An entirely realistic castle sits atop a large white cloud, upon which it gets wafted, quite practically, from place to place; for this castle is blessed with the agility of contemplation, and meditation can never be pinned down to the stasis of a fact. Many have it in mind to attain the castle, which to different people means different things; maybe some hope to step forward solemnly across the drawbridge flanked by sky; perhaps, for others, it is sufficient simply to put a foot upon the cloud that upholds it, to experience the absolute softness of its support. But all who seek it must endure a certain, wretched night in a coaching house, in which they learn at last what it really is, and that they will never attain it. They will close the doors; they will draw their swords; they will put them, all of them, even the nuns, up against a wall. They will leave them there to fret and speculate for an hour, and no one will answer the bell, when it rings; and no one will put a name to the faces on the posters, and no one will buy cigarettes from the old, decrepit machine that stands like a defunct sentry in the corner. For it seems this is not a time for explanations or justifications or understanding; this is a time for deeds, but without accusation there can be no possibility of acquittal.

And then, eventually, someone will move; someone will say something; someone will begin to realize that if the soldiers give no answers, it isn’t through want of compassion, but because there are no answers to give. Looking at them more narrowly, they will suddenly notice the dish cloths hanging from their belts, and then the open door to the kitchen. And finally they will start to realize that this charade is not the beginning of something barbaric, but, rather, the end of a lesson that began the instant the door of the coaching house opened to grant them admittance. Seeing that no one any longer restrains them, they will turn away from the wall; some of them will return to their seats at the bar; those who do, it should be noted, will never leave them; that is their destiny now; their castle lies elsewhere. Others will pause at the window; there is so much to see. So be it for them that they spend their lives in seeing; the scenes, after all, are unending; for the window is nothing but a pause, itself creating the pictures as a reason to remain. Others still will make it as far as the snowbound streets beyond the coaching house - fair speed to them. You can follow the lane to nowhere; that is one option; or you can cut across the white fields, within which two gales, one circling and smooth, one low and long, have been planted among the wild teasels and Queen Anne’s Lace. But their interlocking is precise; they are cogged with different teeth; the circuit of the one and the part circuit of the other will together sweep through every corner. Neither is this the way to the eternal castle, although, for a time, blue dreams will seem to buoy you aloft there.

So none of them will reach their castle. But it doesn’t matter; maybe the castle can’t be reached; maybe they were destined never to reach it, anyway. Either way, at that moment, standing up against the wall with no expectation of tomorrow, as if before the final judgment, all of them must have noticed a patch of sun among the flagstones, and thought to themselves something like this: However many books are written and even if, some day, language as a whole is proven to be false, nothing will stop the sun from appearing here; nothing will take away its meaning, or lend it the support of any more general meaning than this. And this simple give and take – the sunlight and the flagstones, the meaning which neither conceals itself nor has anything to reveal – this is sufficient to explain everything.

Of course, none of them know what the future will bring; and, finding themselves free again, they cannot guess that the rest of their lives will radiate backward toward that day, toward the paradoxical constraint of one moment of perfect opportunity. But from the other end, away from that day stretch any number of cracked and crooked paths. Errors of judgment and deficiencies of vision slowly twist everything out of shape, until all that remains is a blind and baffled circling. That is how life has to be, once you have fallen within the shadow of the eternal castle; that is how life has to be, now that it stands ever before you. You put one foot after the other, simply in order to prove there is a space upon the path ahead, and to leave the current space, which is already a mistake, behind.