NOEMAYA

The field is raw and empty. Several campfires spread across the land and a few of them are still breathing their last breaths but no one is around to receive their fading warmth. Everything is soaked in the dusk and the face of the field has started trembling with muffled echoes of the dark. 

In all silence, one can hear the rhythmic sound of stumped grass, the footsteps of a dark figure roaming the field and staining the last fall of light in the deep blue horizon. It’s the clown. He’s the last member of the circus that had taken up the field for a day-long show and amusement and trickery. When the circus left, the clown, the last trickster of the noisy crowd, had decided to stay with the field. He’s roaming and spinning around and kicking the trash left behind by his likes who had just left the field. He’s in full costume with a painted face, and in all dimness one can’t make out what he’s up to; but, his way of kicking and dancing in the horizon carried the weight of a carefree wisdom, like that of a child. 

The clown expands as it approaches the origin, and by this time all light has left the field and the dark settled in. The clown, now a fully dark figure with a big nose and oversized shoes, sits by the last living campfire whose light is buried under ashes but still letting out some smoke. 

“What’s worse than dying a gruesome death?” utters the clown as he lets himself gently fall to his back against the field. 

“Hmm, I know! And I know very well, like it’s my own invention; what’s worse is living a gruesome nightmare when one has lost the capacity to wake up. But wait, what’s even worse in that nightmare is having that capacity but forgetting how to wake up. That’s torture; that’s real hell, for it’s the end of man when he knows but knows not what.”

“I’m at once irresistibly drawn to and terrorized by the same thing. Can you tell me what it is! Maybe you’re the same, and if we are I want to know. I need to know your beloved and your worst fear. So, tell me, are you, too, in love with and at once terrorized by the ocean?” 

“The ocean! My most beloved fantasy, the love of merging into that which holds all horizons and that to which I lose all boundaries and let the world become my skin. That same ocean overpowers me at night when all grasp has ceased and the love of merging has overcome with the terror of submerging into its monstrous waves. Yes, the monstrous waves that reach the sky and crush the mightiest vessels, they’re my worst nightmares. I have these nightmares often, and more so recently.”

The clown turns away from the origin and gazes into the abyss. The abyss, the other side of this origin, the graveyard of all receding lights and appearances, the abyss that’s pulling in the clown’s gaze into itself and devouring all that stinks of the circus. 

“The great flood, water is everywhere and high rising waves are sweeping me into the dark deep. I’ve been having this recurring nightmare. High waters are everywhere and I’m about to submerge, and it’s even more frightening when it’s dark. But the dark sea is always mighty and frightening, even when I’m not dreaming or submerging in it. When I go to the ocean, I enjoy the day swimming in it and laying by its side; there’s so much bliss in the bright side of the waters. But I’m afraid of the same waters at night. And you know what I do? I return to that same ocean at night, and preferably alone; my heart starts beating faster as I approach it but I keep getting closer and closer; in the darkest nights, I can’t even see enough to know how far from the edge of the waters I’m standing, and yet I, like you, succumb to the human nature and step closer toward that which terrorizes me the most. And do you know what I’m talking about? Do you know that irresistible human temptation to step over the ledge of a high building and look down a second time when the first glance was enough of a shock to alarm one of the fear and the catastrophe lurking around all high ledges? That human inclination and helplessness over the desire to keep looking at and approaching that which can devour our whole being? Do you know that feeling? That’s the pull of the abyss, the pull of the ocean at night, the force that’s animating me and commanding my feet to march toward the other side of bliss, to walk into chaos and hell.”

“I’ve thought about this for quite a while, of this human predicament. You know what every circus needs, without which no one is amused enough to sit through the rest of all the boring entertainment? The whole circus is built around rope-walking, the most entertaining of all things; and that’s the act that catches all attention and pays the most. The child and the adult are equally captivated by the adventure, fear, and suspense of a rope-walking act; it’s as if it speaks their own truths to them, to their deepest abyss. And you know what? The circus with all its lions and elephants and fire rings, is nothing but later additions to rope-walking, a strategic addition to allow the rope-walkers rest in between acts.”

“Just look at the faces of the audience when they watch a rope-walker; their gestures and emotional states are so in tune with that of the rope-walker that one might think they’re with him on the rope. But you know what I think? I think they are and have been. Remember the darkness that crawls in human nature, looking down the high ledge that throws order into chaos! To have a precious life and yet dangling it over an abyss filled with vicious monsters that jump any high to devour that life! That human paradox of bearing a desire for safety and security and yet bearing within that same desire a deeper desire to give it all away for a brief moment of thrill and uncertainty, to find pleasure in hunger and sweetness in pain, to gnash your aching teeth and press into the pain! To have all you ever wanted and yet thinking of what you don’t have! To be in existence while having an affair with non-existence! Well, my friend, all that is nothing but rope-walking. That’s what it means to be human, a mere rope-walker who can’t help but compulsively look down into the abyss over which he’s crossing, except he’s one who is bound to fall and knows it very well, and yet still he looks down! Isn’t that insane? Yes it is, but that’s what it takes to be human; that’s its essence.”

“And I told you about my nightmares. They’re the worst nightmares but I still wake up from them. And when I do, I’m quite relieved and feel safe again because I’ve woken up to the old familiar room and life and business as usual. And yet something of that nightmare is still with me, a muffled gnawing at my soul that is not supposed to be there. It’s as if I’m still about to submerge and be devoured.”

“I’ve carried this feeling for a while; it’s as primordial as that sickness and paradox of the soul. But you can’t tell what it is until you become as vacant as the abyss itself, like this field that’s left to itself after the circus is gone. And I, the clown, am nothing but that last light, the dusk of the field, the last standing man to kiss the field goodnight.”

“And until I became vacant I couldn’t understand the terror that spilled into my life after waking up from my nightmares. But let me stop here and tell you about the life of me, of the human capacity not just to adapt but to get used to suffering and even finding pleasure in it, so that one is even so attached to the misery that it makes freedom look ugly and threatening. That’s the power of the familiar, the captivity to the familiar, the familiar pain, familiar room, and familiar anything.”

“That to which I woke up from the nightmare, the familiar anything and everything, the half-ass recognitions I called my life and reality, the funny costume and nose and oversized shoes called reality in which I found myself when I woke up, all that was the true nightmare, except it was familiar and accepted, an amusing play like a circus that I’d adopted as my environment. And that vague feeling of terror that lasted even after I woke up, that deep, muffled voice and angst, that was real terror springing from a deep recognition of some buried self, the origin, that this circus is nothing but a nightmare, one which I couldn’t recognize for what it is. My dreams of monstrous waves and dark, high waters were reflections of my reality stripped of their familiar and entertaining costumes. The ocean was the circus, and I’d forgotten how to wake up from the familiar nightmare. The circus had to go so the field, the stage and the truth, could come into view.”

“And that’s why I’m here. I’m a rope-walker and a clown, I can’t but labor in a circus; after all, that’s what a clown does. But when the dusk comes and the circus leaves, I like to stay with the field, for the field is for me the ocean-bed and I’ve become very comfortable with it. I’m not afraid of those nightmares anymore, for I’ve already submerged and found the other side of pain. The abyss pulls in only those who pull back.”

The clown made a sigh and turned toward me and glanced over my face and oversized shoes. He got up and started roaming around and dancing and kicking in the dark horizon. His figure no more stood out of the horizon, for everywhere was dark and silence ruled over the field. There was no distinction between the stage and the dancer. The field was the clown and the clown the field.