Blog Story: the beginning
[This story is not complete and follows the rules of the previous post. It is also the first thing I write since a really long time, so be indulgent.]
Only two or maybe three hundreds yards separated him from the summit of the mountain. Eventually, after several hours of ascension and suffering under the summer sun, his efforts were quite finished.
Why did he undertake this trip? He didn’t know for sure. The routine of his daily life wore him out and stripped him of every peculiarity, every difference from the other human beings. He was just a gearwheel of a great machine that had no purpose beyond survival.
The mountain he was climbing was his redemption, a way to give the meaning of his life back. He decided to reach its summit, even if it were the last thing of his life… And now it was finished. No more looking out of the window of his flat and waiting for the good time to flee from the city, no more goals that would be worth living for.
He stood on the top in front of the precipice, his long hair wavering in the wind, staring at the whole world he left behind himself. It would be easy to make another step forward, to finish his life after a great deal, instead of dying a bit every day and resemble more and more the majority of the human beings. It would be easy for the muscles to move and the body to lose balance, but something in his mind stopped him.
Behind him, near the horizon, there was another mountain, with the slopes covered with snow and a steep path leading to the summit…
[There are no continuations of this story so far.]
Initially I rushed toward an end with the conclusion:
He turned back and began a slow descent into normality.
but this end makes really difficult for others to continue the story, which isn’t easy anyway.
As I showed throughout this weblog my interests are mainly in the microcosmos of the characters, rather than the macrocosmos. The goal that the hero chooses is physically an easy one (climbing a mountain), but I consider itself more in a symbolic way, as the purpose of the life whatever it is.
I didn’t describe the hero, his work, his preferences, thus leaving it to whoever will take care of the next episode. I couldn’t manage though not to mention a rather unusual philosophy of death and suicide that is in my opinion a rather Romantic¹ one. As in Goethe’s Faust the protagonist doesn’t care about dying after accomplishing the goal of his life:
Werd ich beruhigt je mich auf ein Faulbett legen,
So sei es gleich um mich getan!
Kannst du mich schmeichelnd je belügen,
Dass ich mir selbst gefallen mag,
Kannst du mich mit Genuss betriegen:
Das sei für mich der letzte Tag!
Die Wette biet ich!
Obviously both heroes don’t manage to achieve entirely their goals, because other ones appear at the horizon. I hope I clarified the meaning of the post for those curious enough to read the comments.
For the next stories I thought of using something simpler than a psychological drama. The form of literature I chose for the next Blog Story is Fantasy. I didn’t decide yet what will be the entouring world, but I like very much Zelazny’s world of Amber, which leaves the imagination free to express itself through the concept of Shadows, or the world of the turn based strategy game Wesnoth, which doesn’t suffer of its humble origin.
¹ Any link to Caspar David Friedrich painting wasn’t intentional, since I looked at Wikipedia only while writing the comment.
Comment by chopinhauer — 8/7/2005 @ 1:59 pm
che fine hai fatto anche tu?
Comment by nushu — 4/10/2005 @ 12:49 pm
Heh. Nice. Do you approve of my flowing surveyor A joke for you! Reporter: Who would I blame if California fell into the Pacific Ocean? Geologist: It would be San Andreas fault.
Comment by Neuncacleweer — 29/10/2008 @ 7:52 pm
Thanks!,
Comment by Pfgobmpx — 13/12/2008 @ 6:51 pm