Black Canvas of Oblivion

Today my Guest Author is my adventurous grandson.
The hidden world in the dark depths of the earth come to light
through his senses and his phenomenal photography.

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Lights danced in the dark. There was one light and infinite darkness. It was as if every metaphor for good and evil was set before searching eyes. In and out, the beams twinkled off dusty haze- hundreds of feet off the deck. Silhouettes of steep walls massed like phantom cathedrals coming together and falling again by some consuming darkness. I yelled, and it rang through; sound was bouncing where light could not. My eyes were fixated on the hazy beam of a headlamp, and then it disappeared. The sun went out, and I was suspended, fooled by the dream of weightlessness. My mind, searching for shapes, cast phantasmal images on the blank canvas called oblivion. I locked off the rappelling rack and let my arms fall, fingers outstretched. I let my head fall back and hang, spinning slowly, eyes open. I related to the astronaut who had lost their cosmic directions, as if all of a sudden the moon, the earth, and sun had been extinguished. How often, I wondered, had I seen what Nothing looked like? It was against the intricate pulse of my senses that oblivion should be so apparent. I wanted to realize that my mind was not the only piece of me which doted on fantasy, which reveled in the of summoning of façades.

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There is a corner of America called ‘TAG’, where ancient limestone has been slowly eaten by time and water. Where the ghosts in the darkness are the ghosts which we carry with us. This is where fear plays tricks on you; this is where Time’s fickle, delicate pulse whispers. It is flailing its arms at us always, but in the overwhelming emptiness of endless night, there is little choice but to listen to the pulse– to the whisper. For me, the voices cause my chest to tighten. But only because they are at first unfamiliar. Soon I will be lost in the oblivion, fixed only by the polyester highway, the vertical lifeline which is a caver’s messiah. “Trust your Tools, trust your Mind, trust your Body.” I repeat in slow cadence for hours below the earth until these thoughts are like breathing. When the lights have come back on, I wish that I might bask in the infinite a little longer, yet, mankind is not tempered like the translucent troglobites underneath, and we must breach the surface once in a while to take in the breath of sunlight. It is the deal we make to navigate these many worlds: balance.  

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TAG stands for the tri-state area where Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia meet

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JBA September 2019