The Philosopher’s Attic

I laughed the other day, when hit by a cool breeze, I was reminded…
… of the last words that never get to be spoken,
of the one feeling that never seems to come,
of the longings we once shared,
of a lifetime spent apart, when all it took was a word,
of sighs once shared and
tears that, now forgotten, have lost their weight and calm at last.

Once the world was empty…
once all things intertwined were waiting for the one song.
Once anticipation was all that there was left.
Once all I had was this lost emotion.
Once all you were was a shadow.
Once, all the leaves where a darker shade of green…
Once all we were was but a dream.
An unthought wisp of a clouded memory.
A stormy breeze over a sea of blue…

And wherever the air moves, the mind will follow…

Speckles of unknow intensity,
streaks of lights across the only surface left,
fading stars over some remaining impressions,
last sounds of the dying darkness…
… and deep breaths of cristaline clarity.

It’s the last moment of serenity,
just before rationality has fought its way back
towards the wavering mind.
The last memory of…
…peace, probably.

And just before the birds start their welcoming song,
at last greeting the light,
guiding it back into the world,
drawing on and on…
… just then…
The last of all broken thoughts is made whole at last.

~
For Krys - I missed you terribly, Sis.

The last few weeks have been exhausting and envigourating at the same time. A lot of conferences, talks, presentations and a race quarter-way across Europe to hear one of my Masters, John Searle, speak at my home university of Fribourg (which was wonderful in itself and well worth 10h of train ride).

The semester here has wrapped up nicely, all of a sudden summer is here without having passed the spring-stage and the city is buzzing as usual and while in Fribourg some things have started to pan themselves out nicely (although very unexpectedly) and it seems that ‘il leader maximo’ (ie. my boss, cheers to i. for that title…) is really planning on integrating me and has asked me to move to Fribourg for the next year. She was happy with my progress and that offered me a good night’s sleep as I always fell like I am not really getting anywhere. I’ve seen colleagues and friends I haven’t seen in months or even years. And for the first time I really got a feeling of people being happy to see me back, which usually isn’t the case…
Another conference, another city and I did get the confirmation that my PhD Thesis is necessary and not a simple repetition of things already been done. That of course offered my another week of good and peaceful sleep. *grin*

And of course I am already starting my bottom line analysis of my stay here, the things I did or did not do, the papers I did or did not write etc.

But at the moment: all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds… The demons are banned for now, the sunlight has won and the light is shining into all the dark places of the valley… no immediate danger in sight. What an unusual thing for me to write…

Now, I have the pleasure to organise my trip to Bastogne.

We learn to live with a lot of things. Deal with open hatred and envy, fight battles that we never dreamed up having in the first place, fall down and pick ourselves up again… ever on.

But silence… well, silence has a way of growing, of building itself up. Until at a certain, undefined point it starts to nurture itself, to sustain itself like some alien device. Built up from pictures, unsaid words, and loudly thought snippets of sentences that go unheard. Figments that go lost between the irrelevant and the importance of tomorrow. To the self they are real, almost ’spoken’. In reality, they don’t exist.
In my mind and life I am a solitary wolf. I am used to silence around me (and very, very rarely in me), but there is nothing more painful than the deafening silence of the un-said… or the unshared.