered wings. Then freedom would exist once again, reality no longer contradicted by unreality. So it would be. So it would be for you. You could still reach for it. You believe you still know it to be there. You are insatiable, your desire fills the cold emptiness until something is there. You have not sworn that you will deny everything. Instead you are always ready to see it; you believe that you can observe it before it is ready to be seen. But this can happen only when you do not notice that even this has been taken from you. And so any question about reality is worthless.

You always want to reply that at least the question is still there, that reality will be conjured again as a result, the question alone not enough in itself once it is asked. Then the end would be defeated, the last threat of danger overcome, and a beginning launched through whose vast gate everything must pass once more in order to gather before lewd looks and hands. That’s how it should be, you say. But something is missing! What should be simply is not; you cannot begin again that easily. Remember that nothing is, and nothingness disavows even itself. There is always a “no” that hollows out every subject, and absence doesn’t answer back. Indeed, only the humiliated think that it does.

Everything is a mockery, the snake’s cunning circles back on itself. If there is nothing, then there is really nothing, but even that is a lie. Belief in that leads to despair and a destructive madness that can crush an army of apparitions, while what is essential flees it and repels every approach. The misery of such deep disturbance is already enough in itself to refute such destruction. For then nothing more will come to harm, all that is fleeting is restored, the world in its inseparable twining of the beautiful and the horrible rises anew and carries on. You slippery snakes, however, have your part, and if it’s miserable, then so it is; that changes nothing about the truth of life, the course of history remains undisturbed. It’s up to you all whether or not you know to call it a blessing or a curse.

Yet you don’t know what to say because you are the reflections of our helplessness, and therefore you are doubly and triply ridiculous in your own helplessness. Yet the snakes do not sense what others think of their weakness. They’ve reached the top of the hill, from where they can look down in order to better observe what is being destroyed. They lift their heads and sway back and forth, for now they are not afraid. Below, towns have been built in which things do not go so well, even though they contain fenced-in buildings separated into apartments, broken up into rooms and chambers, which have been leased by many people who have no idea what is to come. They themselves have the right to move about and to leave their apartments. Without asking permission, each of them leaves home to head out and take care of his business and pleasure. No one lurks, full of jealousy, watching every step, and the living are not treated as suspect. Yet perhaps that’s an illusion, for it could just be that they’re allowed to walk around because the authorities are careless or the guards on duty too lazy or because there are so few guards. It could seem to them that people enjoy a certain amount of freedom and go along their way undisturbed. Why should they care about the law through which the authorities impose their own commandments? They can escape such traps, they are also snakes, though blessed with more luck than the snakes up above.