tannoyblanc

Under the crescent moon of a nameless spring evening, I took a seat by the far side of a park meadow. Before me flowed a stream of quiet evening happenings. Commuters, families, students, and couples alike strolled along circling paths, surrounded by tall trees and red brick buildings. The sweet aroma of pollen drifted about, carried by a faint breeze. The sound of water from a courtyard fountain rang in the distance, filling out the background. In my ear played Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “20211130,” a breathy piano piece whose melody hung in the night. A few tables on my periphery were sparsely populated by some elderly, their movements and whispers barely detectable. 

The night was calm, but in an almost mournful type of way. The peace was effused with a subtle secrecy, as if there was a veil that could be lifted at any moment to reveal another world. Figures ambled by, their faces obscured. I watched them go. Round and round they went, along the park’s circling paths, ad infinitum. This gave me the impression not of ease, but of dread. In fact, it seemed quite as if I was sitting in a park at the edge of the world. Were these shadowy figures really normal people enjoying an evening out? Or were they lost souls seeking a way home? As I observed the scenery before me, it somehow began to feel more and more like there was nothing there at all. 

I found myself suspended between a feeling and a thought. I wasn’t sure what it was that I was looking for, and if I had a question to ask, I couldn’t find the words for it. All I know was that something was unbalanced. It felt to me like the various devices of this park were conspiring together to form an incomplete image, a composition of movement and color that lacked just enough vitality to make it real. Like living in a dollhouse. Somewhere in the world, a mechanical wind-up bird let out a hollow cry, which echoed against blank walls. A meaningless, nonexistent sound. I got the sense that if I spoke my name aloud to the world, it would be met with the same stillness.

I can tell you all about the state of stillness. It is a wonderful, terrifying place. Stillness is in essence the active rebellion against the natural way of things, a midair suspension of nature’s enterprise. Life wants to move, to reach, to want. But stillness resists all inclinations. It is the perpetual check to end a game of chess. It is the space in between lines of poetry. It is the silence whereupon you cannot speak. There are two entrances into such a world: serenity and vacancy. Serenity is achieved by conquest of the mind, complete mastery over your inner lake of jewels. Vacancy, in contrast, is the conceding of battle, the acceptance of nature, and surrendering of self to forces more powerful. 

I found myself in such a place of vacancy that evening. Wrapped in a cocoon of stillness, I experienced the tight coils of my self-image loosening, my essential conceptions becoming more vague. Through the haze, I saw previous versions of myself, each carrying different things, holding different beliefs, heading in different directions. I became unsure of why I was there, what I was doing, and who I really was. I felt afraid of letting go of something fundamental to my understanding. What happens when your highest values destabilize, your aim relaxes its grip, and your question “why” finds no answer? I looked out at the world for a sign but saw only my own memories reflected back at me. 

I was transported back to a particular time during undergrad when the pandemic had just lifted, a time that I spent grappling heavily with the ideal of purpose. I remember the restored buzz of Durant Ave, the picnic blankets scattered out across the Glade, the brimming halls of Main Stacks late at night. It was pure aspiration, swirling, seeking, spreading all throughout. Such sparkle might have seemed a marvel, with all of its undirected vigor filled with hope and potential for realization, but I distinctly remember looking out at the commotion with a certain obtuseness. To me, it felt like all that movement was for naught, movement without an ultimate, higher end. 

I had spent many springs since, wrestling with nature’s mechanisms. I’ve thought a lot about movement, how the desire of spring erupts into the passion of summer, peaking into the release of autumn and sinking into the introspection of winter. Round and round it goes, like a carousel. And as the seasons take their turns eternally, we engage in our own cycles as well, chasing after a promise of happiness. “But to what end?” I found myself continually asking, unable to find an answer. I’ve turned it over in my head countless times. My ideals clashed feebly against the laws of nature. Why are we spending our days each carefully crafting a house of cards just to watch it all fall apart in the end?  

Eventually, my idealism waned to give way to a more rational approach. The German philosopher Wittgenstein argued that meaning cannot be held within an object or world. It can only be applied from the external by an outside power. He writes, “The sense of the world must live outside the world. In the world, everything happens as it happens, there is no value in its happening and doing-so.” This can be observed in language, as a word does not hold meaning in and of itself but is assigned meaning by an outside source. A word is a sound that we have collectively agreed to use in reference to something. There is no objective meaning to that sound. The “sense” of a word lies within us. 

In a general sense, there can be no absolute truth to any interpretation of the world coming from a constituent of it. If one accepts the argument laid forth, then the boundaries will melt. Any meaning given to the world by a person living within it cannot be objectively true. From our limited viewpoint, there might as well be an infinite amount of annotations to explain it all, each of which equally valid. And any evidence presented in favor of a view is evidence found within the world and not outside of it, which only further traps the argument inside of its own shell. While this thought gave me reassurance, it led me to a larger conflict: if nothing is really true, then what is important?

It wasn’t until I went on a silent retreat this past year that I found some solace. In the south of Spain, amongst rolling hills and fields of wheat, we sat in stillness for seven days, practicing inner methods. I had initially struggled to find my center. Every day, from early dawn to nightfall, I sifted through my mind for something pure and true, but all I got was silence. I felt frustrated and helpless. Perhaps there really was no answer, no grand reason to ground myself and give me aim. If there was, then it was not available to my clouded thoughts and empty mind. We repeated mantras to ourselves, counting beads on a mala to call upon the divine. I felt like I was walking in circles. 

On the fifth day, I saw the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen in my life. We stood atop a hill, sitting on haystacks, tires, and logwood, and we watched the sun, blood red and royal, descend slowly down from its throne, painting the transluscent sky and the rural lands below orange with its soft glow. And when I looked around, I saw us leaning against each other, or motioning to each other in wonder, or gazing contemplatively into the light, and it seemed to me as if we were scattered across the skyline as well, forming constellations as we melted into the completeness of the ether. It was the stillness of serenity, a stillness that could only be reached through faith and openness.

We can’t fully grasp mystery or beauty, but we experience them nonetheless. We know they remain because we perceive them without understanding, we recognize them without placing. Like an abstract painting, the beauty exists on the outskirts of our rational consciousness as an entrance into an elevated, worthy place. And the mystery excites us to continue striving towards wisdom and understanding. It’s a feeling no words can fully describe, a place only accessible through a sublime moment in time. But as long as these two things exist, there is reason to keep on moving, to continue following the path and pursuing our goals in the context of the mundane everyday.

There are two exits out of the realm of stillness: purpose and faith. Against the lofty backdrop of southern Spain, the idea of purpose carried much less weight to me than before. Any purely rational processing of the world would yield nothing but suffering and ideological self-abuse for the intellectual, for there is a refutation for every argument, a question for every answer, a yin for every yang. And in the world of the absolute and concrete, I’ve only ever known one thing to be true: that everything changes, everything fades. But if one chooses faith despite the lack of rational evidence, one will have embraced the beauty and the mystery of our world to reach the divinity within the stillness. 

I stood up from the bench, unsteady. Something closed in the depths of my consciousness. And as I made my way back home from the park, I could faintly hear the call of a crow from somewhere far beyond, sending a shiver down my spine. I kept walking.