Gloomy woods
2025–2026

You are journeying along an endless highway together with many other people...

The road leads across a stony plain where nothing grows. The fiery sun burns from morning to evening, and nowhere can you find any coolness or shade...

Sometimes you ask yourself or one of your fellow travelers about the goal for your pilgrimage, but the answer is uncertain and hesitant.
 
Suddenly you are standing in a wood. Night is falling and all is quiet;

You stand in astonishment, full of your anxiety and your distrust. You are alone. You are alone and you hear nothing because your ears are stopped up by the dust of the road...

Your unseeing skill is remarkable and soon you are back on the noisy highway in the burning shadowless light among the bellowing cattle, the furiously driven wagons, and the embittered people.

But the evening reflects its clear eye in the dusk of the wood. The water ripples tirelessly as it flows through the woods, becoming brooks, rivers, and deep lakes.

"Where does all this water come from?" the youth asked.

"It comes from a high mountain," replied the old man. "It comes from a mountain whose peak is covered by a mighty cloud."

"Every man bears within him hopes, fears, longings... all these longings collect and condense into a vast cloud round a high mountain."

Everyone has at some time heard of the springs and the mountain and the cloud, but most people remain on the dusty highway for fear of not reaching some unknown destination before evening.

Fragments from the "Old Jewish tale". Fanny and Alexander, 5. Act: The Demons (Ingmar Bergman, 1982)