Obvious: Mystery

From this angle it appeared flat and round, a giant disc overhead, and no one knew what to make of it, not to mention what to say of it.  It hovered above our city with no visible intention to leave, to fly or float away, whatever it was capable of.  For now and for a long time–children were born underneath that disc, the young became old and died underneath that disc, entire families changed, history went on as it is wont, with suffering and triumph intermingled, but only with this difference: for generations there would be an eclipse of the sun, for four or five hours a day, because of the sheer size of the object above our heads.

Strangest of all, the televisions, the internet, the newspapers, the radio, all of them, those channels through which we try to learn about what is happening in the world or distract ourselves with the sheer enormity and vastness of occurrences on the earth, all of them were completely silent as to the mere existence of the thing, let alone any attempt at giving an explanation for its size, shape, and for the barely noticeable lights, noticeable only when it was pitch dark all around, that could be seen around the edge of the disc in an array of unearthly colors, as though a man mad with color and its hitherto unseen and unimagined possibilities had abstracted from his dreams an utterly new palette of nameless colors. 

What do you think it is?  I mean, I’ve lived here all of my life long, I’ve been married and I’ve had several children, all of them grown now.  I never thought to ask, a woman asked me as we came out of the grocery store by happenstance, not because we had traveled there together.  She was in a large purple and brown coat that covered the whole of her body, as it was more that a little cold, and, as she turned, looking like an oversized, human-sized plum with overripe brown edges, away from me and cocked her head up to the sky, where the disc was in its usual suspension above all of our cares and troubles, she continued: Has anyone ever dared to ask?  We can’t go on living with such a blunt mystery.  Mystery is always hidden, she said, so when it’s there–she pointed up, or at least the soft purple staff of her arm directed my gaze upwards with her–obvious in your face, that’s no longer mystery, and to live with it without asking what it is is not reverence or in any way a proper composure before what faces us in our lives.

She was on to something: indeed, she was the first citizen of our rather tightly-bound city–everyone there was part of a cohesive family, in fact, even though our population had reached over one hundred thousand a year or so ago–to ask any such questions or to make any such proclamations.  I was dumbfounded when she asked, as I didn’t know for the life of me what to make of the thing up above.  To be truthful, with you, because I know you are searching for truth like a good explorer, always and restless searching for truth, even in twisted metaphors, tangled stories, and indecipherable tropes, you can’t give up in your search, I wanted to simply shrug my shoulders and shrug off her questions like I wanted to put down my bags on the counter at home, perhaps make a sandwich after putting away the groceries and supplies I had secured, and set about other business, the more pressing affairs of the day-to-day.  But as she was standing right beside me and as she wouldn’t budge, neither with her body or with her words, I felt obligated to attempt my form of an answer.

And this is what I said to her: Lady–well, I didn’t call her lady, I was more respectful than all that–Ma’am, Miss–something like that, although Miss implied a youth this woman had long left behind; she was old, old, old, her coat looked more youthful than her and that was not saying much, ragged and beaten and torn up as it was–Ma’am, I think I said, I think at least we have all dispensed with the dream that that thing–I pointed along with her, because her arm was as though stuck pointed up to the flat circle above us–was sent here, or traveled here due to any intention, in order to announce to us some message we could get in no other way.  I think it’s fair to say that we don’t believe in extraterrestrials any longer, that that fairytale has long been thrown away along with grandfathers in the sky and our ancestors having some concern for us and tending to us, looking out for us, from their graves.  It’s probably nothing special, or nothing to worry about in any case.  You can rest well tonight as you have rested well on other nights.  The thing has been here for your entire life, I reminded her.  It was here that she put down her arm, or the purple arm dropped by itself, because of the great size and weight of the winter cloth, and seemed to be despondent because of my retort.

Something even fell from her bags, an apple or some other round fruit or vegetable, and she didn’t bat an eye when it fell, then rolled clear to the other side of the parking lot, as though propelled from within.  She only put down the rest of what she was holding on the cold cement beneath our feet, then said to me: Look, youngster–it was true, at least this much was true: I was a good deal younger than she, and it more than looked it; you could hear it, you could guess it closing your eyes too–there are some things an old and tired lady like me cannot give up.  She could give up on being answered questions as to the existence of God or the meaning of life or of history, sure, but how–she said it and almost spit when she spoke–how on earth could she not fret at night or otherwise about this huge circular thing above her head day-in and day-out.  Are we being watched, she whispered. 

I told her that of course we are being watched, but not by this thing up there, I reckon.  That thing up there, I said to her, is probably as blind, as mute and as dumb as anything else in the sky, or beyond the sky.  It has no care for us down here; of this one thing I can be sure after living with it from my childhood on, all my life, like you.   Could that be true, she responded, again in a whisper, and, satisfied or dissatisfied with my answer, she didn’t let me know, she picked up her bags with great effort, sighed and heave then took off in one direction, the direction opposite of her fallen fruit, while I hugged my own bags closer to my chest, looked up one more time–it never moved, this thing, it stayed there like a stain on the sky–and went off in my own direction, not bothering even to look back at the old woman.