AN EXTRACT FROM MY RECENT SUBMISSION TO ERASMUS.

A solitary man ascends the mountain, the final stretch before the summit. Just as Abraham said to his servants before Moriah, “stay here, while I ascend the mountain with my son, we will worship and come back to you”, so did this man depart from his men at dawn, saying, “stay, while I ascend the peak with my soul, my conscience, and worship.”

Long has this man wandered the world, found himself blending into the homogenous mess which was contemporary man. On one peculiar winter day, he decided to visit the sea. As the cold wind billowed through his hair, he felt his essence draining from him, his life force dissipating into the sea. The waves lapping across the sandy beaches, stealing his faith, his hope, his love.

How could this be? He has achieved all which men would envy—wealth, health, status—yet, in the praise of man, he saw naught but vanity. The slow, indomitable movement of time which returns all to ashes. The beyond stood out to him. ‘The universe is reciprocal,’ he thought, ‘it can only take as much as it can give. If the infinity of the sea can drain one’s soul, so too must infinity offer it back.’ Yet into the sea he could not go, for bear in mind, my dear reader, his civilization had not the maritime technology of the present. Therefore, towards the skies and the vast infinity of space, he decided to ascend.

His pursuit was religious, for any pursuit of the infinite is religious in essence. He remembered his father’s stories of a distant land named Cathay, where Mandarins worshipped the sky “天” as God. He recalled the tales of old, where the council of gods lay above the fog on Olympus. Lost in the traditions of old, he gathered his servants and said, “I hear the mountains calling for me, my soul longs for its renewal.” Thus, up the mountain he went, in search of a God which he knew was above the sea of fog.

As the man began to ascend the mountain range, he stumbled across numerous icons and ruins of past ages. There would be buildings made of faded rock, tall steeples with rusted bells. Empty windows with stained glass shattered across the floor. In a window which was still intact, he could vaguely make out a man whose heart was exposed. The man smiled meekly towards him, beckoning him closer. Yet as he tried to clear the cobwebs off the glass to take a closer look, his touch shattered the window into fine dust. The closest thing he found which would have given him any knowledge of the lost culture was a book titled Novum Instrumentum. It was a peculiar work, for the pages were separated into two columns, both in scripts which were alien but looked familiar. A translation, he assumed, of what? He didn’t know.

He skimmed through the pages, hoping to understand something, yet most of the ink had long faded into illegibility. One line he make out but couldn’t understand was this “Qui em uoluerit anima fua feruare, perdet eam. Qui autem perdiderit animam fu am mea caufa, inueniet eam.” What could this mean? From his recent studies into the language of his friends from Aragon, he assumed that it was about the loss and gaining of one’s soul. But in what context? To what end? That he pondered for many more days.

We return to the present. After many nights upon the mountains, our friend found himself at the base of the peak, the final stretch of his journey lay in front. The closer he got, the man felt more exhilarated, his spirit lifted, despite his legs being weary from his hike. His hopes were raised, the strength that he lost to the sea was slowly returning to his sinews.

On the day break of the next day, he gathered his courage and spoke to his servants for one last time, “stay, while I ascend the peak with my soul, my conscience, and worship.” With that he turned his back on them, tucked his overcoat tighter. In such a high altitude, it was frigid, yet his heart was warm; it was difficult to breathe, yet his soul sang. He felt the calling from the skies, the calling from God that he seeked for so many months, beckoning him on as he ran up the final stretches towards the peak.

And then he made it. He had stumbled, for the first time, above the clouds. He attempted to gain his footing, to turn and face the God that he knew was there. Yet when he finally found the strength in his soul to stand proudly, solitarily on the peak, he gazed out over the fog and the abyss, and found himself dreadfully alone. It was at that moment he realised the calling of the infinite was nothing but his own, and in the place of what he knew was so definitely God, he found something all too familiar—his own soul.

SUCH IS THE LIFE OF A WANDERER