Jumping (6 page)

“Sorry. I'll stop. That's what comes from reading too much philosophy. The philosophers talk about the Void the most, but it stays theoretical, not like the one we have out in the woods here.”

This talk of the Void makes me think of all of the talk of ascension, transformation, 2012, portals, etc., going on now in the “new age” world, which has made its way into mainstream media, too. It seems part of a continuum of definitions of dark, transformative places, from more to less real. “The Void seems to have more relevance than it has had in a while,” I offered. “It seems less a place to avoid, than a place that has some kind of necessary part in the scheme of things?” I looked at him as he pondered my question. “Okay,” I said to him, trying to go back to the question I started with. “I know where you stand on jumping. Where are you on Voids?”

“Well, I don't know,” he said, leaving the safety of the swing to contemplate my question. “I'm not where I was when I started, I know that, but I don't know if I can define where I am now. Before, you're right, Voids were just scary places—like they still are for most of our own town's people.”

“Yes. I'm like them,” I told him. “I have the same worrying questions. I wonder why this town has a Void and others don't. Are you being punished somehow? Are you meant to do something with it? Honor it? Make some kind of sacrifices to it? Jump into it? Ignore it, for your own safety and well-being?” I pause for breath. These are questions I've had for a long time.

“You do ask questions, don't you?” he laughed. “Of course, I have those questions, too. None of them are easy to answer. So don't think I have all the answers! I don't know if other towns have Voids, but I don't believe this is the only one in the country. A town could have one, somewhere on its outskirts, and not know it, if no one stumbled on it. I think we know about ours because of the Tribe, on the outskirts of town, who've always known about it, from what I can tell. They don't particularly talk about it, but it's mentioned occasionally in the town records. The Tribe used to have ceremonies there, using it as a place to offer thanks to their ancestors, because it seemed to afford greater accessibility to those not in the here-and-now. They don't question why it's here. They just accept it.”

“Yeah, they definitely don't seem interested in talking about it. I tried talking to a few people I saw around town, and they didn't seem to know what I was talking about.”

“I've come to believe that—that we need Voids—even if I don't fully understand why,” mused Miles. “It makes me appreciate the one we have in the woods in a different way—though I'm not sure ‘appreciate’ is the right word. Maybe ‘respect’ is better.”

“Well, and it makes me wonder if the Void needs a name?” I laughed. “Wouldn't that make it warmer and friendlier? Maybe we could have a Void-naming contest.” I'm only half-joking, wondering why no one has ever named this particular geographic feature, as they've named all others.

“Yeah, but then it might become known—known as a place for jumping, like some high bridges in this country. I can think of a couple of the more famous ones—the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or the Gorge Bridge outside of the little town of Taos, New Mexico. About twenty people a year jump from the Golden Gate Bridge, and more than 150 have jumped from the Gorge Bridge since it was built in 1965. Would we want to try to police that? I wouldn't. I'd like to keep it the way it is.”

I told him, “I can't figure out if I want it done away with or immortalized as a shrine.”

“Yeah. Me either,” he said honestly. “And a shrine to what?”

As I walked home from his place, beneath a shimmering lattice of stars, to my cozy little rooms above the bank, hoping my writing will do positive things for the town, I realized there wasn't another person in the world I could be having a conversation like this with. And I realized, too, that I can't think of a single conversation that's more worth having.

My dreams that night were all about falling. I have a little fear of heights, so falling dreams are the worst for me. First, I fell through the sky, as if I had jumped from a plane, something I would never do. I fell and fell, paralyzed with fear, unable to catch my breath to scream, but trying desperately to. Suddenly, I fell through a hole into darkness, as if I'd been swallowed. I knew I was falling towards something, something waiting for me down there, but I didn't know what, and I could do nothing about it—just fall. I tried to argue with it as I fell, yelling, “No! You have no right!” I woke in a sweat. I knew someone had been falling with me, just above me, just out of sight.

I
HAVE TO GO BACK
. I have to go and I have to stay at the edge until I figure this out. For the story, sure, but this is bigger. I know this. It has hold of me, has had hold of me since I was a kid. I managed to stand there for what felt like a quick minute when I first got to town. I fled then, spooked and disoriented knowing time sped by as I stood there, without my knowing. What will happen if I stay at the edge?
Will it possess me?
I think. I know it's irrational of me to think that, but if a Void isn't irrational, what is? Already most of my waking thoughts are about it, not to mention wherever I go at night, in dreams. Am I rational right now? Probably not. I'm using up too much of my rational energy avoiding the Void. My only hope to get any rational thinking back might be to go to the edge and reclaim it. Or lose it forever.

From the first time I heard about the Void—I must have been no more than six or seven and heard older kids trying to scare younger kids talking about it—I have been captivated. I knew those older kids were often full of it, but when I asked adults about it they couldn't give me a reasonable answer either. That really pricked up my ears and kept me thinking. “We aren't always meant to know the reasons why,” they said. “Sometimes you just have to accept God's will.” But I thought we
were
meant to know, which fueled a minor but steady passion about it over the years. But this was different, minor had become major, and passion had become compulsion.

So I know it's time to go, and one morning, after talking to Henry about what I've got so far, I decide to go. I don't tell him I'm going, I just agree as he tells me he likes what I have, and asks what else I plan to get. “You know, you should talk to all the officials—the police, the mayor—to see if what they say is different. The police always know what the real story is. They will have had some association with the Tribe, too,” he tells me.

“Yeah,” I say, absent mindedly.

“Babe,” he says sharply, “are you paying attention to me?”

“Yeah,” I lie. “I was writing it all down.” We hang up after I reassure him a few more times how smart he is and what a big help he is. Does he really fall for that? I wonder. Well, it might be half true. I pick up my bag and my keys and head for my car out front. I drive north, to the Void. I'm there within ten minutes, walking through the clearing, through the dappled summer sunshine to the Void's edge, feeling a light breeze ruffle my gauze skirt, hearing insects buzz in the grass. I catch sight of a small black fox on the other side of the clearing, darting into the tree line. That makes me smile.

As I stand at the edge of the Void now, calmly gazing in, I realize, with some surprise, that I have always liked knowing it exists, with all its risks and possibilities. It's like knowing that the Very Large Array exists just outside of Socorro, New Mexico, one of my favorite places. It's a place scientists can listen to space, just in case. Somebody's on that job, ready to establish contact when it comes. I feel that way about the Void. It's pretty essential, in terms of meaning, like those listeners at the Very Large Array. Because some of us believe we're meant to know. And I'd like to write that story.

Just standing on the edge, I suddenly know some things now about the Void that I didn't know before. Being this close makes a difference in your understanding of things.

I'm waiting for him, Duncan Robert, to create the truth of the Void for us, I realize, by telling us what he found there. He can't do that because he created it for himself when he jumped. His act of jumping made it what it was. He brought himself to it, yes, but he brought his act of jumping to it, too. Any realizations he had were actualized by his jump. And his jump is his jump.

I stand there, feeling understanding fill me. I've always been drawn to people who've been through recovery programs successfully, of their own will or through interventions, because they seem to have been through something that transformed them in a really empowering way. They have a new quiet confidence about them, as if they couldn't be pushed. Yet they are humble, too. A jump feels to me like it might do the same thing. It might take you through a process that makes you more than you were, that releases some of the fear you've accumulated.

I feel, too, the presence of a truth here. I can't deny it. The Void is what it is. It's got its own “normal,” separate from what we do or don't do, believe or don't believe. It doesn't require our belief, as the saying goes. I feel you can trust that, and I almost laugh out loud. I'm talking to myself about trusting a hole in the ground.

As I stand there, I'm aware that I'm still paralyzed by my fear of falling into it, of it swallowing me up for all eternity, of my no longer existing, no longer mattering, no longer seen or heard. My fear grows as I notice it. I feel I'm quickly losing my own sense of personal agency, and I start to feel helpless. A moment after that, my psychological and emotional sense of myself is reduced to that of a child. I'm overwhelmed by the power of the Void—its depth and darkness—and the powerlessness of me.

There's no arguing with that kind of presence. Either you have it or you don't. I don't, not in the face of the Void. I have never felt so insignificant, so matter-less. I stand there as a cold realization dawns on me. I've never felt so insignificant
except
. . . except when I was a small child, and I would feel my father's hands on me. I'm shocked by the emergence of this felt memory, as I always am when it materializes unexpectedly, sparked by something outside of me.

Such a deep, long-held, closely guarded secret, one that doesn't belong in the daylight, brought out so quickly. But I'm also beginning to understand that this is what the Void is about—the truth,
your
truth. The truth of whatever dark secrets still hold you in their clutches, whatever secrets your power still serves, leaving you paralyzed, without strength to move or save yourself or protect yourself.

So, this is what the Void is about for me, I think. This is what I'd be jumping into. I feel myself shrink in stature and feel the wind buffet me. The wind is stronger than I am, too. I don't know if I can hold my footing on the edge, and there's nothing nearby to hold on to. Just the grass at my feet. I drop to my knees, insides quivering, and grab hold of it, twining my fingers deeply into it, feeling its roots hold me back. I anchor myself there, and it feels like the most natural thing in the world, just as jumping almost had a moment ago, to have the grass holding me safe, to feel in partnership with it. I breathe, realizing I haven't been breathing, not deeply, as I do now.

I've lived with an awareness of my abuse for a long time, managing as best I could. There had been a time when the damaged part of me had more passion for living than I did, directing my choices, determining my course. But I've had years of afternoon therapy and night-time support groups, I remind myself, and multitudes of books that helped me confront and overcome the horror of it to get to its core and remove its poison. I understand the abuse scenario and everyone's roles and responsibilities better, and I'm not entangled in the levels of guilt and shame I used to be. I'm nobody's victim anymore, and proud of it. Maybe I overcompensate for the years of feeling powerless by challenging the men in my life more than I should, but at least I almost always couch those challenges in my version of kindness. My proximity to the Void shows me all this about myself. It shows me the things I can celebrate about myself, and it occurs to me that my healing can move through my
heart
now, and not just be a
head
understanding.

I feel a kind of euphoria at this. It becomes clear to me now that no one jumps into the Void as a victim. It's not about that. If I jumped right now, I wouldn't be jumping still feeling like a victim. I don't! I'd be jumping to experience something else. You jump from a position of strength! It's not like suicide, in which you jump out of a sense of desperation, or because you can't go on. That's why you wouldn't pick the Void for suicide. I'm certain now that Duncan Robert had no intention of suicide whatsoever.

This kind of jumping is a whole different kind of act, but it's been hard for me, or people in the town, or his mother, or even Miles to see that because the Void seems empty, even nihilistic. Yes, you go into it alone, and you're leaving everything beloved behind—people, pets, places, things. But as I stand here, I
know
I don't feel alone. I've never loved all those people and things more. I'm crouched here at the edge with a sense of wonder and peace. Where has all that paralyzing fear gone?

And that's how Miles found me. I felt him before I turned on my knees and saw he was there, with a wad of my long, tie-dyed skirt gripped in his hands. I could tell by the look of stark fear on his face that he had been afraid I was going to jump. And, well, I almost did! It had felt like the most natural thing in the world. Miles calls this “the lure of the Void,” he would tell me later. I hadn't known about this, but I certainly believe in it now. It doesn't happen to everyone, Miles says. It's only possible if you've made a kind of peace with your worst fears and they don't rule you.

“Your fears are your fears, hard won, every one of them” he would explain to me after, “but you have to get to the place where you no longer self-medicate against them, or lose whole days to them, or where you take them out and use them as weapons to wound or maim anyone around you. You know them, they know you, and everyone peacefully co-exists. They no longer assume they are in control. They just come out now and then to show you they still live there, and maybe always will.”