Potato Philosophy

Another Chapter – Another Step

“Why?” — the Eternal Question

(Unknown)

My feet, they wander, one step, then another. The path I once walked . . . was it mine? Did it die with the Shadow?

   Our Hero was troubled. Gravely troubled. His gilded leaves were withered, his branches splintered. Their flames were dead; they died with the Shadow. 

 Yet here I am, thought the Hero who lingered. Here I remain. Once, he was a humble star at the eastern horizon, bright but hidden, destined to fall. Now the sky was blue and empty, pale as frost. Come night, his resplendent siblings woke from their daily slumber. To our valiant Hero, they sparkled like pebbles in a pitch-black sea; they were distant torches in the heavenly vault, worlds forever and ever aflame. With our Hero they lingered; with the Hero they fell.

   But the Hero was no hero. So he had said. 

   On the day of departure, when he had donned his yellow cape and unsheathed his silver sword, he had made his promise. “I am no hero,” the Hero proclaimed at the White Plaza. “No hero sees the end. No hero prospers in peace. No! Peace is his end, but that end is not here. Your end has not come. Yet I am here. I remain!” The crowds cheered with cautious excitement, for such was their custom. Whosoever could fault them? Death and despair made promises obsolete. Too many had fallen, too many had failed, and far too many had brought back nothing but shame, if they ever returned.

   Yet our Hero was assertive, a juggernaut of will, its fatal representation. “When my journey is ended,” he said, unsheathing his sword and pointing it at the heavens, “languor and loss will be whispers in wind. Our realm will rejoice, our younglings be joyful, and the Great Shadow will be a distant cloud destined to disappear!”

   His eyes gleamed like bright blue crystals, his aura glistened, and his smile . . . yes, his smile, it soothed them, cradled them, wrapped them in the amber kiss of a dragon’s fire. 

   One described him in clichés; for a cliché was what he was. What is a hero, but a mortal ideal, a fate written and rehearsed – glory, grace, and a grateful death?

   With this cliched smile he made his cliched promise. “I will vanquish the Shadow and the realm will be free. I will not fail. Hear my words. I will not fail.”

   The Hero did not fail.

   When the Moon had turned for the thirteenth time and the Sun wished them the best of mornings, the Hero reached the cavern. Within burnt the Black Flame, the Shadow. 

    But even in darkness, there was light — a lonely dandelion and its lonesome tears, no longer alone. For the Hero had come. With the valour and will of a hundred rivers, he cast the Shadow back into the shadow, forever banished, finally gone.

   That was long ago, the Hero thought. So it must have been. Somewhere in the past, far beyond his eastern shore, in a black cavern with dandelion tears. It did not matter. It was all that mattered. 

   But the past was unreal. The present, an illusion. And the future . . . was there one? In the Land of Lands there surely was. But I am not in the Land of Lands. Not any longer. Existence was fluid. Immaterial. Unreachable. Spatiotemporal fluidity. Am I even here? He was trapped in freedom, lost in stasis, with nowhere to run and nowhere to stay. 

   Yet he lingered, and took another step. He took another. And another. One after the other, on and on, and on and on. It made little sense. Too little sense. But what did? he thought, astray. The left foot was a boulder, the right one a leaf. And then the right was the boulder and the left was a leaf.

   He took another step. 

   What is this pain?

   He felt no pain – a hero feels no pain. Suffering. What a farce! Heroes endure. And I am the Hero.

   ”You are no hero.”

   Who was that?

   ”It is I, the Great Shadow! The victim of your sword. The one you vanquished, your mortal foe.”

   You are unreal.

   ”Yes, I AM! But I was real, was I not? In your past, in my past, in all the pasts that ever passed.”

   The past is unreal, the Hero countered.

   “What does that make of the present?” the Shadow asked.

   You make no sense. 

   ”Heroes make no sense, I say!”

   That made sense. Too much sense. The Hero did not answer, only thought, Go away.

   The Shadow obliged, and the Hero took another step, into the unknown, into the familiar. 

   I have passed this way before, he realised. It was true. Back when the leaves were shadowed, when a robin’s song was naught but mist, when the furnace in his heart could rip the wicked apart, he had come this way. The rivulet he crossed had trickled with a flute-like grandeur, blissfully ignorant of the realm’s haunting terrors. Underneath the oaken canopies, the rivulet had no perspective. Neither did the Hero. In that faraway past, he had halted before a redcurrant bush. Why? The Hero did not remember. His allies had questioned the puzzling disruption.  

   ”How could you pause your paramount journey to sit by the water and gorge on redcurrants, simply listening to silence?”

   ”I fought for those moments,” the Hero replied. “Those quiet memories no storm can wash away. Had I not paused, I would never have witnessed the redwood squirrel leap across the rivulet and dash up the oak where he stored his acorns. Is that not enough?”

   It left them speechless, less talkative than that squirrel. Said squirrel was somewhere, but not there, not today. 

   When was it there?

   This he knew.

   When I was a hero. He sighed, and took another step.

   ”The Hero has saved us!” the realm had roared, toasting mead and wine and water. He had returned to the Plaza on a cloudless day. Travel-worn he was. Winds had burnt his chin and cheeks. But that smile, yes, that smile that had soothed their anxious souls, it lit the pale Plaza once again. 

 ”The wicked is banished!” They rejoiced, feasting on potatoes and pie, on cakes and cookies, and pastries so indulgent they left the greedy comatose. It was a worthy sacrifice. The Hero had won, and the great evil was gone.

   Then, the years passed. One after the other, and then a third. The jubilation thought immortal was naught but a memory, shared by many, forgotten by most.

   Time had moved. Whereto? Nowhere, but with the Hero. So the Hero submitted to the temporal current. Green leaves turned purple, then brown, and then they fell, only to emerge again, green. Then they turned purple, again, then brown, then green, then purple, then brown, then green, then purple, then brown, over and over and over. The cycle never ends. It remains. Maybe the leaf that emerged was the same leaf that died?

   But I am no leaf. I am a hero. 

   ”So you have returned?” It was the Shadow, returned. 

   So I have.

   The Hero was back where it had begun, where it had ended, and where it had started all over again. Somewhere, far, far away, the distant rivulet kept its course. Not here. This was the Mountain of Madness. Or, that was its proper name, once, maybe twice. Not thrice. Now, it was just another mountain. 

   It was always just a mountain, he thought, gazing up at the suffocating immensity he once had ascended. Its peak was still as white and as sharp, its dark wall solid; the mountain would outlive life itself. Time, however, did not discriminate. Even it would crumble. Even it would fade from this world, washed to the sea as nothing but dust. 

   Like me. The un-leaf. 

   “And yet, your mountain remains, as do you.”

   Why have you returned? the Hero asked the Shadow. I told you to leave me.

   “So I did, but now I am back. Like all who wither.”

   You are dead. I killed you. 

   “True. But what is death, but a step further?” 

   Did it make sense? Did it matter?

   “Beyond the realm of silver glass,” the Shadow continued, “within the soul of the storm – there you will not find death, will you? No. There I am. Yes! I am there, waiting, longing for the wind.”

   Ludicrous.

   ”You were the sun,” the Shadow mused, ”but I was never your shadow. And yet… without me there is no you. No canonical ’I’. We were dichotomies, so unlike, so very different. And yet here we remain, you and I. ’No shadow without light,’ they say. Bah! Where there is light, my friend, there is a shadow. Always.”

   I am the Hero. I am that light. So I must die, to end the Shadow’s might?

   ”Are you a maggot in delirium? Said metaphor is older than this accursed mountain path. Fool! Life is not binary. There is no good, no evil. There only is. Death is utterly pointless. Your body persists; it lingers until absorbed by the earth, only to breed yet another specimen with the same fate. And what will they do but die? Death is the only truth and death never dies.” The Shadow laughed. ”But the soul, the mind behind the matter, the captain, king, commander, that which is worth preserving, it vanishes. . . Your death means little, my death means less, yet they matter, they are matter, they are the only things that matter, in our world.”

   Leave.

   “You will miss me.”

   Perhaps.

   The Shadow smiled and departed.

   The Hero had reached the cavern. Which cavern? The Cavern of Caverns of course, the Heart of Darkness, enclosed rage in the depths of night, where cursed roots brewed their demonic blight. 

   There I fought my final fight!

   Neither was it his first.   

   He had single-handedly toppled the Tourmaline Titan, outwitted the Masquerading Marauders, even ridden the fire-breathing Falcon that flew faster than lightning. These were a few of his many victories, but the Shadow was different. Nary a foe, nary a friend; a pond no pebble could ripple, cripple, or cut. The Shadow was . . . a shadow, desire, dependence, the eye in his storm.

   The battle had nearly ended them both, but the Hero’s glimmer had resisted the Underworld. In this cavern, in that immaterial past, the forces of good and evil had clashed, one final time. And so, the peace that was promised became their present, but our Hero had returned, like a dead cliché. 

   Dead, he was not, nor was the cavern. There, trapped in its void, nested a lonely Dandelion, still golden, still alive, still eager to greet the guest. 

   How poetic. We meet again. The Dandelion and I. Here we are. Here we remain.

   ”It was merciful to leave it,” said the Shadow. ”Had you claimed it your trophy, where would it be? Forgotten, withered, destroyed by the maelstrom.”

   You speak as if you were omniscient.

   ”I am.”

   Impossible.

   ”And how do you know this?”

   He did not. 

   A bit further in, he encountered the second mirror. The one without a frame. 

   ”Break my mirror.”

   No. The Hero reached out and touched the mirror, but he did not touch it, he only fell. Through the mountain, through all madness, and through the void. Emptiness abounded in the infinite vacuum. Where is the light? Where is life? He felt nothing. What is nothing?

   “Everything!”

   But that was not the Shadow. No sun, no shadow, no suffering. Why do I suffer?

   I do not suffer. I do not endure. I am. . . 

    The void opened. There, by the pond, sat the singing frog. His melodious mind had nothing to hide. He was naked but he was not afraid. 

   Why?

   The frog did not answer. The frog did not know. He only looked at the Hero, his eyes seemed to glow. But these eyes were a mirror, like the mirror before. Again he was empty, and the frog was no more.  

   So am I, thought the Hero, but that was enough.

   He fell out of his mirror and into the shadow. 

   No.

   There was no shadow – it died with his path. He turned and saw there was neither a mirror, nor an ’I’ in the reflective storm. Only the dandelion. The lonely dandelion. 

   Why have I returned?

   ”You missed me.”

    I did. 

    ”But you miss me no more.”

   I do not know.

   ”Farewell.”

   Are you leaving me?

   ”Yes.”

    Forever?

   ”Likely.”

   Why?

   ”No you, no me, no canonical ’I’.”

   Will I miss you?

   ”Perhaps.”

   But I need you.

   ”No. You never did. We are too different, you and I.”

   That made sense. Too much sense. 

   Farewell then.

   ”Follow your path; that is all I say.”

   No, I do not think I will.

   He stepped out of the cavern and into the river. Yes, that river. And there it was, the squirrel. He was under its shadow once again. Naked. Empty. Longing for redcurrants. He lay down to rest. None knew when he would awaken. Not even he. For there was no path. There never was. 

   Why?

   It did not matter. Nothing did.