I was feeling extremely down the other day. I am always fighting and fighting and all the fighting starts to wear down on me, and simple as that, the weather is dark and rainy most of the time. And I work hard for nearly nothing, and where other people get a place in society, deserved or undeserved is not for me to object, I seem always on the edge. No, I am not complaining. It´s my choice, after all, and it´s a good life. What I want to say is just that I start to feel weary. Many people come to me for counsil, and I try to help them as best as I can. Many people thusly feed on my energy, and if I have none to spare, they are offended. Plus, many of them seem to get out of one mess simply to set out creating a new one by offending and hurting all around them like a ravenous rabbit.:-)
NOW I am whining, see;-) (whimperwhimperfünününü)... but I resolved to do something about my foul mood... and what to do? I hitched the bus and rode out to the hills, and did a hike to a lost place. And it is funny, as soon you enter the woods, it is an altogether different world you enter, even if those woods are domesticated. But it is always as if you cross a border into the other world, and the other world seems to be more in touch with our reality in the forest.
Bitter thoughts left me as soon as I took my first steps on the trail. I enjoyed a scenery, dark, and yet soothing in the dark green and the vibrant colours of a leaving autumn, which will soon be replaced by the winter´s dominion. The trees seem to burn with the last remnants of colour, and every iota of life force seems to stem up from the roots, embedded deep into the ground. And towards the roots I went in my mind and my soul.
Now this lost place was a former industrial site, and presumeably occupied by metalworkers since the early middle ages. There are so - called "Sinnerhoopen" ( heaps of sinter, slag heaps ) everywhere near the creeks.
Like this slag I found beneath the roots of the tree, by the swift and musical creek. All was silent, and mists arose from the hills. And I thought of how those spirits of the land were once called "Niflungar" or "Nibelungen", which literally translates as "folk of the mists", around these parts.
Long have the ruins been claimed back by the forest´s twilight, gentle and violent, and roots entangle the once proud industrial workshops. Their noise is all spent, exhausted and gone; the walls crumble under the force of the land. Roots like time itself claw at the heart of the hubris of man, mercilessly eating away at manmade marvels that our kind deems eternal.
Along the tracks of an ancient abandoned small-rail line I found this railroad spike. Since the site was abandoned after WW II and established far earlier, I hope it could be crucible steel.
On I walked, with but the silence for a companion, and as the day drew to a close, darkness fell. And with it came the force of twilight.
It lent a blueish tint to everything around, and then, growing ever so much darker, the woods embraced the night that was to come. I walked on, alone on the darkness, carrying no light, for light I needed not, wanted not.
On a fallen log I sat, contemplating and having a cuppa tea, and my spirit fell into the embrace of the spirit of the trees.
It is not warm nor comfortable. It is not hostile, either. It simply is. This, I have always found to have a soothing effect on my mind. And while it takes all you can give, it also gives all you can take in turn.
Darker it grew, and darkness has always been conceived as Evil by man. But the woods do not regard anything. There is night. There is day. That is all there is to say.
Faintly, in the far distance, I saw the light pollution of the city shining, screaming, raving, tearing at the sky, but not here, not in the dark realm of twilight.
Where the trees come to life with voices so manyfold and yet they hold no answers and pose no questions. This is the true power behind any magic. This is the force of the land springing to life in the twilight, wafting with the mists through the cool air. I was confronted with my fears and hopes when I saw all those shifting shapes. Was that a movement over there? A wild boar? I imagined I could see it, standing afore a blue light of vague intensity, a wild boar of a race long bygone, with a mane of bristles so thick and strong they sliced the air like a knife, and with a fire in his eyes that told of an unseen force below the roots of trees, below the secret mycelium of the force of the land. And as I received this image, I found a bone for a knife handle.
Amazed, I rounded the bend, and high above the valley I stood for a moment, contemplating. There was a stream of noise from the traffic going on down there, and lights blared up to the blueish twilight sky as if to defy it. And the roaring, screaming noise suddenly seemed ever so small and helpless. I stood there, and suddenly I had the sensation of belonging, not into the pitiful, roaring world below, but into this realm of twilight. Into the realm of the vision of that boar, and into the never-dimnishing ranks of the Niflungar´s host.
But then, I am a human, and even now, by writing this, I roar my defiance to the sky, as do wolves when they howl. "I am! Look! I am! I live!"
Thus I return into the world of man, forging another knife out of the gifts of the other world, forging another story out of steel and bone and twilight, for this, truly, is what I am:
An existence of both worlds.
