The Land

Michael’s wanderings led him from one odd job to another; meeting new people, gaining new experiences. Never bored yet moving within a fabric of lack: lack of money, lack of security, lack of consistency; lack of knowing. This was coupled with a lack of caring beyond his immediate needs, and a lack of worry too. Perhaps it was a lack of gain.

Michael knew well enough that his ways were out of the net of contemporary society. He wasn’t being a member of the social formation; yet he was attempting, and hoping, to be a member of humanity. Things were changing; fixtures were seemingly becoming more fluid. Fixed notions of the self and how to interact with ones environment were breaking away from their moorings and casting adrift those who held dearly to their anchoring. Too many years, and too much reliance, upon an iron anchor of belief and hope was beginning to tear at people’s civilised psyche. Michael was noticing this infraction as he moved across the landscape of a country increasingly alien and unfamiliar. And the cities were burning.

Urban sprawls had slowly been turning into hardened wombs. Just like the Auschwitz experiments of injecting concrete into the veins of victimized death-camp inmates, so too had the degradation of negativity slowly been poisoning the urban veins with concrete viruses and piss-stinking twisted love. The painful cold heat of urbanity finally drove Michael away from the cumbersome cash-in-hand dishwashing jobs into the retreat of rural grasslands. It was the air too that Michael craved for; the open air of expanse and a Nature that did not bite in judgement but welcomed as family. And finally Michael rested upon a small farm in some hills far away from his home town, and took on the hired-hand of a farm labourer.

It was hard, manual work. It rubbed against his skin as much as it rubbed coarsely against his upbringing. Both his finger skin and his conditioning began to fall away from the soft-textured patterning. Back aching and body-battered did Michael often fall into bed at night – exhausted yet satisfied. Michael began to feel himself becoming stronger little by little each day.

The farm employers treated Michael well in the circumstances. He was treated almost as family, and ate at the same table and afforded the same privileges as everyone else who worked on the farm. The sole condition was that Michael pulled his weight and did his job well. For Michael this was demanding, yet fair. And so in this challenge Michael sought a life opportunity to fulfil. It had been a circumstance placed before him, either to confront or turn away.

The strength of will inside Michael’s chest urged him on to face this step like a compassionate hunter of the self.

Although Michael felt neither like a hunter nor a warrior, he still felt as if he was engaged in a constant war. Yet it was not a destructive war, nor a fearful one. It was a constructive war of apprehension and renewal; not knowing the prey until it spoke deep inside with the hunter’s own voice. As if to cure yourself you must first kill that which is most precious to you – your very own conception of self. The belief in you: yet that belief which is not you. To dig up the implanted and sew anew.

After two years on the farm Michael felt a strengthened change had come over him. Still quiet yet not timid, just like the lay of the land.