With the closing of the final scene, the question remains, and I am afraid neither Gunslinger Girl nor myself can claim to possess such exalted knowledge. Whatever is to be said, it is not the last word, leaving the ending inconclusive... yet joyous. This last part is a conundrum in itself. What is there to be joyous about? This, perhaps, can be addressed.
Answers Not Sought
"What is too subtle to be said, or too deeply felt, or too revealing or too mysterious - these things can be sung and only be sung." - Kenneth Clark, Civilisation
On that summer roof, Henrietta first beheld Venus. A distant light, hidden and nearly imperceptible amongst it all. What it was she didn't know. She couldn't really know. She had no reference frame, for it wasn't like anything she knew about. And yet... it was familiar. Familiar as herself. What she saw at a great distance was in her as well, the image drifting across her eye as she gazed up at this mystery."What is it that she sees?" I... am not sure, and have it on good authority that those who speak do not know. Thus I share my own impressions, as well as a confession as to what the ethos of Gunslinger Girl means to me, for it is quite impossible to do one without the other.
At the quiet end, when the moment is silent and the seeker stands before the night, something happens. It enters, as light through a window; the series becomes transparent, illuminated, and one realizes this is not the first time. Here, it encircled the colonnade. There, it was resting in a bucket of water. It's as though it were in between the frames, if such a thing were possible. The white-black canvas, always abiding, glimpsed for what it is. Emptiness essential.If one does not find this description enlightening, then one is in good company. When Henrietta asked Jose what it is, he could only give her negative responses: it is not man-made (airplane) or supernatural (fairy) and it exists beyond violence (sniper rifle). And, most importantly, it is automatically recognized in the right frame of mind, when all distractions are gone (night). Having exhausted the categories that her world exists in, he could only tell her that what she sees exists in none of them. Not-nothingness has no category.
This is perhaps the problem. As Henrietta developed, she learned to think of her thoughts, and realized that they had followed a structure she never appreciated; she didn't gain new facts, but a new understanding of those facts. Perhaps there lies another recursion: thoughts on thoughts of thoughts, a reflection on what thought itself is and what it can do. And there one finds limitations as well. The issue lies at the root: how does one describe and explain if one cannot categorize?Yet despite its inexplicableness, it brings with it something else. Peace. In the strangest of ways, it is only what it is and things are only as they should be. "How is that possible," one might ask, "after seeing what has happened?" I do not know. The tragedy is real, and death still came; the observations remained the same, the last scene being where we started... yet now there is a nimbus. That is the poignancy and the power of Gunslinger Girl, to present the most intimately human characters and their suffering, to accept it in its entirety, and then guide our view upward. To pause, and ask if we understood.
But how can we understand if it is so incomprehensibly different? From whence do we perceive it? That is where the joy comes. It isn't different. It wasn't just in the world, it was in Henrietta's eyes at the end as well. She is part of the mystery, and we are her.There is a peculiar luminosity to existence, filtering through and illuminating the swirling dust. At the outset we thought perhaps it were to be like us, and were disappointed by its awe-full silence. But after much searching we may have come to the beginnings of a better answer.
Perhaps we are like it.
←Episode 13
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