GRASSHOPPER

You sensed it. The moment the pinnacle was reached; when you stood at the dizzying height and you gazed around - the hard climb up, the relatively easier scramble back to flat ground... For some few moments, the entire world of possibility stretched out below you in every direction. Other pinnacles, like jagged spikes reached up, some close, some very far. You'd scoffed at those on the way up.

It took a while, this climb. You were hot and thirsty and hungry and oh so tired of trudging uphill; watching every step, slipping once or twice and landing on your arse, dusting yourself off, letting out a short burst of laughter or an "ouch" at something scraping your skin. Once, a scorpion scurried past but you paid it no heed, figuring you were intruding in its habitat.

Yet after those few moments, you sensed it. You stood atop another wrong pinnacle. It had felt so right on the climb up, songs you had sung, words flung to the wind returning to you many times over as echoes from afar. It had felt so right this one, bathed in the rays of a pink dawning sun.

How many such pinnacles had you climbed over the years? Some you could see from here - see their imperfections, their falsity, their illusionary promises... You'd climbed those with renewed hope each time, only to quickly retreat back down, finding nothing of value in the trek.

Oh but this one had held so much promise! Wildflowers strewn around you, butterflies flittering past, the sound of bird-calls heralding a new dawn, a new Spring... Anticipation and the prospect of finally arriving at the one had filled your lungs; breathing had been easy, the oxygen infused with faith and the belief your time had come.

Yet here again you stood alone. Alone again, despite having spied another pacing this pinnacle, calling you, signalling you to begin the climb. For this you had begun, for the chance to see who rode the crest, who'd dared reach it before you. For this, you'd vowed to disregard the danger signs and crosses where others had mistyped and fallen thus to their demise.

He had not waited. That one you'd glimpsed now rapidly descended, taking with him the butterflies, swiping away the wildflowers and their heady scent, shooing away the mating birds... leaving behind another barren cliff-side for you to plummet down.

The weather turned, a storm brewed as with shoulders slumped and spirit broke you wrote, placing the flimsy paper on a flattened rock and using erasable ink:

"You taught me too well, Master"

You let that paper go and watched it tumble, turn, lift in an updraught and then plunge again, small rips and tears cutting it down to bits of white - like snowflakes landing in some ink-splotched puddles.

When all were lost from view, you turned inside yourself and saw the fault: A mind-created mirage does not a future make...

Reviews

[Davidgeo]

Climbing dangerous peaks has nothing to do with hope. Being alone is everything to some people, it's how they breath real air and see clear skies. There is no past and if you are very lucky the future is irrelevant.

[Elise Anton]

I have a rock on a hill in a rainforest (hard to reach and largerly 'undiscovered'). There I stand, like Elsa the lioness... I visit it less these days physically but live on that rock mentally. It smells of eucalypt, the air, and wet earth. Perfect aloneness? Perhaps. From there I see the city in the distance. There's corporate mountains there. The air stinks.

[Davidgeo]

Smoke some grass... have some whiskey. It's just some things.