A Journey Through the Underworld

Last night I car­ried into my sleep the ten­sions I live with while awake — the same ten­sions many car­ry right now. I felt cramped, smoth­ered, yet I could­n’t escape from the place where I found myself. I was part of a slow-mov­ing hor­ror, a crazy dark­ness. Then grad­u­al­ly, some­thing of life and san­i­ty returned to me, a frag­ment any­way, and I was trans­port­ed to the dim mouth of a cave, an open­ing that some­how I knew might take me to anoth­er place, anoth­er con­ti­nent. I entered, going deep­er and deep­er, with a sub­tle light guid­ing. At a cer­tain point it was clear that oth­ers had come this way before me, had them­selves carved out the path for­ward: a set of smooth, slick walls; a nar­row, twist­ing pas­sage­way that many times seemed to come to an end only to bend wild­ly back on itself, a strange labyrinth but nev­er a maze. Some­how I slipped through know­ing that oth­ers might not be able make it this way. 

Soon­er than I expect­ed the pas­sage widened and I saw a light ahead, a bril­liant por­tal with green vines dan­gling down. I knew there was sand beyond, a beach, the open sea. I knew then this was the way back to free­dom. I had found it, or bet­ter said, I was lucky. Some­how, psy­chi­cal­ly, I had been giv­en it by those who had come before.

The ancient term for this dream is kataba­sis, a Greek word mean­ing a jour­ney to the under­ground, from which ulti­mate­ly one may draw some spe­cial gift or knowledge. 

What that gift or knowl­edge might be I do not yet understand.

For now, I see the great indig­ni­ties every day, the vile accu­sa­tions and emo­tion­al smears, the gap­ing igno­rances, the self-enhanc­ing divi­sive­ness, the appeals to mov­ing on or tak­ing “ratio­nal” steps that do not dis­guise what is real: con­fu­sion, anger and desire to fight; peo­ple already exhaust­ed, ready to look away; the fright­ened chil­dren and the fright­ened, weak­ened adults fac­ing a cun­ning new autoc­ra­cy; and the sad­ness. Sad­ness! Out­rage and con­tempt, like two hors­es begin to pull a wag­onload of corpses — don’t you know? — our worst capa­bil­i­ties dragged for­ward while we search around for our best ones. There is hope, that sub­tle light, but vio­lence also approach­es swift­ly from its not-so-hid­den quar­ters. The ten­sion does not end.

Too much dra­ma? Oh, well, maybe — you be the judge. At the moment, I have only the dream to reas­sure me that we will emerge some­day with a gift, per­haps appre­ci­at­ing our pre­cious free­doms in a new way. It will sure­ly be a new “con­ti­nent” that we find, the rein­ven­tion of what we mean by a “good coun­try.” What is cer­tain is that we have no choice but to go through the under­world for now, encoun­ter­ing each of those tight, near­ly impos­si­ble pas­sages in turn. There will be doubt and the fear of get­ting stuck but also, with luck, that light to guide us. 

Per­haps it is so that not all of us will make it through, but at present there does­n’t seem to be anoth­er way forward. 

There will be casu­al­ties, as there have always been.

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