The soul is the final frontier.
That's what Haruki Murakami says in his final chapter of “Novelist as a Vocation”. A book I’d recommend if you got some time to kill on a beach in Cyprus. Cyprus was where I crunched through this piece of writing, perhaps it's the warm nights or the white noise of a soft ocean, but there was something about Cyprus that allowed me to chew through this novel. I would finish dinner, an oversized feed paid for about ~8 euros- always cash, wander back through the ancient laneways of stone and meandering gangs of cats till eventually I would reach the waterfront. It would be night but luckily there was always a free bench next to yellowed hued street light, there I would perch myself to do two simple things, read my book or reflect. This little alcove became my monastery of dedication and meditation, not much of a view lay before me, simply a black void, but in that black void was an opportunity, an opportunity to look so deep into the abyss that eventually I came to see myself.
Maybe that’s why when I read this statement in his closing remarks it stirred in my head so god darn much. For indeed the soul truly is our final frontier. Exploring the frontiers of the mind is a lot like mapping the dunes of the Sahara. It’s a probing task that will only produce ephemeral results. While these results presented are never long lasting, the task in itself is never a fruitless errand. For by mapping the valley and shoals of sands in the Sahara we can see its changes, its movements, we see what time has brought to this land.
With expeditions into my psyche I see what is the landscape I have fashioned within my mind. If reflecting acts as my scout party then journaling constitutes my field notes. Field notes that require me to return to the same location as a later date to see how I’ve changed. I say require because certain landscapes require repeated expeditions to see where the bedrock is. There's solid rock that sits below the sands of the Sahara and there’s mountains that live under the glacial walls of Antarctica. Some of these will wither back to sand one day while others will stay firm and set. We can separate the transient, from the semi-stable, to the permanent layers because we have studied these areas for decades if not centuries. And while I can’t analyse my brain for centuries I can occupy what decades I have left to that final frontier. An expanse where I can feel my soul shift through the act of my observation. A landscape where the erosion of self growth can wear down even the toughest of stones. A place I will forever call home even in different surroundings.
Edited diary entry written in Larnaca Cyprus, 12 January 2024
NASA, 2022, A portion of the Sahara Desert in Algeria, Nasa online archives, Accessed on 15/02/2024, <https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/portion-of-sahara-desert-algeria-2/>
No comments:
Post a Comment