He speaks of “wiseacring” in the beginning, and is as good as his word. The book is filled with metaphors. In one place he paints fake birds, a simple enough symbol. In another he takes a heavy rock and dives deep into the ocean to find treasures, another simple enough metaphor.
But in one case he crosses some desert in Asia–perhaps the Gobi, I forget as I read this more than a decade ago–and they use stilts to stay above the shifting sands. I have long wondered just what he meant by this. It was obviously a metaphor, but I wasn’t sure for what.
Last night I dreamed I was in a car with extended wheels that went down 40′. A storm hit and the water came around the car, but it was still able to move, still able to drive. I have had one other similar dream, where I was with my children. I kept the seat we were in stable, in a sea of change.
The stilts, in my view, and the extended car, are ways of connecting with reality in a sea of emotion and change. Quiet, and stillness are ideal, but not always obtainable. The stilts are a way of saying to yourself, when must pass through a difficult place, that “reality is what I say it is”, because you cannot at that moment see, cannot feel clearly, cannot sort things out, cannot find peace and quiet.
The stilts are a will with which you orient and move yourself in times of random movement, of shifting sands. It is how you keep your sanity, and ability to come back to earth eventually.
The alternative, which I also saw on display, was many cars floating on the tide. A car, in America, is a symbol of power, of control, of motion. To float on the tide, is to lose agency, to lose personal power.
And so many people, now, are floating on the tide. The storms of our modern world have overwhelmed them. They have lost their footing, and cannot now find their way back.
This is a very hard time. Very hard indeed.
My work continues.