And now I will close the old picture book and put out the light.
The same snowfall and intense darkness.
It gives a certain feeling of light-headedness, as though you had slipped out of the context of time.
The calendar tells me that today is 29 March 1974. And yet it is something of a coincidence that this is the date and not, for instance 1874 or 1174 or merely 74 – and why not 7474 or any other date into which it might have amused the capricious forces of fate to launch a fleeting and helpless human snowflake.
There you sit, pondering in your dark tower at the end of the world and the end of life while, filled with idle speculations, you sit staring out into the silent, swarming abundance of falling snow.
***
Was there more?
There was indeed – for then you fell asleep. Aye, that was what happened to you: you slipped helplessly into a blissful sleep and the mysterious and playful dimension of dream.
What did you dream? Of course, that you were a child again. But alas – a strangely deformed and old-fashioned changeling with running eyes and melancholy wrinkles in your brows, and the bright-eyed, undaunted children you wanted to play with (so as for one last time to feel the happy young vibrancy in their life rhythm) laughed at you, not maliciously or disparagingly, just patiently. Then you, too, laughed, resigned, perhaps with just a slight touch of bitterness, while withdrawing to the dark place where you now belong, in darkness and decline beneath the merciful snowfall…
***
Was there no more then?
Indeed there was, of course. For when I awoke again after my brief snooze it had stopped snowing, and among slowly moving banks of cloud the stars were shining over the wide expanse of the sea – the beautiful crystal white of Capella, the red topaz of Aldebaran, the ecstatic group of maidens in the misty Pleiades, the flaming belt of the ever young and mirthful Orion, the whole of this enchanting heavenly springtime array. And out on the horizon there is the flashing light of the ordinary lighthouse, a mortal light among all the immortals, but in the deep, joy-intoxicated spring night nevertheless a star among other stars.