The Land Where No Man Is

This is the Land Where No Man Is.

There is peace here. Stillness, at last.

Relief. One feels safe, if only for the moment: the chase, the flight, the incessant clashing or brandishing of weapons, fighting one's way through the pack of others fighting their way, or else biding one's time with impatience, reading the signs, tasting the wind, parsing the clouds — all done with, as if long ago.

Few come here; fewer still return to the land where all men are. Once brought here, one understands why. In the land where all men are, it is nearly impossible to conceive that there even is such a place as the land where no man is, let alone find it. Nearly. And nearly is near enough for most, for they have other things to do — for other men, to other men, with other men, in the world they have builded together.

Of the very very few for whom the word 'impossible' is not a comfort but a summons, very very few ever find the land where no man is, for they do not know how to look for such a place: all their maps and their diagrams, their tools and their engines, their lessons and their practices, were devised to be deployed in the land where all men are, and none are any use in the land where no man is.

There is no Teacher here, no Teaching to be brought back from here. This is not the wilderness, in its many kinds, of which the world is but one. To seek this place, one must set off in the opposite direction from all worlds.

To approach the land where no man is, one must abandon every thing in the world, and this cannot be done without violence. It is also impossible to do without nearly impossible providence, such as being the only survivor of a holocaust of one's own igniting.