The pit and the pendulum

Imagine a heavy pendulum swinging to the outer reach of its passage. It hovers fleetingly as gravity pulls, then building speed it swings gracefully back then slows gently to a halt at it’s central point.

This scene unsettles the viewer. It defies our understanding of the world. It breaks the known rules. Instinctively we expect the pendulum to gather pace through the centre of its drop then slow gradually as it nears the opposite end of it’s arc.

I slid into a pit. It took me many years of stumbling in there before I realised what had happened to me. I looked up and saw the steel edged blade of a huge pendulum. I became mesmerised by it.

Beneath each swing I heard the sharp rush of sliced air. The blade began to swing faster as if propelled by an invisible hand. Finally I lay pinned to the ground watching the shining blue steel flash closer to me with each pass.

I passed out. When I awoke I had climbed from the pit and was sitting free, watching that vast pendulum from a distance. I observed it for several years marvelling as it maintained momentum, never slowing.

I was safe but I could not take my eyes from the scene. I was watching the wild swing in my behaviour. A powerful force had hauled me to one side and an equally powerful effort had redressed the balance.

Now I see clearly the extreme pull exerted in the pit. I realise I will always hold the strongest of views about life inside and outside that region. So I have come to understand that the pendulum can never rest in the centre, all apathy and inertia.

The pendulum swings forever and touches the strength of my former addiction on one side and the sweet relief of freedom on the other. I can never be ambivalent to its massive influence, I can never sit calmly in the centre. It is always with me and I am alive.

Title courtesy of Edgar Alan Poe 1842.