.

I have not written anything with heart in quite awhile.
haven't really wanted to. but the dawn is moist and
tender. light floods through each window, leaving little
rainbows on walls and floors. slender shadows from a
fig tree sway across the honeyed surface of an old
armoire. N is seated at the kitchen table. I catch a flash
of silver from the corner of my eye. he dips his spoon
into a steamy cup of coffee. clinkclinkclink. his lips
collect reflections from the porcelain rim; he holds it
there a little longer, savouring warmth while his eyes
track an elegant glide of gulls outside. the air is filled
with the fresh smell of water from a nearby lake.
both of us nestle into the sunny silence of waking up.

"you are deliciously uncontemporary."

his gaze remains unbroken so I add,

"...as if you belong to some mythical past
but at the same time, to some very remote future."

he understands and nods at my conclusion,

"I just like breathing with you, Nikos."

I know this is our last breakfast together.
he is leaving tomorrow but neither of us want
to talk about that. isn't there some intermediary
stage between wet and dry eyes that we can
aspire to? I want to address it, to slice it open as
if to respect whatever it is that we have shared.
to honour it. but he would rather seal its edges.

bread and cheese sit on the table untouched.
I remember what he told me earlier, that to
share a meal is true communion, a mystical act,
its ordinariness uniting souls (even though I
balk at the word "soul"). in his words;

"To eat bread, to drink wine with someone
has always seemed a serious action to my
prehistoric heart."

t/his idea suddenly matters to me since I suffer
from some misguided notion that this particular
meal affords me absurd rights. as if I could cut
across the sacred code of etiquette just to feel a
little freer, a little more human, a little closer
to him than before, as if to savour his warmth and
as if I have a right to take something of his before
he leaves. if I could hastily stuff some tangible
treasure of his into my pocket, something
precious to keep close to me, I would.

I watch the twinkle in his eyes grow bright;
he knows what I am thinking. I like that he
is not threatened by it. he adds;

"Don't you know a man never travels except
around the edges of his own soul? Or at best
inside it? At the ends of the earth, in the most
exotic nations, you never find anything but
your own image. From all the new things that
dazzle our eyes and our minds, we unconsciously
select those which correspond best to the needs
and curiousity of our being, which is always
concerned with its own interests and limits."

"right!", I say with darkening eyes, my mouth full
of unspoken words. he knows I dislike the word
"soul". an overused and misunderstood word, at best.
but on this particular morning, it doesn't matter what
he says because I just want to memorize the sound
of his voice before it becomes lost to me forever.

"The warm traveler creates the country he
passes through. And he creates it of course,
in his own image. That is why, leaving your
country, I have taken with me only myself."

"I understand what you are telling me, N. I do. but I loved
travelling through you for as long as I could."

he shakes his head at me, picks up a piece of bread and
slowly tears it in half.

"Out of all you've heard, you remember only
the poetry...Out of all that confused muddle
of words and actions, of all these incoherent
spectacles that make up a journey, I've
winnowed - I've made a selection. I reject
what's of no use to me, I keep what's useful
or agreeable, and with these little mosaic
stones, I compose [this place]. I mean: my
own face reflected by a new mirror."

I watch crumbs fall from his fingers onto the table.
to choose, to reject, to select the essential from an
exploding kaleidescope of thought is so difficult when
time is winding down. but he is referring to a treasure
I supposedly hold within, the one he is trying to
convince me of, something he would describe as;

"the soul's equilibrium in the face of joy and pain."

that kind of self-mastery! I don't yet embody. knowing
it requires me to carry the destinies of everyone on my
shoulders, the tragic sense of responsibility he aspires to.

"I know, I know. I am the great eternal thing, just like you,
fearless and without reproach, worthy of that great eternal
thing...if only I could believe it."

he is amused at my seriousness, my inadequate expressions;

"Pitch your tent on a volcano, carve statues of the
gods...take a reed and write piercing little poems
that fly swift as an arrow and lodge deep within
the heart."

his inexhaustible thirst for seeing and doing is what I love
about him. his passion for accomplishing great actions
quickly before the volcano erupts (compared to my inertia).
his rise against the current compared to my slow drift.
his swim upstream compared to my safe seat along the shore.
but these stark contrasts become our assemblage, our
becoming. the treasure in my pocket is not who he is,
but how his presence has changed me, how he has added
something richer to who I already am, how it fills me up
like blossoming air. I wonder if he knows this.

the sweet fragrance of spring lends this day its particular
clarity. its colourful acuity with rainbows on the walls.
his impending departure is softened only by his willingness
to say goodbye; this becomes the treasure I adore and
the intangible thing that I retain long after he has gone.




Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957)