The Interface between the Valley and pennings of Keylong

I visited the valley last week, treacherous roads, rules imposed,
at least the view’s worthwhile.
I drove several hours; roads of mud and gravel, 
turns sharp—elevation steep,
the only thing keeping me at bay was the purpose at hand, 
and rare March winds—
they carried along a distinct flair:
a hope for the year to come, and the chance of escape
from perpetual indictment to some form of sentient life—
from floods of remorse in a funeral offshore;
from guttural underwater cries that go unheard, 
from the unrivaled passage of life, as the Great Drought comes forth 
at the turn of century, that follows a different standard of days and months—
the discrepancy is human, so is complacency, and trust.

On a detour somewhere, I lean off my way—disrupt the course, 
the hill I was going up hadn’t seen rain, 
“A century here has passed”, came briefly, that thought.
I continued uphill, until the slope made way for plains,
a building rose before me—a congregation of monks I’d come to expect, 
but there were none, I assumed they’d secluded in their monastical veils perhaps.
I walked inside with swollen toes, aching from days of abuse, treading frozen roads.
A room inside had statues of the Buddha and the rest of the ambitious cult: 
the masters, and saints, and demons that’d been invited 
when defeat changed their ways.
All figures in sum were decent, meticulously crafted even, 
yet I felt intimidated almost, something urging me to leave—
fairly certain it was my own mind, I blamed it on the glass wall 
that kept god away from us all, with bills of foreign currency hacked into the frame— 
with foreign scripts, embodying a shared passage—
many people had been to that place;
it certainly lost a bit of its spark then.

My purpose then called when everything seemed bleak. 
All cages came to be true: visible that very moment—
I could see that language was one, 
made even smaller with my mastery of the tongue;
then all the moments that I spent with, or for someone else—
acting in influence—learning a certain way to act, 
or ingesting it in full, becoming someone else.

A tree in the backyard had spiralled all the way to its roots:
I could only see its top—branches occurring from stray outer spirals, 
like fibres straying from a yarn.
I thought little of it, yet the idea intrigued me for days to come.
I took a long breath to collect all that was coming undone off me—
all that I bled, and continued downhill, with the old ambition as compass—
what was it that I now had in mind?

Clouds took the sky an hour into the drive, 
I couldn’t see more than a couple metres ahead, I slowed the car,
looking for a place to park, and camp out the night.
Every other minute, I picked up more pace, 
and desperation that came with a sky that grew dark and bleak, 
and a horizon that remained veiled.
After a while I’d forgotten I had a plan to stop
and rest past sunset, perhaps because it never came, 
or any view of the sun, except when I was close to the sky, on that hill.

I wished to see my summer home that I built in the Year of the Amidst, 
unknowingly preparing for its fall, and then came the road—
a single straight cut across the valley.
I slowed my pace, turned down the lights, and the music, 
immersing myself in the splatter of rain as it fell on the roof, 
and then my loft appeared, and the lights inside were lit—
I trembled in shock.
There wasn’t any moment to spare and think the nexus of action, 
at this point I was too far gone;
another this was taken from me I assumed, 
a beggar, a settler from the lower plains had terrorised my home.
How could I revolt in the very place that embodied solace, comfort and peace?
I went an extra hour uphill, into the snowy abyss, 
pushing my car to as far as it would go with on the highest speed, 
on the coldest front, how long will my worker sow?
I was punishing the car I thought, but I was tormenting us both instead,
I trembled, the car finally stopped at the market I once went to,
to buy groceries and a jacket.
“What a terrible fate…” I said to myself, 
even in my worst, freezing moments, I was amongst people, 
and all treachery was self imposed.
What was it that I had in mind?