Wanderer above the Sea of Fog

A man, standing tall, all by himself, on top of a cliff. Beneath him is not the world of Nationalists fighting for unification and all the efforts going south. He is above and beyond all the ruckus. Everything is tucked under the fog bed.

He has left his thoughts, opinions, feelings, and ideologies at the bottom. He is a man who has reached the top of a mountain. To be here and to look out — is it the next taller summit he is already eyeing, or is this the escape itself? The painting refuses to answer. And that refusal is the point. Maybe standing above it all is not a pause before the next climb. Maybe it is the destination. Watching a heaven on earth, unfazed, with nowhere else to be.

To be wearing a green coat, hair messed, unfazed, and standing above all the known and unknown on a cloudy spring day — going above and above until the hassle, the clouds, are beneath you. That image alone is a kind of meditation. Not the kind that asks you to empty yourself. The kind that simply places you somewhere so high that everything you were carrying looks small.

Friedrich pioneered a device called the Rückenfigur — a figure seen from behind, placed so the viewer inhabits their perspective rather than observing them. I am the wanderer. What does it mean to stand on top of a cliff? There are infinite answers for infinite people who see this painting. "I am going to climb the next taller cliff that I see from here next weekend." "I wish I had a friend I could share this moment with." "I must bring a tent next time around." Or — "Hello God, how was this week for you?"

The fog bed was famously called the veil of the divine. A rough division between earth and heavens. Not a wall — a veil. Something that blurs rather than blocks. And the rocks peeping through it, refusing to be swallowed, just like the wanderer himself — refusing to be blinded by the noise and weight of life below, thriving to stand tall, at peace, above the veil. We see what we are. And what anyone claims to see says about them.