Love and Abyss

That is a very deep valley, which does not prevent me from easily seeing, from the top of this high cliff, the clear opposite side, in a vivid blue. I begin to descend the slope towards a presumed river, imagining it as large and raging. Despite seeing, close in front of me, rocks, and forests in rich detail, I cannot discern anything there deep below, where I suppose the opposite escarpments must meet as in any valley on Earth.
Suddenly, it comes to my mind a queer doubt regarding whether the unavoidable down under contact between these face-to-face mountain massifs really exists. Sure, this could not be a queer single exception on Earth where only nothingness stayed down there between facing cliffs!
Looking at this abyssal direction I can see nothing but these endless slopes, whose contours end up dissipating in a strange vertical horizon, either on this side where I am going down, or on the opposite one, where my eyes meet yours.
You, traveler who also descends, do keep on your journey for days, months, years on end, now catching how high these slopes are. Down there, however, there is only an endless, fixed, immutable depth. No, you don’t see any fog.
There is an astonishing sharpness in the two vertical horizons: the one we came from and the other to which are going. Both make us imagine being infinite.’
We continue, for decades, towards these depths without finding anything or anyone who able to tell us when or whether we will one day reach terrain with no slope.
Looking up now, we are no longer sure about our memories’ veracity which say one day we have departed from a flat, horizontal floor.
Thus, we keep on our way without any illusions regarding any rivers, lakes, or plains as points of arrival. Each of us then looks at the opposite slope, until our eyes once more meet.
Neither you nor I will ever be able to bridge this chasm alive.

Originally published at https://reality-to-who.blogspot.com.