The road remembers every pilgrim who climbed it in the dark.
Nobody built this path. It was worn into the mountain by people who came up at night, one at a time, for eight hundred years — and the stone is dished in the middle because of exactly where they put their feet.
The first lantern is the only thing you can see. It is enough.
A gate is not a door. It is a question asked slowly.
There is nothing to open and nothing to lock. The gate has no function you could write down. You pass under it and the mountain is simply different on the other side, and there is no mechanism responsible for that.
It has been raining since the third lantern. Everything from here is louder and quieter at once.
The moon does not descend. The water rises to meet it.
The basin is cut from one piece of stone and kept exactly full, so the surface sits level with the rim and holds the sky without a frame. On a still night the reflection is better than the original.
Wash your hands here. Not because anything is dirty.
Every joint in this hall was cut by someone who never signed it.
No nails. Every beam is held by the shape of the beam beside it, and the whole roof stands up because a hundred pieces of wood are leaning on each other in the correct order. It has been rebuilt six times and it is the same building.
The light behind the paper is one flame. The screens do the rest.
You will carry the dark down with you. That is the point.
From the clearing you can see the whole path you just walked, reduced to a line of small amber points going down into the valley. It looks like almost nothing. You were inside it for an hour.
Nothing up here was built to be arrived at. It was built to be left.
