31 days to go and feeling...conflicted
So at the moment it seems that I have no idea how I feel about anything. Even the simple things, like "do I like pizza paninis or are they an unnecessary expense?" But largely, it's how I feel about the way my affections are placed. It's hard to expand without naming names but I'm sure you know how I feel because everybody has experienced this at least once. It's one of those moments that your heart releases a full scale war with your head, and while they are battling away you simply can't move on with your life. Because in my heart I can't move away, can't shake the feeling off, but in my head I know that I should, before I hurt myself and the people that genuinely care.
And therefore, today I am going to write about the most unstable part of Morbi, the furthest North that we can go, besides what could be more logical than starting from the top, and let's face it, in times like this we all need a bit of logic.
The Northern Peak: Where Ice Meets Fire
It's a trek to get to this part of the world. It takes strength and skill, and advanced provisions. But people manage it because somehow, among the fury and the chill of the North Peak, they find solace. Because no matter how intense, how mixed up their own feelings are, it cannot compare to the titanic clashes of these elements.
The ice planes stretch before you, rearing up out of nowhere and rolling down to the horizon. The North side of Morbi is mercifully the furthest away from the light and so the dazzling brilliance of the frozen liquid is bearable, just, although wise travelers will wear sun visors at all times. Great mountains of ice twist and thrust into the air, melting and freezing forever into one another until great crowns of white dominate the landscape. There is no life here. Everything is still. So very still. The silence is penetrated only by the occasional distance thuds of snow slipping from the crystal steeples, and the odd, sharp crack, like gun shot, when the weight of the world becomes too much for a more delicate area of glacier. The sky is blue, but not a blue that you or I could comprehend. It's a blue that is so very perfect that without seeing it, one cannot possibly imagine it.
There is no blemish of cloud, not even a sun, and night time comes but doesn't bring darkness. It is intense, the most intense sight you will ever see, and it is relentless. After a week of walking under that sky it will start to penetrate your mind, so that when you close your eyes to sleep you are faced, not with nothing, but with the image of that sky once more. After a month it will drive you mad.
You could wander for days on these ice planes and not see a soul. People do live here, under the ice, in tunnels like rabbit warrens carved over many thousands of years and held up by some natural phenomena that no one can truly explain, but they are shy, and lost in their own thoughts, and though they will offer a cup of something warm, and guide those that are lost both physically or mentally, they keep themselves to themselves where ever they can. This solitude does not bother those that come to the Peak. Here, you are seeking a cure that matters only to you. It's a journey that can only be taken alone.
If you walk for ten days and ten nights you will find that suddenly, this icy place with its shard like cold and unavoidable sky, shifts slightly. Things get darker, warmer, less pure, and a glow will start to appear on the horizon. You have reached the point of conflict. Here is where the fire meets the ice in a battle of flame and steam.
It will come upon you all at once, this lake of lava, spitting towers of fire miles into the air with great explosions that shake the ice land that you cling to. You'll look up from the snowy ground and before you will lay miles and miles of bubbling crimson, hotter than any liquid known to our own planet.
Somehow the heat never melts the white, but simply bites at it, licking away with tongues of flame. It screeches and whistles and throws forward hot arms of magnum which sizzle as they grab at the glacier. They leave no mark but release plumes of thick steam, engulfing the bemused traveler and leaving them drenched in warm condensation. They sky is turned black with smoke from the barrage of fire crackers shot upwards and the acrid smell of pure incalescence fills nostrils and lungs like tar.
It is here at the center of the war that you will find the answer to the question that has been tearing your soul apart. But it is dangerous. You have to look right into the lava, getting as close to the churning cauldron as possible without touching it. There, when the heat becomes unbearable and your consciousnesses begins to slip away, will peace find you. Because in a haze of steam, you will find guidance.
A wise old man once had to make a decision. He had to decide whether to leave his family, who he loved with all his being, and follow his dream of travelling the world. Or to stay with his family and give up on the fantasy that had sustained him his whole life. Looking into the flames he found the answer. Find a new dream, it told him, one that makes you feel alive and fulfilled, but includes your family, because only with them can you be truly happy. I looked into the flames, but I lent too far, and got burnt.
If you have a question that you alone cannot answer, then make the journey to the North Peak. Cross the wastelands of ice and find the battleground of the elements. Look into the steam and smoke and heat and open your mind and let the truth come. And then return to whence you came, free of the torment, but with the burden of acting on the answer. Because the answer may not always be the one you wish to hear.
