Walking down a familiar street, the haze of sweltering heat reflects the distant landscape on the scorched asphalt of summer.
The doors lining the street are closed, curtains are drawn. Not a soul is to be seen. Traffic lights blink red, yellow, and blue in the lonely street. and occasional passing cars speed away as fast as possible, as if ashamed of their stifling exhaust fumes. Even normally noisy cicadas hold their breath.
Burned by the flaming sun, gasping for air, I turn into a shady alley that leads suddenly to a field where houses peter out and a grassy pass continues. Insects seem to hide silently in the shade of the grass.
Pale mountains are visible in the distance. The path is far. This is an ancient path where countless people walked on, in cherry blossom-strewn nights, in hazy moonlight, under the hot summer sun, on leaf litter in the crisp autumn air, or through freezing snowstorms.
How far does the road go? There are infinite number of crossroads. One can go anywhere one wants. The road goes, no matter how far one walks. But it eventually would reach the dead end, since the sea would block one’s headway.
In ancient times, however, the sea couldn’t detain the advance of groups of people. Boarding a small wooden boat, they sailed for months of stormy weather to reach an unknown land, not knowing what would surprise them.
What drove them to do it? Couldn’t they foresee danger, since they were too primitive? In their rough society, was fear a shame? Were they proud to challenge a deadly risk?
Rather than rot in the land of despair, they went out to sea, imperiling themselves for their future progeny. We owe them our luck and prosperity.
Far from being welcomed, each time when they reached a new land, even harsher natural disasters and merciless starvation awaited them. Long winters lasting decades came, and they had to endure a lifetime of arctic cold and smothering heat. Many died and few remained. Nevertheless, they continued their journey in search of a better place.
Eventually they thought they had found their final place. And they settled down. People gathered and settlements grew. They helped each other, but soon, a natural order began to emerge.
Long immeasurably tireless quest for better future began to bring strife and domination within the order in return for stable food.
In years gone by they could go far away from misery to a driftless but another life. As dominance spread across the surface of the earth, valor gradually lost its true meaning and decampment became mockery.
Once a path made endlessly forward on land or sea. But it terminated in a dead end. The way doesn’t carry us to hope and freedom, but to calamity and despair. One ceased to plunge into the unknown and closets itself in own cave.
Covering own eyes and ears we prefer silence to fermenting longing for a far destination. Encapsulation in secured society, not in wilderness where beasts roam. A warm bed instead of a roaring sea that freezes to death.
No dreams of crashed trees and a gorgeous coast washed away by raging waves as big as a forest. Countless days drifting on the broiling summer sea, emaciated and dying, waiting for the rains. The horror of the nights on the sea in the terrifying darkness hanging over them at every turn. The wonder oft billions and billions of stars in the sky after a storm. The sunset reddened like the end of the world. The moonlight silvering the entire surface of the sea like the ruler of a dead world.
The stifling bargain for life with a strange tribe in a strange land. The killing between clans and the beginning of love between young people from different tribes. The joy of harvesting crops and endless number of perishing dwellings by drought and pestilence. Multitude of victims slaughtered and humiliated by villains and warriors who suddenly appeared from nowhere.
A monotonous and harsh life that never changes, no matter how hard one tries, from the time of cradle to the time of death. Small, unreliable happiness occurs slim and none in one’s life. Tragedy strikes suddenly more often.
Almost all memories of yearning for seeking a better world to the ocean accompanied by hardship stranded and sank to the deep sea. Many, many centuries we trod the long, long way and finally found happiness. Then we lost our way and stopped walking. The road reached an endpoint that leads nowhere more.
Roads that no one walks on anymore. The dead grass and trees are exposed in the dust. The far mountains are covered with outpouring red lava sea. Flora and fauna are dying out. Nobody cares anything.
But the path is still there.