"So you need this?"
"Yes. That bond. That hope."
"Now? – For life?"
"Now and for life."
Life, said the stream of fast water down between the rocks in the cold darkness.
Ursula K. Le Guin, Unbound (translated by Jakub Němeček)
When astrobiologists search the universe for potential worlds where life could coexist, they are guided by the phrase follow the water – because we do not yet know any other life than that which depends on water. I have realized that in everything I exert my creative powers towards, I follow a very similar formula – only instead of water, the cornerstone of all life, I follow life itself.
I have always counted myself among those who, as the physicist Ševek beautifully reflects in the novel Unbound from my beloved Ursula K. Le Guin, They never cut the umbilical cord, they never weaned them from the breast of the universe. And honestly, I don't intend to change anything about it. In fact, I'm getting closer to this path the more the tentacles of technocratic and corporate ruthlessness, antisociality, isolationism, and resistance to any form of diversity and change - and therefore freedom - spread in the world.
We all owe our lives to the many-life of this planet. And it is a cruel irony that people whose astronomical wealth would not exist without the active swarming of this many-life turn their backs on this simple yet so essential fact. Worse, so many of the poor, who are the first to pay the price for the self-centeredness of the powerful, enthusiastically applaud them in their efforts to shackle, plunder, and de-live this world, and aid them in their political influence through their elections and votes.
I have no grand plan to defy this gloom, but I can share with you a little hope that I found in the books of the aforementioned American writer Ursula K. Le Guin, and that I repeatedly find while wandering the countryside. In most of her novels, whether it be the fantasy saga Earthsea or the science fiction works of the so-called Hain cycle, Le Guin expresses the following belief in various variations: Where there is life, there is hope..
Sometimes this belief is expressed directly – in these specific words, for example, in the thought process of one of the human characters in a novella. The world is a forest, the forest is the worldwhich for Avatar so unbridledly plundered by James Cameron – sometimes hidden between the lines. But the revelatory power that springs from it is undiluted.
I know that power. I know it well, because it touches me vividly every time I lie somewhere in the grass, for which I have such a peculiarly tender weakness, perhaps from one of my earlier prairie lives: on Bacín, on spring-scented Vladař, on Pecca near Prague's Stromovka, on the summit of Křižák. It was there, on Křižák, one of the countless volcanic peaks of the Bohemian Central Highlands, that it touched me perhaps most intimately so far.
It was last year, at the beginning of June. I remember every detail, every scent, every creak of that broad day. I remember everything along the way. Ash trees, tall and bright ash trees in the wind and sun. A little tree, forever motionless on the glowing asphalt. So much unseen life. So much unseen death. The rustling barley. A frightened blackbird. The wave of intense excitement that ran through my body – that familiar tremor when the body starts moving after a long time, when the world sucks it back into the road – I had barely stepped out of the bus stop in Libčevs.
But most of all, as I climb the steep slope of Křižák, it's as if an epiphany awaits me at its summit. I just close my eyes and I'm there again, in that thundering avalanche again, swept away by a rush of emotions. My heart is pounding wildly, tangled, whipped by anticipation. I feel that with every step I take I'm closer to some great geological or historical turning point. And then finally I climb up and
I gasp for breath.
From horizon to horizon stretches the world as it is: infinitely unbound, infinitely lush, a world of sun, water, exuberant entanglement. Wave after wave. Up, down. In, out. Jotei. Denali. Atlas. A tangle of vines. Flying squirrels. Ocean trenches. Smoking vents. Monsoon rains. Pink dolphins. Karst caves. Glacial moraines. Rice fields. Multicolored sari. Multicolored thistles. Multicolored bloom in the California desert. Swift eels in the foamy lace of swift rivers. Hoofprints in the ochre, parched, cracked brown earth.
Sweaty and happy, I lower my frayed, sun-bleached backpack from my back and lie down on a small patch of land, as if made for blending in. It's blowing hard up here at the top, the rocks are throwing wind vanes, the westerly wind whistles over the sharp edges of the basalt. I close my eyes, my palms facing the ground.
Minutes are passing. Minutes are disappearing.
The solar wind creates a dazzling display of fireworks high above the ground.
I stretch out towards the life around me, towards the wild strawberries on the hillside, the flowers of sage, carnations, poppies, primroses and flax, the quails in the thorny tufts of blackthorns, the buntings in the tinkling meadow whistles, the grazing sheep, the windswept clouds, the distant blue of the sky. Me. The mountain. Me, the mountain. The mountain-me.
And suddenly I know. I know that everything will be fine. That we won't fall forever.
I am supported by thousands of warm, soft hands, hands without orders, hands without anger, thousands of hands accepting and giving gifts, inviting dance and reconciliation, thousands of determined, selfless, pampering hands that hold the world as gently as a newborn child, hands that have saved sperm whales and humpback whales, that work tirelessly on thousands of small and large acts of caring reciprocity.
No tyrant, no power-drunk oligarch or techno-baron yearning for immortality, can harm that safety net. He can tear it, he can weaken it, but he can never permanently disconnect it. That's what I learned from the books of Ursula K. Le Guin. That's what the Crusader gifted me with. I find myself doing it again and again as I follow life.
You there on the other side of the darkness, will you come with me?
Josef Váňa fell from his horse on Vladař and broke his femur.
Thank you. Yes. One in all – all in one. We are all one big Cosmic Consciousness in every single millimeter and second. A look from the outside and inside at All of This – like a movie – sometimes beautiful warm scenes, other times the Apocalypse – helps. Just like you from Crusader – nature, which explains and supplies Love, Faith and Hope.
Zuzana Kinkalova