THE HILL
("First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is")

On that particular day however, she had walked, via the wood's route, all the way to Arch Rock without thinking and without enjoyment. At the cliff's edge she had looked out dully at the sea and then had climbed down the steep cliff path, crossed the stream, and climbed up the opposite bank. There she had sat, looking across to the hill where she was now sitting eating lunch. It had been grey day with cold gusts of wind coming off the water so she had faced away from the cliff's edge. Her eyes had traced the hill's form unconsciously as she'd sat in a mild stupor.
Slowly as she actually began to see the hill, she began to cry. She cried simply because she hurt...Where had it begun? She wondered. She thought about her present life, her unhappiness. She thought about college before that. She wondered why she wasn't married. She thought about high school even. And happiness? She had never really thought about happiness before. What was it anyway? And she thought about her childhood, and her idea of what it would be like when she grew up. And she felt so forlorn, so helpless and so lonely. Then her tears had come more evenly and she had seen the rolling hill blurred with its rustling grasses. She liked the hill, and she thought about death and about solitude. And she thought about saying "Good-bye" and about death. About her death and about loving. She thought about mourning ...and she thought maybe there was no such thing...just mixed up feelings - dependencies. Things went where they went. That's all. Death itself was not so awesome, after all what held us here in life were the confused things, the troubles. The beautiful things made no claim on us, even love ... especially love! And then it was the same somehow, living or dying, and she practiced saying "good-bye" to the people and places she'd known, even to the things that she used at home like her hairbrush. It felt good. "Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye." It was easy. And she looked at the hill and its form was perfect just exactly as it was and she loved the hill and so she said "good-bye" to the hill too and then she had a most peculiar feeling as if the hill were not there at all. She could see it all the while, the hill; grass-covered, gently undulating in the sharp breeze, the hill; ancient, enduring, indifferent, the hill; wobbly. And she was wobbly too. It was a good feeling and a sad feeling and a warm feeling. She sat for a long time. Existence seemed so chancy...a momentary balance with no end points and no center either. Like a line without dimension, only the further one got from its place of movement, the more semblance it had, the more urgent it appeared.
She felt she had understood something that day, she felt complete, simple. She felt that she had "understood" death.
Excerpt from The Peanut and the Pearl by Edna Bale