The Canyon Valley at Night by Mario McCarthy

One thing that we as a people have yet to derive is the most intimate part of our being. We have yet to understand our own intuition and our own intentions to create a life worth living. We cannot understand our own thoughts on the nights where the moon casts its shadows upon our lives and when the sun ceases to show us its refulgence and when the clouds are seen over that remote vista. This is what we know about ourselves, that we know nothing about ourselves. ​

I will never fully comprehend my own mind. I know that. But knowing that I desire and yearn for nothing more than to know myself so I can see why I am deaf to the praises that I have been given: the summa and the temporal images of distinction and the ability to attend university. Yet with every canyon on every day as the sun rises and sets there is always a partition of that canyon bottom which is not given the grace of the light from the havens. There is always a dark side of the moon that we can ignore. There is always a side to every life that we can hide from just as there is always a side of every other life that we can choose to ignore. But I cannot ignore the perils that have been isolating my mind from my family and my friend for years. I must not ignore this, because I want to survive.  

In over two months I will be attending university to study one of the only subjects that I can while retaining the ability to truly survive in the world after I graduate. Because failure is not an option in this life, but it’s the same path in life that I can look ahead and see death and life playing their game of chess like the gods of old moving their kings and their kings upon the board of fate. Despite everything that I do not know about my own mind and my condition, I am fully aware that when I am faced with the prospect of living a normal life on a normal street with a normal family with a normal job I cannot see life itself as an option in that future. It is not that that life is not honorable or difficult. I know the most difficult job in the world is raising children and every parent and every guardian is a true hero in the world. But it’s not for me. I am an artist. If I cannot create or cannot touch another person’s life through my work then I see no point in life if I cannot help to save a life or create a work of literature. If I am unable to add to the greatness that humanity has created in our diminutive time on this single rock that spins and turns against the tide of time then I cannot see a point to continue. This is not the rambling of an individual who suffers from depression but rather someone who sees reality for what it is. Reality in all of its alluring emptiness and in its canyons that have long been run dry from rivers of purity that have always run from the beginning of vanity until the end of vanity that will never come. I will be called a fool for saying this but I know that it is the truth: I see what others cannot see and what others choose not to see. I see this society as a possessive force that controls our lives telling us to reach for the stars but when we face reality for what it is and escape the cave we see that the stars we are reaching for are merely a reflection in a pool of abandoned hope that we can choose to drown in or pretend to reach that infinite sky toward the heavens we have been taught to reach toward in all our lives and in all our actions. But I know that no matter how many books I read and how many poems I write, all of my efforts to turn away from that darkened loch will only be measured in the terms of this society: those tests written by people who will never take them and the curricula written by the sons and daughters of upper America for the sons and the daughters of Middle America. No matter how hard I swim against the undercurrent I will never reach other side of this pool of hope to the shore where I will be able to look at the stars for what they truly are. Because I choose to swim against the confines I drown and because I choose to pull on the chains they cause my wrists to bleed out and spill my life upon the dried earth and because I choose to scream into the night where the howls of the moon sing praise to the dark I will receive no answer. And the irony of it all – of swimming in this tarn and wanting to escape the cave of our hope – is that I still am reaching for those stars. If I only I possessed the courage deep within my being to close my eyes and turn away so to look at my own reflection I know I could find happiness. It is inside of me. But in an age where the frauds do flourish and the deceivers prevail against the honesty among us, how can I be happy as I attempt to continue onward in honesty and integrity achieving nothing in a society that guarantees happiness for those who are lucky enough to succeed?

I have been told for too long to find the happiness in my own life by people who have worked the system and cheated their way to the top. I have been told to live in temperate complacency for far too long. I just wish I knew where to look inside of me.