The Tower
We didn't notice it. We spent hours contemplating, ruminating, worrying, arguing, going over the plans back and forth, up and down. We had consultations, supervision, feedback. We read books, we did exercises. We wrote reams of pages on everything that might have gone wrong and how to make it right.
When it hit, we didn't see it coming. The one thing no one contemplated, or contemplated seriously anyway. A passing thought. A glance up, a flicker of an intimation: that seems off somehow.
Our precious self-concept. Our beautiful agenda. Our magnum opus. Our utopian dream. Our religious vision. All dashed to dust from a moment's carelessness, a glance in the wrong direction. How can something take so much effort to build and so little to destroy?
Yet the cracks had been accumulating. Nothing happens in an instant but the impact and the fall. Nothing occurs in a vacuum. Nothing is separate. That is the lie that caused us to build. If only we can get higher from this ball of dirt and filth, if only we could touch the firmament! Then we would free ourselves of this vale of incoherence, death, and meaninglessness.
The ball of fire is the apple of chaos thrown into the party. Discordia revenging her snub. The thirteenth witch offering her unwanted blessing. And after all this, after all the heart and passion poured out, all that's left is to watch the edifice collapse upon itself.
Now we return to the dirt. Some of us are screaming and crying. Some are blaming each other, or the gods. Some choose to ignore what is happening. Some pretend we will begin again and make something better. More clinging and delusions.
We cannot rush to the next project. The collapse must be mourned. We will never learn if we simply walk away now. We may take the time to clear away, to salvage what can be saved, to dispose what must.
Having lost the center of our activity, the sterling epicenter of our idealism, we now have Geb, the open fields supporting us, and Nut, the starry sky stretching above. We have possibility, terrifying and free.