Free The Wall by H. G. Adler Page B

overlap each other, an image emerges, breathed into and called forth: “Now exist!” I am that image; to the degree that it speaks to me, I respond, appearing before the wall, which functions as protection, because before it I can exist and rise to become a figure that is visible and casts a shadow, though within myself I remain an indeterminate entity.
    The wall before me has never disappeared; I have known it for many years, not knowing when it first sprang up, though I didn’t always see it. Only when I peer forward intently and want to believe that I exist do I see it. Otherwise it does not appear to exist; for hours, often days, even many weeks on end, I do not notice it. Nor does the wall stand always at the same spot, for suddenly it will loom up where I would never have expected it. Sometimes it shimmers with wetness, almost like the flowing crest of awave, then at other times it rises up dogged and heavy, composed of piled-up, dense patches of fog, though always it’s the same wall. Whenever I feel invigorated and brave, I stride toward the wall, farther and farther, and yet it always stands before me. It is never far from me, but I have never gotten all the way to it. Indeed, I rush toward it, wanting to reach it, storm it, and overtake it, yet no matter how much I tirelessly try, it always remains there across from me, securely fixed and implacable. Wall of my vicissitude that often from an insatiable distance lures me onward, until I collapse before it exhausted, abandoning my pursuit. Then I kneel before it once again, wanting to sacrifice myself before it, but it only scorns such a desire. It does not care about me; it merely appears, rises, towers, admonishes, warns, even threatens, though remaining furtive, fooling the eyes, retreating silently, slowly, and steadily, drawing me toward it or holding me back, sometimes offering resistance and yet wandering off. Tirelessly this game repeats itself. I don’t own the wall, but it belongs to me alone, it having been created for no one else, meaning nothing to anyone else, neither good nor evil. Nor can I show it to anyone, prove it to anyone, or explain it, for it remains inexplicable to me as well, it being my wall, and only my wall, as it doesn’t belong to those who simply are self-evident, who hardly ever come up against it.
    It’s thus that I realize that I don’t belong to human society. I and the wall, we are alone, we belong together; there is nothing else that I belong to—what any academic would call an asocial existence. If I have been granted a consciousness, it doesn’t allow me the possibility of sharing a basic understanding with others who sense they are conscious. I am not part of any continuum that allows those who are self-evident—so they maintain, at least—to discover something in common or at least assume it. But what makes others tick? They run along their way, driven by their senses, intentions, wishes, and duties, they remember, which in turn nourishes them along their journey’s path. Does memory not lie at the root of all society? Yet I suspect that people each have their own wall. If this is so, then my belief is confirmed that the much lauded continuum of those who are self-evident actually doesn’t exist, that it’s only a dream, the conjuration of those who simply appear to be self-evident which vaults over the abyss of that which is not at all self-evident. Could not the continuum be evidence of a mighty past, the conscious symbol of a golden age, the myth of paradise,an exalted state of innocence or a dreamy fairy-tale existence that has been carried off but still stands separate before us, a looming, unreachable wall that, as an inscrutable archetype, perpetuates our descent from a society that once existed but has long since been lost?
    I can talk about most anything with Johanna, but even this protector between the self-evident world and myself balked with tender consideration at following along whenever I wanted to