In Nightmares We're Alone (34 page)

We drive for hours. We drive for days. Maybe we drive for years or centuries, but we are outside of time now. We must drive from here. We must, so that we can see it from far enough to know its beauty, and then from close enough to know its scale.

And eventually, one night, there does come a time when we reach it. But by the time we get close, the wonder with which we regarded it from afar is replaced once again with terror and the tree is no longer a tree.

The bus comes to a stop and the doors open. We climb out into the valley because there is no such thing as choice.

This close up, at the base of the tree, all one can see is an infinite wall of suffering, spanning left and right and upward as far as the eye can see. And the tree is composed of every living thing that has ever sprouted from the Earth, from that first molecule that came from God knows where. That molecule that was, perhaps, itself God.

Every living thing was born from another living thing, every living thing lived and died so another could live and die. All these lifeforms were cells and the cells composed the tree. And I was one cell. And Casey was one cell. And Macie and Elaine and Heather and Arthur and Mom and Dad and you. And every dog and every dinosaur, every blade of grass. Every virus. Every parasite.

Every living thing was and is The Great Tree. That Thing We Don’t Quite See.

Life.

Pressed together, stacked on top of each other, crushed under the weight of all life on Earth, each individual, each subjective expression of the concept of life, each body lies naked and screaming in the pile of pain and anguish that is The Great Tree. And as I walk to the base of the trunk, it’s Arthur’s face that greets me.

“Help me, Edna!” he screams, reaching out a hand from the pile of howling shrieks. “Take my hand! Pull me away from this!”

This is what everyone shouts. What everyone is always shouting.

As futile as I know the fight is, and because there is nothing else to do, I reach out and take my husband’s hand. He pulls me into the crowded abyss of suffering that is Life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said,
“I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”

Well, Mr. Emerson, here is what I know, the only thing of value I’ve ever learned:

If you could see it, That Thing We Don’t Quite See, from millions of miles away—if you could look at all of Life objectively, in its own terms, the way it’s meant to be seen—you would see it as the profound and glorious splendor that it is.

It is a cruel and tragic joke that we must see God from the inside; if we could look from a distance, I think we’d all stop screaming.

About the Author

Greg Sisco is a novelist and independent filmmaker, as well as an occasional actor and standup comic. For an up-to-date list of his works and information on future projects, visit his website:

www.GregSisco.com