“Valley of Grief”

The windswept reaches greet me as I reach the top of the hill, overlooking the flatland. Originally I had sought out a camera or something of the like to make these observations, but the village nearby lacked anything like that, not wishing to tarnish and spread out into the open a clear record of this place.

It is of no matter, though frustrating. I've never been a filmmaker or a photographer, and even if I were I doubt that I would be able to do this place justice. All I have in the world right now is my ability to still write, though everything else has been lost to me.

There is barely a cloud in the sky, the cold empty spaces I have found reminiscent of the cold empty reaches of an abandoned airfield or the salt flats of Africa and India. Those places I have only ever seen in film or picture, and I can see now how futile such an effort is.

How do you capture a feeling? I suppose that is what makes a photographer a good one or a filmmaker a person of vision.

I look upon the flatland, and I can see that it is not wholly flat.

There are brambles and all sorts of low lying grasses that dot the landscape, though this place scarcely receives enough rain to truly make these plants into anything more than brown husks much of the time.

I am writing this knowing that I cannot communicate much about myself in the words I have here. A person reading this may have assumptions about my gender, perhaps even the state of my mind, but in reality I cannot say that what I write gives anyone a clear indication/observation.

I miss her, and the dull empty spaces don't grant me any leniency from that feeling.

It is said that long ago, this place was in fact a wide open space, coated in hills and valleys. It is said that one day, a great thing stepped down on this place on its path across the cosmos. Just a single step and the whole of this place was rendered muted and without rain for much of the time.

It is said that nothing can grow here, though I have obviously seen evidence to the contrary. But I will admit that little can or should grow here.

It is a space, empty and devoid save for the implications for the locals to share with their children as they pass the story along from generation to generation.

I try to fathom the sort of form, the sort of scope required to make such an impression, but I simply can't without rendering the whole process comical. Observation does this place no favors, and as I breathe in I can feel the dull heat sitting in my lungs.

I don't think people will likely understand what brought me here, why I chose to take what I had left and make my way to a place so unspoiled by human contact.

Observation can only provide so much.

At some point, all that you can do is simply sit in all of it, and simply let it rush over you.

Drown you.

Today marks a year passing over, and yet the heat is stifling. The dirt under my legs is coarse and dry, biting a little into my skin.

I came here to feel nothing.

I'll leave here realizing that this place wasn't going to grant me my answers. No place ever really can.

They call it the Valley of the Grieving, a place of lore that speaks about futility and the impersonal state of the universe. A place where a thing touched down for just a moment, and then left, leaving behind a whisper, a mark upon the ground.

Writing this is becoming hard.

To try and explain feels empty the more I write.

I think I will just sit here a while and endure this place a bit longer.

I have all the time in the world, and all the time I have left.

Nothing is waiting back from once I came.

Like a touch of something graceful, I sit alone in my place of grief.