Vista

Can you imagine an instant void of all color in the moment of perception? This was one when you  seen her on a winters day, that disguised as autumn, in a light fog setting sun shining on the river and city a like. The brown colors of the snow-less tree frame her hair. The sky had the changing nature of a quickly setting sun dark blue changing to light, to bright and yellow, pink and red. Moving quickly in to the light mist at the horizon. Within this moment the wind keeps its breath just as you held yours and the beauty of the unknown captivated you and stopped you dead in your tracks. Just as shaded as the sky was her hair flowing over a dark green wooden park bench. It glistened even vibrated and in your black and white dream you know it to be a lovely auburn.  The world outside the frame lost all importance. Once you realized that it was her unseen gaze, set on to the river bellow, the city across and grazing for colors in the sky that captured your attention and imagination. It might have been that eyes were set in to the distance in to the setting sun and the obscuring fog of the future.

Her fragile frame seemed lost in front of a vista and truly you would have almost walked past her. Yet just as atlas held up our sky these small shoulders of hers seemed to have carried everything you perceived in to an undying memory. Was she a girl or a women or on the verge of becoming both? You never knew the beauty of her mind, heart and countenance. You only knew her to be able to entrance you by sitting motionless in thoughts entrapped. She stopped the passing of time yet made the memory black and white and the colors mere dreams.  You are walking past, she was sitting still yet in the moment both are motionless and were travelling the worlds of thoughts and emotions. Sloped like the path in shade and sunlight alike as the world around you.

In retrospect you often wondered if she was indeed pondering a life changing decision. Do her eyes linger on the water imagining herself drowning or are they set on the city thinking of loved ones or the bridge she would have to cross without being drawn in to the bliss of the abyss. Maybe the sadness you felt was just the realization of your own cowardice. That one-one-hundredth of a second that is needed to realize your lack of courage. The ugly truth that you can’t just intrude in her moment that captured you in to one. How could you interrupt her vigil of the breaking dusk. As time is irrelevant in exploring a memory or dream you stood forever and mere seconds.

What you have seen is what she has seen a vista of beauty and change but without realizing that she has become part of your outlook to your path, past, present, future steps and the world. Nature has these moments without observers you pass these by far more often than you think. Then there are the moments in life where your heart told you to do something unusual and you didn’t do it out of fear to break with convention and you pass those by as well, knowing of their existences. I consider these the moments in black and white. Color was present but was lost because it just was too much. Though it returned a few steps further. In this one moment and single chance in-spite of action you decided upon observation. Giving you a single image of a memory worth more than a thousands words and thousand curses. Cursing your decision to move on without speaking the words you actually desired to utter, the words to have acted upon. Cursing your heart you count the letters of a hello. And where five letters could have been enough for a short-story or a life-story now you are limited to the imagination and the memory.

Down the hill across the abyss bridge you walked a slow gate which spoke of your regret and indecisiveness. In the middle of the bridge you found the courage to turn your gaze back up the hill following with your eyes the slope you walked entranced and without counting steps to a wooden bench in between two trees. No one was sitting on any of them anymore. The sun said its last goodbye for this day and the cold of winter came with the end of dusk. Then through the city of imagined loved ones you walked briskly like the air. After the vibrant feeling of a black and white moment the colors of night seemed dull and doubtful. Your life is more and more a collection of these monochrome moments. Maybe the bleakness is just a sign of truth. Maybe in imagination beauty was as perfect as life never is. In any case past and passed, it is over it is history. You passed her and it passed.

Even brightly colored and happy people can not compare to the different shades you experienced before. The cobblestone street felt like a slow avalanche of pebbles pushing against your way. You cricked your neck more than usual in the hope to have a second chance a second glance. All around you is the usual commotion of a winter evening not one person that can turn present in to an instant. All that is left is a memory and a collected drop of courage to pierce through the veil of the next instant void of all colors. Despite all the forces of thoughts, hopes and dreams you reached your track, your platform and the train carries you in to the night and home. Imagine an instant void of all color in the moment of perception; frame it with your mind and heart, be black and white and see shades of gray as rainbows.

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Translation ongoing / Übersetzung in Bearbeitung