From Nothing To Nowhere Done

Word Count: 2190 From nothing to nowhere As he walked through the Valle de los Caídos, a heavy stone-cross blocked the sunshine. An ant-like figure, he turned and raised his hands to cover his face. He needn’t have bothered. The stone-cross sarcastically cast Franco’s shadow, perfectly obscuring the sunlight from his vision. 40’000 lay buried in the ground beneath his feet, and ahead of him in the Basilica lay the remains of the Caudillo himself. Franco had described the monument as ‘atonement for a nation’. The man clarified the meaning of atonement in his own mind, ‘reparation for a wrong or an injury’. He smiled to himself. To the victors, history. It was the dedication to the dead. It was beautiful, immortal remembrance of a victory of brutal bloodshed. In this case, the memory of a dictator. All at once religious, pious and unrepentant. It was not the body of one man, or the workers, or the 40’000 souls to whom they had been sacrificed that captured the essence of the place. It was the symbolism. The harsh contrast of the ideas of right and wrong – of right and left, that didn’t matter at all. The blatant demonstration of the essential contestedness of the human race. The highest of blood prices the people had paid for their different ideas. The clearest example of them all that the price people pay for their thoughts is too high. Too pointless. In this case, the emotion of the Valle de los Caídos comforted the ant-like figure at its base. It reassured him that his place in the world was insignificant, that the thoughts and feelings that tortured his every moment were not all that important – that his humanity was only temporary. That his power was not all encompassing. As the small man dropped into a sitting position, seemingly awestruck by the raw power of the dead, he revisited the path in his mind that had in reality begun a long time ago. It was his story of all man-kind, that of a man on a journey. A journey with no destination, and no true marker of beginning or end. One which cannot be defined by success or failure. It was a journey without signposts or direction. One without any clear guidance of right and wrong. It was a world of contradictions and conflicts, of good intentions and devastating consequences. It was in short, a place where one would not want any power or direction – for the very demonstrable and understandable

fear of one’s own ignorance. The man was a wanderer, with no home and no goal. He had no money and no power. He had no work and no permanence. But he wasn’t lost. Because the concept couldn’t exist in his mind. Not with nowhere to go. *** The man had landed in Spain a short year ago. In the land of Gaudi, obsessed with the symbolism of nature, it was supposedly inherent that life was about balance. The young man was already old enough to have realised that. But he followed in the Orwellian tradition – he despised Gaudi. He followed the path chosen from Wilde to Plath to Hemingway – he despised balance. Not that his rational mind would ever condone the comparison to such esteemed figures. He would never admit to thinking such things. He felt them all the same... If a man could be seen as his epicentre, he was being pulled in three different directions by the core of his being. The mind, the body, and of course, the soul. A perfect man was a perfect spot in the very centre, the absolute personification of health, mental balance and agreeability of his soul. The thought that popped into his head unsummoned was that of Oscar Wilde, of ‘consistency being the last refuge of the untalented’. The thought comforted the man staring at the dizzying circles of Gaudi’s misunderstanding. This man had his very identity because he spiralled like the fieriest of protons, oscillating erratically from one extreme to the other – and this was a sign of life and comprehension – not confusion. Gaudi would never understand. To be balanced was to be standing still, hovering. To be ordinary. To be ordinary was to be condemned. But this man was who he was because of this conflict - this very conflict that occurred between his mind and his soul – a titanic clash between good and evil. Or at least that he genuinely thought it alluded to his extremity of will. In truth, many had faced more righteous challenges. Even the man himself would recognise the irrelevancy of one man’s thoughts. In this case, his own. That even the man himself recognised his own irrelevancy provided weight to his rational mind. That his soul burned with pain at every meaningless episode of life fuelled his conflict. It is perhaps testimony to the

man’s strength of mind and power of rational thought that the loser of the clash had been his body. That was why a man who would rather die than bow, even though he thought that was stupid – couldn’t raise his eyes. That was why the man who needed nothing and no one except his own rationality and beliefs couldn’t control a body in its prime from shaking, not from fear, but from the signals that were sent by his own mind. The oscillating little spot still had no victor, as the soul and the mind clashed over indeterminable battles. At once calculating and moral. At once virtuous and sinful. At once, right and wrong. That the mind and the soul were strong enough to cause such pain to his body was a source of pride for the young man – or would have been if he hadn’t known that was such a ridiculous thing to think. And yet, he thought it all the same. The young man was thus almost entirely unexceptional in every way, in every way except for one. His identity. His body was strained not because life had dealt him an unkind hand of fate – quite the opposite. His was a shell for one reason only. Who he was. His identity. It was not a story that would generate empathy from the millions of starving people fighting disease and poverty on a daily basis. It was not a story that a concerned father at a hospital bed would shed a tear for. It is not one that would pluck the heartstrings of one saying fare-well to one they loved. It is fair to say that the deepest irony is that to fight oneself, each extremity must be healthily strained by one’s own weight. Only a man suffocating in a synthetic bell-jar could face this particular challenge. Thus, it was a sad story, and then, for only one reason. It was his story. People had always told this man about the power of the mind. The souls adaptability to life and how things can change if only the man was willing. It was how he knew that they were wrong. It was how he knew that they didn’t understand him. They say that unhappiness is only a feeling. With a quiver he looked at his shaking body. He knew that was wrong too. These were the people who would constantly tell others to ‘relax’. They were the ones who would explain in a reasonable voice that the things that so upset this person were so minutely unimportant. Every attempt to change him, or ‘help’ as they would call it – just reaffirmed the isolation. He saw it for what it was, it wasn’t help, it was destruction. Conformation and destruction were the same things

for this man’s spirit. The irony was, the man was perfectly willing to accept that the other people were different to him, so why weren’t they willing to take the same reasonable step... ‘Never have I come across such arrogance!’ they would exclaim trying to batter down the defences. It never worked. It was just another layer of adhesive wedging the thick shell shut across what remained deep within. His big secret, that he couldn’t seem to make them understand, the whole fact of it was. He didn’t think he was right, not at all. He just didn’t think that they were either. He didn’t think he was better than them. But he knew too that they were not better than him. The whole issue just made him the worst among equals. And alone. Socrates said it best when he told the world that it is the wisest of men who knew himself to be but a fool. How alone Socrates must have felt amongst such bottomless, destructive, misplaced wisdom. Ignorance. The curse of the man, the problem with his identity was simple. In a world where right and wrong don’t exist and the powerful wield a pain so terrible. How could he justify doing what he was told. How can anyone assume to know anything at all. Who was worse, the fool, or the fool who followed the fool. And if the wisest of men is but a fool, then who could dare to follow anyone. How could he be close to anybody with the ignorance to believe that they knew what the rest of the world didn’t – the fascists, the communists, the religious, the atheists, the citizens. How could they all be so ignorant. He was none of the above and he was all alone. How could he make those he loved understand that he wasn’t mad. Or rather, that he was, but he knew it. That he was unhappy, but not unhappy about it. How could he make them understand – and not be sad. How can he make them understand that to him following somebody else’s whim is exactly the same as what the concentration camp guards did. How can he make them understand it’s not hyperbole, and he cannot change, because to do so would destroy his very soul. But he doesn’t want them to be like him. Better to be a happy fool than a sad one. Just ask Hemingway. Just ask Plath. But furthermore how could he explain his mind recognised the whole non-issue as ridiculous. The wasting of god given talent on a new form of apathy – apathy of life. His mind recognises the ultimate irony. The irony of not doing what others want you to do, is that if you don’t know what to do yourself

then there is only one thing left that is possible. Nothing. And if you believe that nobody has the answer then where is left to go. Without your own direction you can only walk with a blindfold, and then you cannot arrive at any destination. Even if you did believe in one. How can one explain the irony of not wanting others to do what you want – and refusing to be commanded. Of needing them not to. To destroy all others faith in you was the most empowering thing of them all, then you need not to be afraid of your own power. Your ignorance becomes impotent. Your actions are stripped of their pain. So thinks his soul – in its isolation. The isolation protected others from getting drawn it. He was a true leader, with nobody to lead but himself. And nowhere to go. The most noble sort. How could he therefore explain that he argues with everything they say and do not because he thinks he is right and they are wrong, or because he doesn’t care – but because he wants them to understand that they, like him, don’t know either. And then he would not longer be alone. And then, none would have that terrible power of decisions. None would have a sense of righteousness to lord over any other. Even though his mind knows the world would not function. Even though his mind knows this would cause happy lives to fall apart. These were the conflicts between his soul and mind that plagued his thoughts. Good and evil. Black and white. Only he wasn’t sure which was which. And he didn’t believe that anyone knew. But he thought that must be wrong. *** And so his thoughts ended and he came to be back in Madrid, in the Valley of the Fallen. He was on his knees as his body quivered to the floor. Franco’s shadow cast a black arm over his face. The fight continued, taking its toll on the inside. But inexplicably he raised his arms to the sky and grinned, a full and open grin flashing impossibly white teeth. Another year had passed. More questions were yet to be answered. But the man who didn’t believe in success and failure. And couldn’t comprehend right and wrong. Without direction or order – or the capability to be ordered. The man who still had no home, who once again had no job. No permanence. The man who had fallen in the Valley of the Fallen. The man with nothing still had something.

He still had life. He hadn’t given up trying – and he never would. Even if he didn’t know exactly what it was that he was trying to do. Such is life.