... and I

I have awoken up to a stunning morning, not like any other my eyes have ever seen. It carries the innocence on its shoulders while stepping through the receding guilty sea. The heavens above have turned into bluest of aquamarine and the waking sun is breathing life into the world one lungful at a time. Everything stands still as it opens its eyes and tries to shake off the brisk early morning hugs. The white hyacinths have started to bloom over night and their intense fragrance has exploded through the garden of light. The world has given birth to yet another astounding day that only wisdom of ages could reason to be a dismay.
As I put a kettle of water on a stove, the familiar knock strikes my door. I don’t know exactly how or when it happened, but somewhere in the past when the loneliness was trying to choke me I must have given him the invitation. All I can say is that it had to be a long time ago, because there he stands on my door every morning in his satin coat like any other friend. No wrinkly nose or provocative posture, and before I can open my lips he has already whisked by me and is looking for his favorite cup in the kitchen cabinet. Yes, we have developed this awkward relationship that has kind of grown its own tree of love with roots strongly interwoven through the ground, and now neither of us want to let it go. However, the time has been more than generous to us and we have become more than just good friends - we don’t need the words anymore to understand what thoughts haunt each others heads. So there we sit then behind the old oak wood table and have a cup of tea, Death and I, and look into each other’s eyes wondering who has more to say this time around. Sometimes we sit for hours there speechless over one another’s existence, other times we can talk the sun to sleep.
Every time his ice cold hands touch mine a white lily is born in my shaky palm as the time and the space become one. I put my head on his shoulder as I close the eyes and he wipes off my salty tears one by one. He knows I am more than scared, almost absolutely petrified, but not him, instead the shadow of my own - the duel that never seems to end. I can hear his voice softly telling me not to worry as he promises to lay me in the bed of roses and take good care until I could stand my own. But I am not worried and I’ve never been, I have always trusted him to be fair and honest, as well as stay with me when ever I need. As I drift to the world for most of us unknown, I hear him telling the stories about the beginning of time and from the presuppositions of our thinking to the creation of concepts that perceptions divine. I have never known anyone with such skill to speak so beautifully that their words can make the Universe flow like a river through your head.
He tells me how the sunset embraces the snowcapped Olympus that so rarely gets its head out of the clouds; how the islands grew out of the blue waters of the Aegean Sea and then became the cradle of civilizations for the mankind. How the bells in Tibet echo and the pi-wang strings play in the Himalayas, while the shaggy-haired yaks bear all the burdens under the Roof of the World; the sounding of mantras for Sakadawa in a capella, and whether one could ever reach the garden of Nirvana. How Genghis Khan, the greatest conqueror of genius of them all, seeded the empire so vast what even Alexander the Great or Napoleon Bonaparte could not grow. About his last battle against Tangut kingdom of His Hsia, and the legend of his nation rerouting the river to hide the grave, like the people of Uruk who diverted Euphrates for their king, Gilgamesh.
I always feel so betrayed when his icy lips kiss mine to bring me back to this world of “Homo homini lupus est” that is not my place to shine. Where every moment of life that flows through my veins dries up the skin as I’ve run out of tears. This place is so cruel and perpetually cold that it can spawn its own Ice Age in the midst of spring warmth. I have begged him to not leave me here and tried not to let go of his hand, but he just smiles at me and says that I need to learn to live before I can give him my heart. He has wisdom beyond my understanding and I know that I would never win this argument, because my premises would fall short of his knowledge of infinity. Next to him every one of my inferences would end up as the “reductio ad absurdum,” as they get lost in the jungle of modus ponens, modus tollens and all the rest. Thus I stand on the shore of another paradox - I don’t know how to learn something that I have lost the will for…
So we say our goodbyes, Death and I, to meet again in the tranquility of next morning, and to count the swirls of tea in the cup as we wonder how long this kind of friendship in this world is allowed. We’ve become partners in a tango full of passion where one dances to live while the other to die - makes you ponder who is more fascinated over life, he or I? In this manner he stands on my doorstep every dawn to make me a witness for stories of genesis and mortality all the way through the epoch of humans and more. But all I could think of is, would he ever choose to change his mind and take me with him, or do I have to walk through the valley of narcissism yet another day against my will.

Häly Laasme