Lady of the Lake

There's a lake of worlds at the end of my jogging-way. At certain time of the year, mainly for a moment in the spring, the lake (which is actually more of a pond) gets flooded with water. Blue waves cover the deeps, the stony bank descends suddenly. When the dam is lowered, those tons of water mysteriously diasappear, continue to join other streams far away.

The abyss of the bare, naked bottom, seen from the heights of the border, may strike one as something unfamiliar - or then again, as something small, huge and familiar.

I met it on a walk with a special friend of mine. I must have been either late autumn or quite early spring. In order to free and challenge our perception and thoughts we let our tongues gibber English. We had entered an animated discussion on words and semantics. Coming to a realization of the difference between landscape and scenery proved to be important for seeing the worlds open up. Consider the word landscape: it lines out a framed and two-dimensional view, while the word scenery depicts more of the smells, sounds and feel of the surroundings.

(You may, of course, disagree. That's OK. The seperation serves more as a tool for discovering the ways of seeing. Take the difference between the art of impressionists and expressionists for example.)

Remember the Lion King? How he sees his kingdom from a high mountain rock for the first time? Remember your little yellow boots carving rivers in the sand, your great castles of sand? You have never lost your ability to fly in great heights and see far, like a pure spirit.

My eyes rested on the scenery. With awe I watched how the bottom of the lake, the sparkling brook formed and morphed right there under my eyes. It was like the River Nile in the beginning of our era. The floods had nourished the plains beside it, which were flourishing with lush grass. The current calmed down to a lakeside surrounded by jungle. The slopes of the coast bended to give space to the undulating savanna, where I could almost make out the movement of antelope herds. At the distance, where the mist was already blurring the details, I met a shadow. The quiet and dangerous canyon, where the great beasts hide, leaving their dying flesh and bones for hyenas to rip apart. Those chasms of madness should one not enter until the gaining of one's full power.

My eyes moved further and gathered the diversity, the wideness, the wilderness. Something tells me now, that if I had not had the mind's barriers to keep me from walking in the bottom of the lake (because you don't do things like that), that world would have seemed more banal. A human gains control over the world by moving through it.

Would I enter my realm that I witnessed before me, if the silver-haired maiden rose from the Lake and threw a sword into my lifted hands? -- Well. What would I do with a sword. She'd only give the realization, that the world is at the same time too huge and too small for a human to conquer, to control. For it is too beautiful, too untouched to be owned.

I returned there. On the borders of the savanna had grown brilliant trees. Either they had white, white flowers midst their crown leaves, or thousands of white birds were resting on their highest branches. The river was warm now. The animals were hidden in the scenery. I remembered my special friend.

Would I inherit the Earth? Become the Mistress of the Realm? Perhaps I cannot. So let me remain merely the Lady - of the Lake.