The Cloud Also Rises

Once in China, I hiked up the famed Huang Shan, or Yellow Mountain, hoping to get a good view. But a cloud sat at the top and I could see only a cold, gray white out. I'd stand at this ledge at the end of the world and seemed to see nothing itself. I spent the night at a hostel, but the cloud was still there the next morning. Kinda frustrating. Kinda depressing.

I was about ready to admit defeat and go back to my apt., and get as far away from Huang Shan as possible. But my roommate, bless his soul, insisted we paid money to get up there, that we might as well explore the mountain for fun, for its own sake. That was the difference, I think, that we saw the mountain for its own sake, and not our own.

For a cold wind began to move and like a slow curtain rising the cloud began to lift; we began to discern shapes, depths, distances, even colors, as the curtain slowly retreated, arose, teased at us.

Finally our patience was rewarded; the cloud whole-sale lifted, and we beheld vibrant green bamboo forests rolling into the morning sky as far as the eye could see, surrounded by mountains, cliffs, crevices, and generally such beauty that I fell to my knees in awe, overwhelmed by the sublime that contained not only the valley, but myself and all else.

I think upon that trip to consider that the Post-Modernists (all due respect and love to Derrida) are wrong who proclaim with missionary zeal that what underlies behind the everything is the nothing; rather, I am forced to agree with the Chinese Taoists, that what fills the nothing is the everything, which is not a means to an end, but an end unto itself.

And I remember then to remember now that the cloud is not everything, nor is it nothing; but rather the cloud must also rise, and always rise, and we shall see at last.