DieterM
06-08-2010, 10:08 AM
I’m sitting in a train compartment. Holding a book in my hand, looking out of the window. My gaze gliding over a luxuriant landscape, cut into portions by rivers and brooks and wooden fences. The book slips out of my careless hand; I lift it up and put it beside me on the green bench. There’s a sound. A new passenger breaks into the still of my compartment.
You introduce yourself, sit down and smile. Your eyes – sparkling like the blue expanse over Irish hills – glint at me. Your eyes resemble sun-filled hours, remind me of a deep sky across which white-grey clouds are racing. I think of green, grassy hills with crooked old stone walls and scattered ruins, abandoned witnesses of ancient dreams; and the wind tearing at long hair; and in the tortured waters of the sea, the sun’s refraction and the clouds racing again.
I look at you.
There comes the moment when I fall asleep…
***
… a meadow, dotted with white blossoms, red and yellow and blue calyxes. The sun joins the horizon. There’s nothing but the meadow; no river, no tree, no road. The meadow is coating smoothly rolling hills. I’m lying in the grass, outstretched and content.
You’re lying beside me, holding my hand. We don’t speak. The sky is blue. Rare little clouds hesitate before entering this vast and empty dance-floor, tossing and turning in a racy rondo, changing shape with each chord.
The musicians beating the rhythm: bees and crickets and dragon-flies and bumblebees, even silently fluttering butterflies. The soft wind makes the grass tremble; a light breezy impact, and waves warp the complacent surface: like a stone that falls into a still pond, creating undulations and circles.
Warmth caresses us. I prop myself up on one elbow and gaze into the sky. You stir beside me, your lips search for mine and find them. Again, the wind exhales and makes the hilly meadow shiver; again, I’m lying in the grass, again we are connected, exploring each other.
The sun flees into the night, leaving a red glimmer over the horizon, when we stand up and run – free, so free? – towards the dim remnants of the light. We’re running through the unfolding meadow, wanting to reach the point where it fades into the horizon. Through the grass and the flowers that dance in wavelike motions with the breeze. Through the orchestra of bees and crickets and dragon-flies, with the wind tugging at our hair, we run, we run…
***
… in the woods. An enchanted territory, home to elves and fairies, fauns and spirits, trolls and unicorns. A light mist wafts over the dry earth, drawing hazy streaks up the trees. The undergrowth rustles and crackles with toddling steps and murmurs. Furtively, eyes glow through openings in the scrub. I place foot before foot, silently and softly. You are behind me. We don’t want to disturb the idyll, the tender magic veil, the poetic spell. The trees are solitary, don’t forgather protectively. Isolated and superior each tree, each bush. And yet – their crests mingle high above, their branches entwined, a nigh impenetrable roof.
A new morning dawns, lighting the misty soil, waking the birds. Two single sunrays pierce the twilight under the trees’ roof. We stop breathing while a tinge of the charm grazes us, then melts away when a draught closes the roof again. We enter a defile that rises slowly before us. Rotten, mouldering leaves litter the path. What are we looking for? Not a future that anguishes me; rather a quickly blurring Right-Now, a Just-This-Moment that is over ere you sense it.
The fairies and elves are now fast asleep, the birds and the forest waking to a new day’s life. We stumble upon a glade, a clearing covered with high grass that tickles our calves and thighs. I take you in my arms, we hold each other.
Later. Still in the woods. The daylight has transformed everything, has torn and ripped to shreds the magical night veil that had weaved such tender charms. We’re sitting near the rivulet, in the shadow of trees that grow close to each other in this spot. Our feet are dangling in the fast waters that cool our hot soles. The rivulet jumps gaily over pebbles and stones, playfully swirls around the big ones, takes the smallest ones with it on a short voyage. Our minds follow the water, float with it when it creates a phlegmatic side-branch, measure it when it gets deeper and deeper, going on and going on, flowing, always flowing, still flowing some more.
Then the stream joins another and hurries on until it reaches the ocean…
***
… the ocean. We’re standing on a cliff overhanging the place where the carnage takes place, where the waves are hewing angrily at the land, badgering it, reshaping it, plunging into it as if it were an enemy. Jealous clouds cover the sun. The waves: grey and dark and blue, they surge and writhe and toss, put water castles upon water castles before throwing all their force against the cliffs which try to resist heroically. The wind is howling as if cheering on the two antagonists.
Look! A hole in the dense cloud cover, and a sunray touches the floods, the barren cliffs, the bare country. As long as it takes to blink, the place is illuminated with an unearthly beauty and savageness. But again, the clouds exile the sun, and we remain alone, just the two of us, at the edge of our cliff, with the waves’ swooshing in our ears, with the salty foam on our faces and in our hair, carefully protecting the memory of that unearthly moment between our hands...
***
I wake up. This is what I see through the train compartment’s window: a filthy river labouring through an artificial landscape and fed with a dirty soup by countless pipes; huge funnels coughing out fat, black swaths; skyscrapers next to high-rises next to elongated factory halls next to empty and grey clay fields. Monotony and bleakness under a dreary black sky. When the clouds part for a second, I peek at a pale, tired moon that rewards me with a wasted, toothless smile. It’s the deepest night.
And you?
You have left the train a long time ago.
You introduce yourself, sit down and smile. Your eyes – sparkling like the blue expanse over Irish hills – glint at me. Your eyes resemble sun-filled hours, remind me of a deep sky across which white-grey clouds are racing. I think of green, grassy hills with crooked old stone walls and scattered ruins, abandoned witnesses of ancient dreams; and the wind tearing at long hair; and in the tortured waters of the sea, the sun’s refraction and the clouds racing again.
I look at you.
There comes the moment when I fall asleep…
***
… a meadow, dotted with white blossoms, red and yellow and blue calyxes. The sun joins the horizon. There’s nothing but the meadow; no river, no tree, no road. The meadow is coating smoothly rolling hills. I’m lying in the grass, outstretched and content.
You’re lying beside me, holding my hand. We don’t speak. The sky is blue. Rare little clouds hesitate before entering this vast and empty dance-floor, tossing and turning in a racy rondo, changing shape with each chord.
The musicians beating the rhythm: bees and crickets and dragon-flies and bumblebees, even silently fluttering butterflies. The soft wind makes the grass tremble; a light breezy impact, and waves warp the complacent surface: like a stone that falls into a still pond, creating undulations and circles.
Warmth caresses us. I prop myself up on one elbow and gaze into the sky. You stir beside me, your lips search for mine and find them. Again, the wind exhales and makes the hilly meadow shiver; again, I’m lying in the grass, again we are connected, exploring each other.
The sun flees into the night, leaving a red glimmer over the horizon, when we stand up and run – free, so free? – towards the dim remnants of the light. We’re running through the unfolding meadow, wanting to reach the point where it fades into the horizon. Through the grass and the flowers that dance in wavelike motions with the breeze. Through the orchestra of bees and crickets and dragon-flies, with the wind tugging at our hair, we run, we run…
***
… in the woods. An enchanted territory, home to elves and fairies, fauns and spirits, trolls and unicorns. A light mist wafts over the dry earth, drawing hazy streaks up the trees. The undergrowth rustles and crackles with toddling steps and murmurs. Furtively, eyes glow through openings in the scrub. I place foot before foot, silently and softly. You are behind me. We don’t want to disturb the idyll, the tender magic veil, the poetic spell. The trees are solitary, don’t forgather protectively. Isolated and superior each tree, each bush. And yet – their crests mingle high above, their branches entwined, a nigh impenetrable roof.
A new morning dawns, lighting the misty soil, waking the birds. Two single sunrays pierce the twilight under the trees’ roof. We stop breathing while a tinge of the charm grazes us, then melts away when a draught closes the roof again. We enter a defile that rises slowly before us. Rotten, mouldering leaves litter the path. What are we looking for? Not a future that anguishes me; rather a quickly blurring Right-Now, a Just-This-Moment that is over ere you sense it.
The fairies and elves are now fast asleep, the birds and the forest waking to a new day’s life. We stumble upon a glade, a clearing covered with high grass that tickles our calves and thighs. I take you in my arms, we hold each other.
Later. Still in the woods. The daylight has transformed everything, has torn and ripped to shreds the magical night veil that had weaved such tender charms. We’re sitting near the rivulet, in the shadow of trees that grow close to each other in this spot. Our feet are dangling in the fast waters that cool our hot soles. The rivulet jumps gaily over pebbles and stones, playfully swirls around the big ones, takes the smallest ones with it on a short voyage. Our minds follow the water, float with it when it creates a phlegmatic side-branch, measure it when it gets deeper and deeper, going on and going on, flowing, always flowing, still flowing some more.
Then the stream joins another and hurries on until it reaches the ocean…
***
… the ocean. We’re standing on a cliff overhanging the place where the carnage takes place, where the waves are hewing angrily at the land, badgering it, reshaping it, plunging into it as if it were an enemy. Jealous clouds cover the sun. The waves: grey and dark and blue, they surge and writhe and toss, put water castles upon water castles before throwing all their force against the cliffs which try to resist heroically. The wind is howling as if cheering on the two antagonists.
Look! A hole in the dense cloud cover, and a sunray touches the floods, the barren cliffs, the bare country. As long as it takes to blink, the place is illuminated with an unearthly beauty and savageness. But again, the clouds exile the sun, and we remain alone, just the two of us, at the edge of our cliff, with the waves’ swooshing in our ears, with the salty foam on our faces and in our hair, carefully protecting the memory of that unearthly moment between our hands...
***
I wake up. This is what I see through the train compartment’s window: a filthy river labouring through an artificial landscape and fed with a dirty soup by countless pipes; huge funnels coughing out fat, black swaths; skyscrapers next to high-rises next to elongated factory halls next to empty and grey clay fields. Monotony and bleakness under a dreary black sky. When the clouds part for a second, I peek at a pale, tired moon that rewards me with a wasted, toothless smile. It’s the deepest night.
And you?
You have left the train a long time ago.