I sought that which erred on the dark side, but that still retained sufficent connection to the light that I would not lose my footing. I liked all that invited me into that darkness, but which had insufficient power to turn me ultimately from the light. Yet perhaps my deepest desire was for an all-engrossing darkness which would take me over in despite of myself, which would not threaten me with a lack of light, since it would exist completely as its eternal substitute.

If you can think of orthodoxy in the context of the curiosity for forbidden knowledge, you will understand my dilemma. I wanted to sip at that which can only be grasped. In writing that sentence, it is almost as if I had already made the decision. But if I had, I would not be writing now - or else be incapable of writing again.

The footsteps of the acolyte are soft and uncertain, and for both these reasons, they are compelling and believable. Divorce has yet to be made; the point of no return remains potential. To walk in that eerie dusk, somewhere between dark and light, to experience the miasma of a faith that could branch either way - this itself is a place within which one could lose oneself. To give oneself up to mystery, without daring to seek its source, to bring some power into being which is greater than the seeker, but from which the seeker can still turn, knowing that, even as the misty paths of the labyrinth confound our steps, so its walls protect us from its eyes.

One can grow old in this netherland, afraid alike to make or break with faith. One can take solace from its partial summons, which is its own kind of affirmation - the still space where two different kinds of meaning find their origin, the one stretching east, the other west, the one to where the sun must always rise, the other to where it must always set. But in this place there is no meaning except mist, and nothing can find, destroy or save us here. It is as if one were living one's own death - one's own erasure from the world, and just as there are no words to summon or banish us, so there are no words even to sustain our feet.