The Seeker
The following is a story translated by Prof. Kimey Peckpo from the original Finnish version published in the 1940s as part of a scheme to encourage intuitive empathy in what was regarded as an increasingly secular life. The title itself is a rough translation of a word "Etsivä" that is perhaps more nuanced than this singular version suggests. The anonymous author may have been thinking about Caspar David Friedrich's painting Wanderer above a Sea of Fog but this is a playful piece of speculation. A man who considered himself to be both wise and humble would set off each day walking briskly towards the craggy slope of a climb up to a summit above his home. I’m going to find enlightenment he said to himself and sometimes to other people he met on his way or even when he was just out shopping on the high street. He strode purposefully through the fields, which always looked so inviting from the back garden of the house where he lived in the valley. Once you were on the slopes...