{"id":49013,"date":"2023-11-20T21:52:15","date_gmt":"2023-11-20T20:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.maestr-ale.org\/?p=49013"},"modified":"2023-11-21T20:51:16","modified_gmt":"2023-11-21T19:51:16","slug":"the-edge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.maestr-ale.org\/en\/the-edge\/","title":{"rendered":"The Edge"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_section][vc_row][vc_column width=”3\/4″][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1700595061728{margin-right: 5px !important;margin-left: 5px !important;}”]<\/p>\n

A True Story<\/u><\/p>\n

The Edge<\/h1>\n

Andrea Cagan<\/p>\n

Everything keeps moving and changing.
\nNothing is as we think it is<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”49008″ img_size=”299×448″ alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Standing at the edge, I could feel the almost unbearable
\nheat penetrating my shoes. Poisonous gases were forcing
\ntheir way through holes in the volcanic ash, destroying all
\nlife they came in contact with\u2014as if they were so determined,
\nthe Earth herself could not hold them back.
\nIt was mid-morning. The volcano had erupted on the
\nBig Island of Hawaii\u2014in fact, was erupting as I stood there.
\nBurning lava flowed into the sea, new land taking shape
\nbefore my eyes. I was watching creation, standing on newly
\nformed earth, earth that hadn’t been there yesterday.
\nI had passed countless signs along my way: ” d a n g e r !
\nn o e n t r y ! ” I saw them, had considered them, felt the fear
\nthey were meant to instill, but my feet had kept walking,
\nfear and all. I was compelled to keep progressing toward
\nthe heat, toward the gases so thick and sulfurous that I
\ncould see them rising into the atmosphere\u2014hovering above
\na boiling liquid mass the hottest, wettest shade of red I
\nhad ever seen or imagined in my life or in my dreams. I had
\nbeen inexorably drawn right here, to the edge, where redhot
\nlava had bubbled and spilled its way down an immense
\nmountain to meet the cool blue sea. Death was so close by, I
\ncould smell it in the atmosphere, and I knew that being
\nalive was my personal choice.
\nI was not alone. My girlfriend Katrina and I had come
\nwalking here together. After we’d scaled a massively swollen<\/p>\n

bulge in the newly formed ground, the warning signs had
\nstopped, as if they weren’t needed any longer. Officials
\npassed us in neon orange jackets that looked drab compared’
\nto the hot lava pouring forth. Since we were the only civilians
\nwho had ventured this close, the officials gazed at us
\ndisapprovingly, but they didn’t stop us. It was as if we had
\nbeen sufficiently warned, and once we had come this far, the
\nrisk was our own.
\nI stood as close to the edge as was humanly possible,
\nwatching the seeping reddish stuff ooze and blister, spread
\nout into brand new surfaces, extend and define its own
\nboundaries. Who would claim ownership of this fantastic
\ndisplay of the power of God? What person would drive
\na stake into the virgin ground and try to give it a name?
\nWho would foolishly think they had control over the Earth
\nherself?
\nWatching the lava claim parts of the sea, I asked myself:
\nDoes water overwhelm fire, or is it the other way around?
\nThe world itself seemed to be shifting before my eyes, and
\nthere was nothing to do about it but simply watch. I felt
\nfrightened and hollow when I realized that I had always assumed
\nthat the edge was the edge. But as I watched this
\nedge extend and consume everything in its path, I realized
\nthat it all keeps moving and changing. Nothing is ever
\nwhat we think it is, not even the edge.
\nThe lava passed dangerously close to my right foot. The
\nnerve endings in my toes tingled, anticipating the searing
\nheat that could destroy my foot, my leg, my entire body.
\nMy breathing had become shallow. Fear had overtaken my
\nchest, pressing in on it, crushing my ability to reason. The
\noozing gases were so strong, the mere act of breathing had
\nbecome something I needed to think about. It was crucial
\nthat I stay connected to my breath . . .
\nThe deeper I breathed, the calmer I became . . . until I
\nwas shocked to discover that I wanted to jump, not into the
\nwater, but straight into the lava. Into the creative core of the
\nEarth. All fear had left me. I could have done it, had my
\nlegs only begun to move: I had to hold them in place, keep<\/p>\n

them from pitching me forward. It was not that I wanted to
\ndie. I didn’t. I was happy in my life and suicide was not a
\npart of my equation, never had been. Yet the compulsion to
\nheave myself into the fire was overwhelming.
\nMy body shifted forward, trying out the limits of how far
\nI could go. I peered into the fire, and it was not alien. It was
\na part of me, a life force so strong and compelling I wanted
\nto merge with it, to fly into the belly of it, to be consumed by
\nthe heat, to be the hot, seeping, sexual, oozing fire.
\n“Don’t do this,” my inner voice warned me. But why
\nwas it better to stand on this side? Both sides contained
\nmystery, light and darkness and infinite possibilities. Each
\ncontained its own version of the edge.
\nBut where would it all end? I looked around. Land
\ncontinued to form out of the fire. The edge was expanding
\nand moving further and further from me\u2014showing me
\nthat standing still was the same as retreating. So, in actuality,
\nstanding still was impossible. I was either moving forward
\nor moving backward, because the very earth beneath
\nmy feet was moving. No matter what I did or didn’t do, I
\nwas a part of the movement, woven into the creation and
\ndestruction of the Earth herself, even if I thought I was
\nstanding there doing nothing.
\nKatrina touched my arm. I looked at her. She was feeling
\nit, too. Were we candidates to fly across the edge together,
\nthe Hawaiian version of Thelma and Louise?
\nWe turned our backs to the seduction, breathless. We had
\nfelt the pull, the draw to our inevitable future. It would happen
\none day, but not like this. This was too mad, too dramatic,
\ntoo surreal, and ultimately too meaningless. Leaping
\nto our death? Ridiculous. And yet\u2014the molten syrup sizzled
\nbehind us, beckoning.
\nI was tired of laboring for breath. I began to walk away
\nand Katrina followed. At first it was like wading through
\nthick pudding, straining against the tide, trying to resist the
\ninexplicable urge to be at the center of the cyclone. But resist
\nit we did, heading back across the charcoal-colored
\nporous ground.<\/p>\n

Wherever I placed one foot, then the other, had once
\nbeen the edge\u2014the fine line between here and there, between
\nthis world and the other. Even the flattest, most nondescript
\nparts of this newly formed ground had, for an
\ninstant, been as sharp as a razor. Now they were simply
\npart of the whole, reasonably safe and solid.
\nAs we left the sacred territory and got closer to the mainstream
\nof life, officials in orange showed up once again,
\neyeing us irritably, as if we were now once again their concern.
\nI had left no man’s land, where gases ruled the atmosphere
\nand fire ruled the sea. Now these people though that
\nthey ruled\u2014and I looked like a dissident, someone who had
\nbroken their rules and could not be trusted. Their stem
\nfaces were masked by an efficient demeanor that spoke of
\nimportant work to be done. But I saw the fear peeking
\nthrough, the understanding of the mortality of it all, of having
\nbeen in the awesome face of creation. They had seen
\nhow little control they had over anything. They knew how
\nsmall they were in the scheme of things, but it was as if
\nthey didn’t want anyone else to know.
\nThey said nothing as we passed, since we were now
\nwalking in what they considered the proper direction. At
\nleast we were moving away from danger\u2014or so they
\nthought.
\nWhere is safety, if every moment of life contains its own
\nversion of the edge? Now we were returning to the confines
\nof society, where decisions on mortality were no longer left
\nup to the individual, a world where there were laws against
\ndying. Perhaps fear served its purpose here. Perhaps it was
\nan illusion to keep us on the path, to keep us safe, to keep
\nus connected to the necessary lessons of life and maintain
\nus on our journey. Or perhaps it was simply one of God’s
\nstunning and mysterious ways to keep us on His time, not
\nour own, to keep us from getting too close to the edge.<\/p>\n

Story taken from the book
\nHot Chocolate for the Mystical Soul<\/em>
\n101 true stories of miracles, angels and healing
\n<\/em><\/span>by Arielle Ford<\/span><\/p>\n

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Tutto continua a muoversi e a cambiare.
\nNiente \u00e8 come noi crediamo che sia…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49009,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[607,582,606,587],"tags":[604,584,608,590],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Edge - Maestr'ale<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.maestr-ale.org\/en\/the-edge\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Edge - Maestr'ale\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tutto continua a muoversi e a cambiare. 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