Point of No Return

From a certain point onward, there is no turning back; that is the point that must be reached.

These words, from Franz Kafka’s The Trial, were quoted in Paul Bowles’ intense 1949 book The Sheltering Sky, an allegorical tale of a journey of change, of a search for meaning in life, of leaving the past behind, of transformation.

Re-reading this classic book at this time when there is so much chaos in the world is instructive. Many awake and aware people feel this sense that humanity is moving into a period when the world is about to change, and we cannot go back to where we were, but must move forward into the unknown.

The Sheltering Sky strips away all information about the characters, to focus solely on “the now, the journey”. We know nothing about the history or social background and circumstances of the rich and bored couple who travel from New York to North Africa and onward into the deepest Saharan desert, where their lives are permanently altered.

The point of the journey was to create a change in the lives of the couple; they were not ‘sight-seeing’, in the sense that a ‘tourist’ would do, a ‘tourist’ being someone who would always be anticipating the return ‘home’. They were ‘travellers’, people who had no destination or objective, no plan to return ‘home’ anytime soon, belonging no more to one place than to the next.

This was a journey of the mind, a journey of observation, from which they might never return, much like Hermann Hesse’s 1932 novella  Journey to the East. A journey that left the past behind, stripped it away, left no trace, once and for all.

This is the point we should be striving to reach before we transition out of this life, to remove attachments, addictions, obstacles that hold us back from achieving the required escape velocity on departure.

The main character in The Sheltering Sky was permitted in the author’s writing to recall only one incident from his past, at a dinner party where he was told: “your life is so simple”.

In musing over this incident as he lay dying in the silence of the desert, his view was that those he left behind had elected to place obstacles in their own way, had encumbered themselves with every sort of unnecessary allegiance, and had no reason to object to his having simplified his life. He recalled having said with finality: “everyone makes the life he wants, right?”

But whilst, in the languor of our youth, life seems limitless, it really isn’t. But it never stops. It just changes. That is the moment we must prepare for.

7 Jan 2024

[Book review: Paul Bowles – “The Sheltering Sky”]