Letters from the Northern Lands

 

30.07.XXXX

My Love

I have lost my spider. I have seen him in my pack or on my clothes since the islands, but not these two last days. I did not have time to give him a name, but from now on I shall call him Tom. It is a good name for a spider, and I think he was a good spider. I am not sure. I did not get to know him very well. I hope he is happy where he is now.

If only Tom had been there, I am sure those blood-sucking nazis would not have dared approach me. From the early morning they started to bug me, flying around me, trying to intimidate me, buzzing in my ear, landing on my glasses. Every time I stopped, they would attack. Even my clothes did not bother them. Of course, I fought back. No nazi scum shall get the best of me ! I slew them by the dozens, their mangled corpses littering the ground around me. But they do not fear death. They kept on coming, relentlessly, proving their eternal loyalty to an unknown overlord. Outnumbered, exhausted, I had no choice but to seek higher altitudes where they dare not venture. Here I am now, tired after a long day, but once I recover, we shall settle this for good. Goddamn nazis !

All alone once more, without Tom, without the nazis, I find myself living only for the road. I rest when tired, I eat when hungry. And otherwise, I walk.

One foot in front of the other, my legs tired, my knees weak, my back aching, only the passing of the landscape gives me a sense of purpose. There is no goal but my destination. Do not talk. Walk.

Thus I am making good distance and hope to return to better times soon. For there is nothing to be found in loneliness but blank, empty spaces. No wisdom, no truth. Only nothingness. I cannot bear my empty mind, and so I seek to escape from loneliness. Walk, walk, more and more, beyond the grey, rocky mountains where only lichen grows, beyond the thick, untrodden forests where the nazis roam, beyond the clear blue lakes where fish doth swim, to the haphazard cities of man, where there is everything to be had, and everything to be lost. To where joy is shared, and pain also. To where madness can flourish.

I do not need this tranquil wilderness, this empty land of lost thoughts. It is empty. Empty of meaning and of words, only to be gazed upon, never to be touched, truly. It can do to us what it will, but we can do naught to it. It is, and we are, but not the same. There is no connection. For me now it only exists as time. I shall go find what I have forgotten here, and then I shall leave. To have a drink with somebody. To share a meal. To talk. To do what humans where meant to do : Be human together.

W.