In Search of the Shoreline
A generational fable
Before life is anything, life is hard.
The caravan has circled the desert since time immemorial. Survival is a complex task, eked out at the ragged boundaries of what the desert will permit, yet life is simple: either you stay with the caravan, or you die.
They have no destination in mind, no origin left to memory. Things are as they are simply because that’s what they are. Existence is a cycle of days and nights, a cycle of geography, a cycle of logic. The caravan remains because we live like this, and it is because we live like this that the caravan remains. This is the best of all possible worlds.
Pilot-Domus is skeptical. Must their days be so hot? Their nights, so cold? And always, always the nagging thirst, wearing them away from both inside and out: why must this be? It is the why that gives Pilot-Domus form, and like the caravan itself, their existence becomes its own proof: if skepticism was unwarranted, these concerns would not exist, would not take hold. That they do, that they have, means they must be warranted after all.
For a long time, Pilar-Fortis permeated the caravan so completely that they were invisible, as fundamental as the sands themselves. Only as the doubts spread do they earn a name. Still, so sure are they of their position that a little debate is nothing to be feared. And so counterarguments emerge: are we not secure? Do we not live? Do our children not live? Life requires water, and we have life, therefore we have water. To demand more is ingratitude, greed, hedonism.
But a different life is possible, Pilot-Domus contends. Surely there are other places, out beyond the desert. One day, in measured tones lest they sound mad, they speak of a land completely covered with water, bottomless and endless, populated by creatures without need of legs, who soar through the water like a vulture through the air.
This “sea”, as Pilot-Domus had called it, is an idea that Pilar-Fortis cannot tolerate. No one knows what’s beyond the desert, they insist. Life here may be difficult, but we know no famine, no violence. To sow uncertainty with such ideas is to invite the destruction of everything.
Having raised the stakes of the debate, Pilar-Fortis soon finds they must resort to violence after all, and in so doing they weaken their own argument: to compound the caravan’s normal struggles with war and oppression is to upend the delicate balance that had kept it going for countless generations. Pilot-Domus, being younger and more adaptable, proves more adept at this new form of the argument, and before long Pilar-Fortis withdraws into irrelevance, unaware that a new cycle has been born.
And for the first time, the caravan charts a new course: one that will take it outside of the lands it knows, and in search of the sea. After so long in the desert, nothing less will suffice.
No one remembers the caravan, not really. Here and there the great raft upon which the people keep their home bears evidence of the wagons and carts and tents from which it was constructed, but these things are no longer recognized as such; they are simply the terrain as it exists, questioned no more than the waves.
What is remembered by all is the lesson of the caravan: that true power comes from the collective will of the powerless. The people had chosen their life on the sea, had fought and bled for it, and for that reason alone it is to be cherished.
Life on the raft is not without challenges of its own, Pilar-Ribba can admit, but these too are to be cherished because to overcome them requires togetherness, and in their togetherness there is nothing they cannot overcome.
They have become what this time required them to be, cannot imagine any other way to be, and therefore life is good.
As time passes, the raft is left more and more to the whims of the currents, its helm largely forgotten. Sea life is plentiful, and what the people have lost in stability they have made up in vitality — or at least, such is Pilar-Ribba’s understanding. They have become what this time required them to be, cannot imagine any other way to be, and therefore life is good.
One day, a storm of astonishing proportions appears on the horizon — a great, swollen tempest many times bigger than the raft itself, raising waves that could obliterate their strongest shelters, winds that could impale a man with a twig. For the first time in living memory, it is decided that the raft must be steered. The helm requires only a small handful of crew, and to shoulder the burden of this responsibility the people select Pilot-Kanawa.
As Pilot-Kanawa brings the raft about, they talk amongst themselves. This is not the first time that Pilar-Ribba has not been up to a challenge, they whisper, but always before the community had made its peace with what the community had decided. Perhaps this time should be different. Surely Pilot-Kanawa had been chosen for a reason? Surely they deserved — through their experience, their hard-earned insight — a more significant voice in future decisions?
Once the crisis has passed, Pilot-Kanawa disperses back into the community. But below the surface, new resentments begin to fester. The lure of power, rediscovered after so much time, calls to the empowered and the powerless alike. Why should everyone have an equal say when some so clearly know better than others? And shouldn’t greater contributions beget greater rewards? Life on the raft may be agreeable, but it is tenuous, and soon there are many ears for Pilot-Kanawa’s message: a way of structure and certainty rather than calm and compromise, a way of upward mobility — for those who deserve it.
Pilar-Ribba speaks through countless voices, and thus their rejoinders are disorganized, contradictory. They maintain that their way is the best option for the greatest number of people, that anything else would be a step toward tyranny, but as Pilot-Kanawa’s influence grows, their principles dictate that if this is what the people want, then it must be for the best. When the time comes to return the raft to land, no one who matters is in a position to say otherwise.
Animated by the promise of upward mobility, the people naturally turn to the highest ground they can find: a great mountain in the far distance. In a boom of activity that lasts for generations, a new settlement is born.
The higher one ascends the mountain the more rare the habitable land becomes, which makes it more sought after, which over the years transforms elevation itself into a status symbol. As the high cannot exist without the low, not every homestead can be equal in its comforts, yet even the lowest among them enjoy a newfound sense of security, and always there is the opportunity, if you work hard, to better your station even further.
From the highest ground of all, Pilar-Parrico declares that it is natural to prioritize one’s own happiness over that of strangers. One cannot climb high without a solid foundation, and thus the higher one climbs the more they must fortify the stations of all those below, and thus the highest’s accomplishments are everyone’s accomplishments, their comforts everyone’s comforts.
For the lowest and highest alike true happiness remains elusive, for there is always higher to climb.
These claims captivate even those at the lowest tiers of the mountain, and their productive energy fuels a rate of development the people have never before experienced. New wonders, new comforts, new amusements emerge seemingly every day. Yet for the lowest and highest alike true happiness remains elusive, for there is always higher to climb. And as Pilar-Parrico reaches ever greater heights, the distance between them and the lowest only increases.
Pilot-Ligo did not experience the raft directly, but they remember. It may not have been perfect, they concede, but its ideals were pure, uncompromised by factionalism and competition. The mountain has simply replaced the tyranny of the fabled caravan with the tyranny of the so-called highest. Only by abandoning the mountain can the influence of Pilar-Fortis, who begat Pilot-Kanawa, who begat Pilar-Parrico, be truly extinguished.
Pilar-Parrico looks down at all the progress they have wrought and concludes that any flaws in their existence must be of flaws of implementation, not of design. The ideals of the mountain are every bit as sound as those of the raft, and if the lowest couldn’t find it within themselves to rise higher, that was simply the way of things: an ever-rising apex requires an ever-wider foundation.
The problem, of course, is that no mountain rises forever. The peak is now in sight, and Pilar-Parrico is forced to reckon with the reality that soon there will be no farther left to climb. The solution is clear: the mountain must be built higher. There is no shortage of earth farther down, and the work of extracting it and transporting it to the mountain’s peak will be just the thing to restore Pilot-Ligo’s vaunted communal spirit — who would not want to play a part in quite literally building a better world, one armful at a time?
Pilot-Ligo asserts that the idea is nonsense, that the highest are suffering from a lack of oxygen, but Pilar-Parrico’s voice is loud, and carries far. The great project commences, and for a time, things stabilize. Pilar-Parrico’s ascent resumes, and they rest in the knowledge that balance has been restored: if it had not, why would they be rewarded so? And all the while, the gaps in the mountain below grow larger.
One day, finally, the digging goes too far. Deep in the side of the mountain, a man-made cavern collapses, unsettling the land above it, and the land above that. An epic earthquake to rival the great storm of antiquity wreaks havoc on the people of the mountain, swallowing farms, toppling towers, and decimating the lowest and highest alike — perhaps the highest most of all, for their land was built on a fantasy and they had the farthest to fall.
As the dust settles and the survivors begin to gather, Pilar-Parrico and Pilot-Ligo are nowhere to be seen. Their time has ended, and new voices must lead the way. With the tragedy fresh in their minds, the people realize that their thinking had become so rigid that they could no longer see the truths in front of their faces. Their next home must be grown from the seeds of compromise — the stability of the mountain, yes, but also the harmony of the sea.
Upon one thing everyone can agree: only the flattest possible terrain will do. To live once more at varying elevations would only foster new divisions. They will return to the sea, but this time, they will settle on the shoreline. Birthed as it was from the lessons of the past, this new home would be the one in which the people could finally live with each other in peace.
As long as the people live, there will always be Pilots and Pilars among them.
As the people trek to the shoreline, the remains of the mountain recede behind them, preserved only in memory. But as they thrill at the possibilities of the future, deep in the recesses of their collective consciousness an inevitable truth lies dormant, waiting for its moment: the truth that no home will ever be so comfortable as to quiet the voices crying for somewhere else. That no leader will ever be so fair as to satisfy those who demand more. As long as the people live, there will always be Pilots and Pilars among them.
But their struggles had not been for nothing; the shoreline will not be a return to the sea any more than the mountain had been a return to the desert. Those places were simply rungs on an endless ladder, repairs on a mechanism that will never be perfected, and only the failures of the past could have brought the people to this exciting new present. The Pilots and Pilars, after all, are the voices of the people themselves.
Comfort numbs, and once a failure has been accounted for it is soon forgotten. The curse of time is that no one on the mountain could truly know the sea, and no one on the sea could truly know the desert.
In time the people will learn that the shoreline is a rung on the ladder as well. Because the truth is this: you can’t live on the shoreline forever. All you can do is prepare for the tide to come.
Next: After two pretty challenging topics I’m happy to say that my next piece will be both shorter and easier to parse, if somewhat challenging in form: I’m going to attempt a straightforward humor piece, something that can be read aloud with the rhythm of a standup comedy monologue. How successful I’ll be remains to be seen, but if nothing else it shouldn’t take anywhere near as long to complete.
