The Last Piece Of Ice Under The Sky
There would be no point in climbing this mountain,
not even to speak to the wise man at its summit.
He has no answers, no solutions. He is merely old,
and that’s no achievement when you live on a mountaintop.
There are two men trapped at the bottom of a deep well.
Were they to assist one another, it is possible they could escape.
Instead they choose to urinate on one another, destroying
their supply of drinkable water and ensuring they remain trapped.
The wise man can see the mouth of the well from where he sits,
because years ago a climber with no money gave him, as payment,
a powerful set of Zeiss Classic 20×60 binoculars, strong enough
to turn a busy colony of ants into a whirling dervish of people.
By the time the climber had reached the base of the mountain,
he’d realized that the binoculars were more valuable than
anything the old man had said, but the thought of re-scaling the peak
turned his stomach to ash and filled his mouth with regret.
Turning northward, the old man can see the last piece of ice under the sky.
Upon it sit two polar bears, and between them on the ice is
the last fish from the water, their final sustenance. Inevitably,
they tear one another in two, rather than the fish, their blood staining the ice.
None of that really happened, did it? asks the filmmaker on the summit.
He’s come to make a documentary about the old man, to record his wisdom
for a decadent, unenlightened age. But the filmmaker is an unbeliever,
refusing to accept what he can see through the camera’s unblinking eye.
The old man smiles and extends the binoculars, offering
the filmmaker a closer look at the world-as-it-is, as it, in fact, must be.
The filmmaker shakes his head sadly, packs his camera back into its case,
and begins the slow climb back to the foot of the mountain.
He reaches the bottom and passes the well where the two men are still trapped,
their lack of drinking water also meaning a lack of urine for their battle.
The filmmaker thinks he hears moaning from the bottom of the well and almost
goes to look. But refusing to believe his ears, he turns and walks away.