Rotating the Gaze from the Summit to the Sovereignty of the Contact
The Orientation
I am not here to tell a story of grit, nor am I offering a way off the mountain. I have heard other ways of telling this—that I must be imagined happy, or that I should find joy in the futility. This is not one of them.
This is a record of Sovereignty. It is the account of a clash of the self against the need for external validation. For ages, I was a prisoner not of the stone, but of the need for a finish line—driven by the agonising hope that if I pushed hard enough, the universe would finally give me an ending and tell me I was “done.” I was trying to solve a circle by treating it like a ladder.
I found that my greatest exhaustion didn’t come from the stone, but from the noise of that haggling—the need for the mountain to justify my effort. This is simply how I learned to stop the noise, refuse the need for a judge, and stay with the push.
The Memory of the Chain
I remember the cold bite of the bronze when I snapped the locks on Death’s wrists. I was a King then, and I believed I could sharpen the world into a straight line. I thought if I could chain Death in my cellar, I could keep the sun from setting on my house. I wanted a life that was all feast and no hunger.
I thought I was cheating the Inevitable Ebb—the natural pull of the tide. But in stopping the end, I accidentally choked the beginning. Without the descent, the air went stagnant. I traded the rhythm of a living man for the stillness of a statue, and I called it a victory.
The Prisoner: The Clutter of the Slope
Now, I am back at the roots of the mountain, and the stone is my only answer. My mind used to be a crowded marketplace: If I shift my grip, will the slope soften? Why must I endure this if it doesn’t transform me into something more?
I was a merchant of “if,” haggling with gravity. I realised that seeking a “why” was just borrowing energy from a future that never arrives. I had been told that I needed to find a “Why” to find my spark, but I found that a “Why” is just a ghost-witness—a merchant’s trick I used to make the pressure feel like a down-payment on a better life.
I was trying to pay for today’s climb with the promise of tomorrow’s “Meaning,” and when the stone rolled back, I was left in spiritual debt. I wasn’t just tired; I was busy—exhausted by the labour of pretending the Ebb wouldn’t come.
The Dante Pivot: The Shift of Orientation
The change didn’t come from a god’s mercy; it came from the weight itself. There is a point, when the incline is at its cruellest, where the pressure reaches a crushing centre. I remembered a tale of a man who found his way through the abyss by climbing down the shaggy flank of the world’s heart. At the point of maximum weight, he didn’t pull back.
He rotated. He turned his body until “down” became “up.”
I did something similar, but the other way round. For aeons, I had been looking Up. Up is where the validation lives; it is where the summit promises a “well done” and an end to the labour. But looking Up makes you a merchant of “if,” always measuring how much of the mountain is left. It is a state of perpetual debt to a future that never arrives.
I rotated my gaze. I turned my attention from the summit to the Contact. I looked at the exact millimetre where my palm meets the rough skin of the stone. At the centre of the pressure, I flipped my orientation. I stopped being distracted by the distance and became present within the pressure.
I was not bowing to the gods; I was acknowledging the mountain. By focusing on the contact, I reclaimed my Sovereignty. I stopped bracing for a summit that wasn’t a home and stopped fearing a base that wasn’t a failure. I simply turned my attention toward the centre of the pressure. The gravity of the mountain stayed, but the gravity inside my ribs shifted. I wasn’t trying to escape the circle any more; I was just learning how to stand inside it.
I still aim for the crest. I still place my feet with the intention of reaching the top. But I have stopped treating the summit as a saviour. In the old days, I looked at the peak as the only thing that could justify my agony. Now, the summit is merely the coordinate that gives my effort a shape. It is the reason for the tension, but it is no longer the judge of my soul.
The Stance: The Texture of the Tension
When I reach the crest now, I try not to brace myself. I simply let go. I watch the stone gather speed, carving its path back through the dust. In the old days, my heart would tumble down the slope with it, bruised by the return. But now, I watch it with a quiet, fragile noticing.
Without the ghost-weight, the sight of the stone retreating feels like an easing. It is the moment the bowstring is released. I feel a clean tiredness that belongs to my muscles, not my soul. Meaning is a ghost-weight that vanishes when the wind changes, so I trade it for the only currency that is actually mine: the raw, cold contact of the rock against my palms. It isn’t a “solution,” but it is unborrowed strength.
The stone is at the bottom because that is where stones go; I am at the top because that is where the push ended. This is not a victory—the gods still have their mountain. But I no longer give them my exhaustion, too.
The Pulse: The Vital Sign
I begin the walk back down. The air is cool, and my hands are empty. I see the stone waiting in the tall grass—a silent, heavy shadow. I don’t see it as a task to be finished, but as the evidence of my own breathing. I am starting to see: the rock is not my curse. It is my Pulse.
I spent aeons trying to silence this tension, hoping for a day when the hill would go flat. But a life without tension is a life without a heartbeat. To have this weight to return to—the recurring strain of a mind that thinks and a body that works—is not an invitation to suffer; it is the proof I have that I am still here.
I reach the bottom. I place my hands against the cold, rough skin of the stone. I remember the ghost I used to be—always looking past the rock toward some imaginary horizon, asking, ‘What now?’
I used to look for the answer in the final note of a song, or the last inch of the summit. I was wrong. The point of the song is the singing. The answer isn’t at the top of the hill; it is in the hardness of the slope under my feet, the weight of the air in my lungs, and the heat of the skin on my palms.
I do not ask for an end. I take a breath, make contact, and begin.
The Pulse is enough.