Thursday, February 10, 2005

Some Vintage Echidne



I wrote this peace when I was at most thirteen. You might get a kick out of it.


At night the stars strip off their foggy wraps, the trees stand cold and naked, the green eyes of the sea are glassed over.
At night I can see far. Across the snow-bedecked valleys into the gloomy dark center of forests. I can see into something where the souls are visible, simple and clear.

Into something where time ends and eternity begins, where death lives. Then my thoughts return to the cowering soul like birds with a broken wing.

The deepest most secret hopes and dreams of people have been pickled and sorted, have been piled up into neat piles in the unknown where they have turned into miserable small dusty heaps of worthless trash.

But far away there are thoughts which are clear and bright. If you start thinking them through and if you start believing in them they no longer exist.

At night one can see anything, even a green squirrel, and nobody will laugh at you for there is nobody here who knows if green squirrels can exist. Nobody even knows if they themselves exist or if all this is just a play staged by death or a big lie. And if you ask whether someone minds or whether it's just a question of time nobody will answer.

Though someone might say:"Time is the laughter of eternity, the life philosophy of the age rings of trees," I have no knowledge about this and neither do you.

Better to believe that there is nothing and nobody in existence; only a large brain beneath the earth which dreams the trees and the water, fruit, deer and snow. The stars and the moon are an illusion. Why fear death if one doesn't exist? If, on the other hand, one does exist, the debt is owed to death at the end anyway. All we hear or feel is illusion. Only the colors at night are real, the colors that nobody has seen and which do not exist.

Pain is nothing but the heartbeats of life and even then a dream. We humans fear so much: ants and bankruptcy and elephants. They don't even exist, for if you stop believing in them they disappear.

Hatred is a relative concept. A very strong love is hatred, too, and so is owning things and destroying things. Still, it is all pointless as all that remains between my cupped hands is space and empty screams and nonexistent colors.
It is the colors that are the truth.