Saturday 5 December 2015

Those, who having crossed into the terrain which withdraws from the approach of conventional traffic, and who having survived to traverse its capricious pathways, are the ones that may go on to encounter, at some point in their journey, an interior space known as the Room. This is a trap disguised as a destination. The room utilises the travellers' presence as a trigger for the mechanism of an encounter with what they most desire. It supplies the asked-for object and loops the traveller back to the constraints of their being - they find themselves expelled from the forbidden zone.

And yet, if the Room's trap is successfully negotiated another, but exterior, space may also be found. This locus amoenus, 'the quietist place in the world', is an open garden, a point of permission at the heart of the forbidden zone, that travellers must resolutely refuse to enter. What is the place, beyond the wall, that you would not wish to defile with your presence, and that you would forbid yourself to even know about? What is this defenceless and innocent place, friend, weary traveller that you would most desire to belong, that allows your approach, but that you would also thereby corrupt by your belonging?

That you are drawn there, I do not refute.  And I know that against your will, you are destined to appear at its gate. It is the one place necessary to your being. But you are torn. You may enter it, you may exert your will and go there. You may make your home and find your peace. But you are also aware that you must deny yourself entry for the very reason that you may freely go there, for the reason that it is at your mercy. For its sake, you must forbear, and not go on. At the gate, you must give up on and suspend your arrival.

What is it like, this place before which your blasted, clifftop being, your cramped, deformed habit, your contorted, afflicted comportment arrives and desires above all to enter? What is it like, this peaceful garden beyond the door, beyond the wall, to which you have dragged the coffin of your identity? What is it like, the place, the moment, at the threshold of which you are driven to rend and tear at your clothing? Consider it now, the suspended, the self-denied, maddeningly nearby place, the garden of your shrinking approach. Is it not where you cannot not belong but at the entrance to which you must, to preserve its integrity, abolish yourself?