There are those before me and those after me. I merely repeat the words of Borges and surely of many others: I am no one. Maybe to a few – for a brief time – I am some body. But where I am now, laying on my back on a giant boulder, I do not know who I am. In the eyes of an other I may be a son or a brother

, a father or a mother, a poet or a song

, a dutiful citizen or, alas, a similar fading label. But where I am now, I am nothing. This human form – if I am completely still in mind and body – could as well not be here. Just an added breath to the passing wind. I am equally significant and insignificant as the rock cradling me. A silent memorandum of painted granite. The question of where I am is inessential. Ask instead: who am I?

Like sparkles drawn out of the world’s back pocket and contentedly strewn across the many passages of human souls, this one is no less and no more remarkable than any other morsel of life. With every turning page the scene folds into a silent crease, exposing countless wonders. I recognize the piano man uniting a world of strangers in a glitter of song and spirit. I gingerly turn a page or two, and let the resemblance touch me deeply as I become witness to the portrait of another man sitting at a piano, smoking a cigar, and the bartender mesmerized by the piece, wordlessly looking on. Could I still call it a sparkle or a glint that won’t outlast time, but under the gaze of the universe is itself a miracle? Maybe that is why my fingers turn each page with adoration and reverence, tending a full heart to every marvel, every glimmer, aware that each is only a visitor.

And here you plucked a star from the sky and shone its light on an entity, which mirrored a piece of your own soul. The vital glow in your eyes had me longing to hear your heart’s utterance. Are they feelings or words I recall? I do not know. In this brief interval of time we stood on your page alone and I can only tell it in retrospect as I stir the past in the depths of my memory: Red. In the whispers of the night , majestically present, poised between natural self-composure and calm – without any doubt a lady. A matriarch, noble, maybe discreetly proud, never pretentious , always graceful. Here when all around springs to life, here, when the day falls silent. I guess these are the instants that melt before our eyes and vanish into our hearts. They are attached to chairs and red-capped robins, to quivering lips and rising suns and to books filled with pages, read and put aside. Just a twinkle, the same visitors, coming and going – let us honor them.

I hear the chimes anew. I missed them, unaware that they were always here. I cannot tell, whether the melody enters through my ears or if the twisting vibrations play soundlessly within. Yes, I missed them – obscured by the clutter of things I make believe are important day in, day out. I grew forgetful.

I am splayed on my bed

, eyes shut, though if they were open they would only stare at the evenly fixed, wooden planks of the bunkbed above. In this state I am oozing in and out of conscious awareness. I recognize the simple touch of sound grazing over my soul. I cannot mold the sensation into any human manifestation and hence allow this pure, tender kiss, strewn across everything I am, to advance. Instantly I am enwraped in loving hands of universal compassion, washing brilliantly over me. Seldom have I felt so alive. In this rare moment, yielding all my futile human efforts to life is completely liberating.

I recognize the melody of water. There is no bend in this tune, no edge, just a fluid motion of conjoined droplets merrily satisfying every bit of me. I am forever lost in this moment, no need to resurface. This is it. I surrender, my mind, my heart, down to my very shadow. The same, worn by reinacting the contours of light, tired of being confined to this body, now departs, not without caressing its loyal counterpart. All vanishes – the song plays on. I would like to say part of me hears every tone, but I have long become immaterial

, just water passing through the ages. A trifle here – a ballade in the moon’s glistening sheen – an ocean there – an orchestra of splendor across the windowsill; nothing more. Now who is embracing whom in this hymn of life

, in which unfastened notes meld to wake me from deep sleep?

Mein Haus, fernab des Lärms, auf Augenhöhe mit dem Horizont, flankiert von zwei hochgewachsenen Birken, liebevoll umzäunt, beherbergt einen Raum der Stille. Mein Heiligtum ist eingebettet in eine Aneinanderreihung mehrer Räume, die meinem Körper und meiner Seele ein Heim schenken. Fast fühle ich mich hier als Vogel, kann links wie rechts, Flügel gestreckt in den tragenden Wind mich fallen lassen und immer wieder in mein Nest zurückkehren. In feine Lebensäste gegliederte Wurzeln erzählen Geschichten, ihre Bäume nähren sich von Sonne und Erde, und geben im Verlaufe des Tages stets andere Dünste von sich. Ein dezentes Aroma , das ich gewiss nicht abstreifen möchte, leckt an mir. Ich rieche, ich sehe, ich höre. Des Öfteren frage ich mich, ob ich aus dem Fenster schaue oder ob die Natur durch das Fenster meiner Seele in mich hinein schaut.

Meine Fingerspitzen klopfen liebevoll gegen das Holz, beinahe um mich daran zu erinneren, dass wir wirklich sind. Sachte kraule ich mein Haus. In dieser Liebesgeschichte lauschen wir gemeinsam sich in den Schlaf wiegenden Birken, gewähren dem Mond mit unserer Anwesenheit ein Schattenspiel und zählen aus dem emporsteigenden Rauch auf des Schornsteins Erhebung glitzernde Sterne. Genau hier, auf diesem Grund stehe ich und atme.

Ich schmunzle im Einklang mit dem Universum als ich die Schwelle übertrete. Wir sind uns einig, dass es kein Hallo mehr braucht. Herz und Herz umgarnen sich. Worte erübrigen sich. Ich weiss dasselbe ist wahr in meinem mir geweihten Raum inmitten dieses Hauses. Es ist ein Raum, der in all diesen Jahren keinem einzigen, gesprochenen Wort horchte. Kein Gesetz hängt an diesen Wänden, kein Zwang, der zum wortlosen Dialog mit der Welt anhält, nichts mehr als das tiefe Sehnen sich der Stille hinzugeben. Wir könnten uns darüber unterhalten, welche zarten Worte der Verliebtheit jenem Raum vorenthalten wurden, welche Hass durchtränkten Worte keinen Empfänger fanden und welches zierliche Geflüster vergeblich einem Echo lauschte. Ich jedoch schliesse lediglich die Tür hinter mir und vergesse im selben Augenblick, dass es eine Sprache gibt; gesprochen, geschrieben, leer. Es ist nunmehr die Begegnung mit mir selbst – die Stille bin ich.

(Auch Du bist herzlich willkommen! Sobald weitere Herzen sich dazugesellen, keimt die blosse Freude an der Zusammenkunft. Die Stille selbst ist nicht getrennt , wächst nicht , wird nicht kleiner, lässt sich nicht locken oder zähmen, sondern ist; ist einfach, ist bedingungslos, ist alles. Und so, als wir uns in reiner Anwesenheit entgegentreten ist Raum nicht mehr, fällt Blick durch Blick und reisst mit sich jede menschliche Idee von Zeit. Keine Worte können uns hierhin folgen. Wir lösen uns auf und sind in Frieden nichts und niemand, und alles zugleich.)

Human. Sits. Eclipsed. Stares ahead into the starless, pitch-dark. Eyes wide, mesmerized, yet see nothing. A quiet sphere, lonesome too. Hears only the rattle of same multi-laned highway of circling thoughts, round and round like the digit eight. Infinity never felt more imprisoning. Feels pain; drawn across the asphalt, vulnerable, bare-skinned, gritting teeth. Hellos gone, happiness gone, affection drowned: a split course from other beating hearts. Witnesses long turned their backs. The shadows now masters. A heavy curtain: Sees nothing. Feels nothing. Hears no exterior. A stampede of foul cognition trampling every other seed. Isolation alongside buried attempts to break free. What is left but to bathe in misery?

Human. Experiences a morsel of premature death, dark; in a restricted headspace, in a burning, aching pain-body, in a broken heart. Or all of the above – strangely united – in a stygian medley.

Human. Cannot save another. Ever. Cannot lift his curtain. Every one has his own sword enslaved in a stone.

Human – cannot save another; no claim in these lines to turn away. Grab the hand that reaches out with all your might. Regardless, grow aware of your own veil and thereby discover compassion and gratitude and life as it rips through you, piercing, penetrating in all colors. You are the residency to radiance and light. Can you, for a moment, put down the lense and look directly at life? Can you in this frame of existence absorb the song that is crawling into the shell of your ear without layering thoughts over thoughts across the symphony? Will you allow yourself to be here completely, to immerse yourself into another, ancient connection with one more human, heart to heart?… and thus be one less who suffers.

Beyond a branch, the natural extension, reaching; growth out of mutilated arms gives rise to a new beginning. What mysterious existence lights up life around us?

I can hardly call it knowledge, for nothing was acquired or learned, I simply trust that you and I see the same wonders. I have no reason to doubt. Not your words, nor any other part of you, though truly it is your smile that exposes you. Why conceal awe, when resonated by your heart in the smallest crease around your lips, highlighting the passing admiration of your sensual intake?

I dismiss any hesitation. A rush of felt confidence, nourished by witnessing how you assume the same delight for these marvels and their magical helpers. Look, there’s one silently working, screwing a bulb into the life containing vein of a branch. And yet another, a laden bundle resting on his shoulders, trinkets of nature, little enclosed orbs, each encasing the colors of our world, in a single moment revealed to our senses without purpose. If anything, just to unfold a rarer, inner cause to ascend to full blossom of creation.

When every second we are open to the miracles surrounding us, and I mean open beyond classifying, naming or in any other way posessing, truly open, like unrestraining floodgates, mere bystanders, permitting the forceful cascades to pass, then we too emerge as the incessant, sublime currents of nature. You cannot restrain the cumulating resonance shining through you and I do not resist being affected by your glow. I can honestly say that yonder the untangled silliness of social constructs and emotional desire, I love seeing you entwined in wonder. I feel as though the moment unveils your true self, that pure essence of life, sometimes hidden in the obscure depths of the sea. I rest assured that Captain Nemo in the human created abyss of inflicted pain and suffering, deep inside his heart is enlivened by each new encounter, beheld through the wordless senses of a child, toying with the wings of mankind, a marble of gold nestling in his core and in yours alike.

A lost flip flop and with it the looming consequences. The cost, the squandered emotions: a tiny episode mirroring the struggle to let go. My constant conscious and unconscious efforts to perserve my-self by all means, wherein a financial loss becomes a threat, tugging at the corners of my existence. The mind convinced in forseeing the beginning of the end. So challenge the mind to let go of all financial securities, along with insurances, investments and technological aids. It is scary. How am I to survive in the face of insecurity? Better hold on tight to whatever, better not question the false-guarantees. Oh the attachment to the physical buoy, keeping me from sinking, from…? Why is it so terrifying? Could having nothing, or else, losing everything be liberating? I cringe at the thought. What will I cling on to, when there’s nothing left? Nothing. No holding on, or should I say, purely letting go; finally.

Maybe there is some relief I can’t or don’t want to admit to yet. Nonetheless it dawns on me that the difference is none, that holding on to illusion is like holding on to thin air. It’s a bird soaring high, soaring low, the wings gait transversing the naked haze, a transparent film reflecting light upon our receiving agents, coats of blue sky and green vegetation. I am that bird, thrusting wings into nothingness, trusting no one in particular to extend my flight. Dizziness overcomes me as I close my eyes and alas my mind. Like that one time in the sea, the water could take me and break me, apartness amplified in fear, then submitted to the cradling basin, soaking my heart, surrendering in spiritual awe. Maybe letting go means to open the doors to death and to meet its gaze, not in spite or grief, but in acceptance. See here, death is the cradle in the basin of life. And I shall bathe in it unclad.

This very second all of us are dying at various rates. Maybe we differ only by means of measure. What makes us appear separate might therefore be no more than the distinct struggles of staying alive, which we may or may not be exempt from.

The mind consulting the mind:

I was tempted to call you a freak of nature, but now I’m not so sure. The one contemplating you is the very same object of scrutiny. The divide is artifical, for I can take a step back and seemingly look at you from the outside, yet this phony metaplane only allows me to reflect upon my own from within. The mind recognizing itself, pretending to detach; one of the mind’s many tricks. So this is at most a little tango or a slow dance on the gym floor, in a hidden den, in the grandeur of a ballroom, where one seeks the other in close proximity.

You have been well trained over the past decades. Trained to always be attentive, to think it through, to think before you speak or act, to think twice. Socialization and education conditioned you to be able to predict, reflect, assess, take on the perspective of an other, learn from experience, inhibit action and surpress emotion. You have literally become a mastermind and as such paved the road to degrees, careers, riches and a place in society. Maybe you are a means to survival in this odd species‘ evolution.

You have built-in mechanisms that keep you from disconnecting, trickery to the extent of deceiving yourself. You feign to shut off, if necessary you urge the body to fall asleep, whereby you, I have discovered, merely change the channel and continue to broadcast in another dimension. I have figured you, or me, or whatever any of this folly is, out, and receive every new twist of your craftiness with a yawn.

Are you trying to outsmart yourself? Don’t be ridiculous. Fighting you is witless, nothing short of half-baked, attempting to cast aside one’s own shadow – come on! I can well imagine insanity being the outcome. Thus I came to wonder and learn, what you are so afraid of: part of me has argued that you are a primitive machine, programmed to execute the above, simultaneously fearing the unknown, fearing that you could perish into nothingness should you be quieted. In this habitual pattern, I suspect, lies a link to our breeds permanent, subconscious fear of death, thriving on terrifying fantasies about the unknown. Maybe it is you, that has been fooled all along in your own limited argumentation that the mysteries surrounding us must pose a threat.

I conjured time and time again strategies to still you, and was always met with the dilemma of the same chessplayer playing both sides. I cannot blame the babe for having delivered the secret. This I too understand.

Hush, my twiddling partner, it appears we are inseperable, as well as sometimes dull, often predictable and perfectly incapable of grasping anything of importance. This chatter has me gazing at the stars. Can’t we just enjoy the dance? Grant a loving embrace of insignificance, with a head-titled-smile, absentmindedly smudge the little pencil drawn circles of human acts, unsubstantial. Letting go is now a voiceless shuffle to the right, a choreography of hearts pumping in unison with orbits of laughter traced onto each others faces, whispers blown inside of balloons, ascending quickly, touching the sky from yonder – the world has become so small.

I has left the room, mind has put up its feet, the battle has ended. Freedom, the enlighted universe beams; never left. I shall now call it accepdance – surrender to silence. Nothing to loose in losing your mind. Now breathe.