The View from the Well (Creative Writing Assignment #18)

Note: Again, the quote below is purely the creation of the author.

“You must go forward. You cannot linger here. This place is a process. Down and rise again. Descend and ascend. This is the eternal and infinite recurrence.”

- Puteus Condus, “A Treatise on the Metaphysical Functions of Wells and Other Subterranean Shafts”

With some minor approximations one can deconstruct the well into two fundamental geometrical entities. The first is the cylinder, oriented such that the plane of its diameter is orthogonal to any line projected from the Earth’s center of mass.

I have come to the first opening onto the well shaft; it is only a few meters below the top. At this window the air is still thick and hot. It spills over the edges above, cascading down past me into the dim void. I cannot see this, but pushing my head out I can feel the heat spiraling and splashing in its descent. Above are the sounds of sparrows and I imagine them, their beaks open trying to expel the late-afternoon heat. I am still connected to the world here. When I look downward I see a million scintillating motes of Italian dust caught in the descending ray of light. Beyond is an indistinct pool. There is still a veil of unreality that separates me from it. I would not be surprised if suddenly the pool was revealed to be only an ingenious optical illusion. In the shaft the lines of the stones all lead downwards, drawing the eye to the watery vortex.

The second component is the set of double helix stairs that coil around the descending cylinder. Each helix makes six full rotations from the surface to the water. The stairs and cylindrical well shaft meet at windows.

The third opening and the light has changed. Or is it my eyes that have changed? This place is a process. Here the air is lighter; the summer humors that float above cannot weigh down this place. The warm tendrils of the sun snake their way down the stones to touch this point. I glance above and see that the sky has become deeper and clearer. The water below is an iridescent blue that mirrors the brilliant sky. These are two realities and I am in between them. Leaning against these cool stones, halfway between water and sky one can almost feel at ease. At this moment I could choose to return to the feverish Italian afternoon, or I could continue my descent toward the phosphorescent liquid that stares upward toward me, a pale eye. At this point nothing is certain. There is a freedom here where I can see simultaneously see into two worlds.

At the side of the shaft that extends into the Earth, the two helices meet on a bridge that bisects the diameter of the shaft and stands a meter above the water. Here, he who journeyed down may, without ever doubling back, ascend again to the world again.

I walk to the center of the brittle bridge that crosses the bottom of the well. The air has become thick again, but this time is saturated with the damp of ancient stone. This place is not cold. But it is absent of heat. The water below my feet is luminous, as if its purity itself was enough to give it light. It gladly reveals the sandy bottom several meters down. Looking up I see a sky purer than any other I have seen. I once believed that to see the ideal through the crude imperfections of reality I had to reach a point infinitely close to that entity. The cracked mirror when viewed closely enough reveals only endless repetition of the elegant and incorruptible atom. Looking up at the sky now though, I wonder if the opposite might be true as well. Perhaps one can also use complete isolation to see through to the perfection in everything. Here at the bottom the lines of the stone all lead upwards. I must go forward. I cannot linger here.