Falling

An Allegory

I am falling. Right at this very moment. There is always a brief second before, a moment when one scrambles. I can feel the ground giving way beneath my feet and I lose my balance. I start to run up hill as fast as I can but already the clods of earth are crumbling away and I'm treading water in air and suddenly down I jolt, the horizon vanishing before me to be instantly replaced by a fascinating cross-section of soil, stones, roots and debris which sprinkle and tumble away hollowly at first and then roar into the void. Shortly after, I follow.

Usually, there are roots or branches or other handy obstacles to help me break my fall a little or slow down my descent should I feel that I am close to losing control. I know that I can't change the fact that the fall will end; one cannot fall indefinitely (except perhaps in space) and I do not fear the end; it is pointless to fear inevitabilities or, should I say, certainties (and there is only one). Rather, what pains me, what terrifies the living daylights out of me, what I fear about falling is not hitting bottom but what might happen on the way down;- missing the opportunities of breaking my fall, for that is my particular problem.

I cannot, like the truly desperate, grab onto the first visible protruding root and thereby gain at least a temporary handhold or foothold. I am so bewildered by the sheer number of rapidly passing options and the limitless possibilities, that I cannot for the life of me decide which would be a suitable one to grasp at. In my (initially) leisurely descent, each gnarled knot becomes almost Technicolor in hue, and they shimmer pleasingly in a myriad of patterns, styles and textures, and each time I am about to reach for a reasonably sized, strong-looking hold, I espy from the corner of my paranoeye, another, more gloriously large, gilded rainbow of a perch that surely must be the one I am meant to try for; but of course, by the time I have recognised it, it is already far too late, the golden branch is gone.

I become aware of another factor. Anyone who might choose to consider `the action of falling� for a moment, would not have to be too familiar with mathematical or gravitational principals to realise that the longer an object falls, the more it accelerates in its descent till it reaches it's maximum velocity. The opportunities for reaching out are just as frequent as ever, but my increasing speed means I cannot focus on them as they blur past, and the faster they zoom away above me, the slower my reactions until only an enormous opportunity would have any chance of catching me, but hitting it could be quite a damaging experience and then of course, I would not have chosen it, "It" will have chosen me. For the most part, my life has been like this.

This is not like a moralistic fairy-tale, where the dirty, sharp, stubby, awkward and painful root is the one that will save me. I have tried holding onto these too, only for them to snap off in my hand and send me tumbling again, just when I thought I was secure for a moment. On other occasions the route has been so isolated as an event, that there is nothing it branches onto, nothing close I can aim for and move to, or it has been too small to really establish any kind of real hold. And, if I am honest, I am not one of those who can cling to a hair of the lowest root and ascend to the uppermost branches of the tallest tree. No. This is not my way.

I am waiting for the big one. The grand entrance the gilded balloon ride to the top again. And when I am at the top, after the edge of the crevasse has been passed over? What then? What then.



Copyright of Sioned Jones 1997