1.19. Between Falling and Landing - The Oracle and The Moth
Rain fell like kittens and puppies from the sky. My feet no longer felt the ground. In a white space between falling and landing, a message arrived, and something quietly began to ring.
1. Boundary White
On the way home, rain fell as if puppies and kittens were tumbling from the sky.
After the meeting, imagination refused to stir.
Before the pale yellow building, the afterimage of the white train had vanished without a trace.
I pulled the hood of my waterproof grey coat over my head and stepped onto the cobblestone sidewalk.
A few steps in, I felt no hardness beneath my soles.
My wet palm registered rain, but not its cold.
I looked at the cuff around my wrist.
The cuff, too, was wet.
Its colour was grey as close to white as possible,
a hue living on the borderline between natural white and artificial white.
This boundary white began slowly filling my emptied mind.
I lifted my gaze.
The same colour spread everywhere.
Was I looking at the sky,
or into my own head?
I lowered my eyes.
I peeled back the wet boundary white with my fingers and checked the time.
The old hand-wound watch pointed to 10:45.
My father had given me this watch when I left Japan.
That same father had died around this time last year.
The sky that day, too, had been boundary white.
I arrived home.
Inca, my dog, bounded joyfully across the black-and-white checkered tiles.
Inca, a black greyhound, a large chess piece on the floor.
The artificial white, beside the black, asserted itself strongly.
I removed the wet boundary white and hung it on the chair.
Water dripped down, marking time.
My father’s watch, now exposed, showed eleven o’clock.
The journey that usually took five minutes
had taken fifteen.
2. The Oracle Card
A message arrived from my best friend.
I explained briefly what had happened.
She asked little.
Instead, she drew an oracle card for me.
I stared at the image for a while.
Against the boundary white that had saturated my mind,
A faint outline began to emerge.
This feeling.
Somewhere before.
As I traced the Czech words written on the card,
A summer memory returned quietly.
3. The Summer Field
It had been a few months ago.
She sent me a photo of a sketch she had drawn, already on her journey.
Hearing she was spending several days in nature, I joined her.
It was a sudden summer holiday, one I had chosen for myself.
At a neighbourhood sports shop,
I selected my first sleeping bag.
It took far longer than choosing jeans.
We drove to the entrance of Krušné Hory,
the mountains also known as the Ore Mountains.
I opened the car door, and Inca leapt out first.
Beyond, she stood.
The two approached, laughing.
Inca ran through the wind.
The meadow swayed.
I called out to her retreating back.
Through forests,
up a slope,
across a stream.
On the night of the full moon,
we leapt into a marsh
and lay side by side on the grass beneath a star-filled sky.
The next morning, gazing at the tangerine sky,
we exchanged words of clarity.
Pure joy
and laughter that spilt unbidden.
There, within nature’s expanse,
we had found a quiet sanctuary.
4. Sun and Moon
In the city, I had assumed the role of the sun,
stronger, faster, radiating light in proportion to the years I had lived.
She received it quietly,
like the moon.
But in nature, the roles are reversed.
The words she spoke while walking
were like midsummer sun.
I listened from the moon’s position.
Laughter dissolved into the meadow.
It returned gently to my own ears,
like the wingbeats of butterflies.
5. What the Butterfly Carries
When laughter arose,
A butterfly was born inside me.
Grammar mistakes.
Frustrations that never became words.
The thought: Why can’t I speak?
The butterfly consumed them
and carried them silently away.
What remained
was a sensation like a comfortable room.
She said,
“During this time, I feel I could do anything.”
In the middle of the meadow, Inca sniffed the ground, her long tail swaying elegantly from side to side.
I could hear the ground’s whispers and see the wind.
I answered softly,
“Right now—”
6. First Contact
She was neither a younger sister nor a student.
We were beings growing together.
"With her, the sensation in my feet might return."
Her name was Moth.
Winged.
Responsive to light.
Moving toward it.
She always walked barefoot,
on cobblestones,
meadows,
forest leaves.
Without fear.
In that moment,
within the boundary white filling my mind,
something rang quietly.
With her,
I might be able to set my feet down.
I lifted my gaze.
From the “boundary white” raincoat, water droplets no longer fell.
I picked up the oracle card.
The sky was still white.
To be continued to 1.20. When the White Became the Sky
- The Morning After the Worst Day
Afterword
This photograph was taken on the second day, after a night under the full moon.
We slept in the open landscape, listening more than speaking.
Walking with her, I was led to the entrances of the world I had never noticed before.
She spoke about astrology, about awakened women, and something quietly overturned inside me.
There was no time for loss.
Nature was too vast, too gentle, and it held everything.
Morning was cold.
The moon still shone through a sky of thin clouds.
By noon, the familiar European summer returned.
We crossed forests, streams, and fields, and then rested on the grass.
Time seemed to stop.
Warmth spread through the body.
When I turned my head, she was lying there, and Inka beside her.
In that moment, this chapter came to me.
And today, I was able to share it.
That is all.
Thank you for reading.
yukocoolsummer