Chapter Seventeen, Closed Eyes

Why doesn't enchanting beauty subsist?
And if it is there, why can't we find it?
I see a big ocean, but it is not ocean, it's a mist.
And all I see is bubble of indefinite.

I see the sky that doesn't exist.
It is only a mass of blue out there.
It is not even blue but reflection of a mist.
Ans sun, moon, and stars hang steadily to their share.

Without a wind, dust wouldn't revolve.
And I see dust, but wind can not be seen.
Indiscernible ocean, wind, and sky dissolve
Into bubbles, dust, and blue in between.

Talking about visible or unseen is just an act.
Listening to thoughts are what we lack.
With open eyes which are closed in fact,
We turn universe upside down and black.
*
In bed, Anna closed her eyes but her consciousness was obstructed. She remembered how she used to look at the pictures of the people who had become other people. Now, looking at herself, she understood why people become others and change, why they get old. She was someone else herself.
To Stacy's question, who was still awake when she got home, she simply said: "We just had dinner in the same restaurant we went once together."
"Is that it? How did it go?"
"I talk about it tomorrow." What Anna really meant was to leave me alone. She needed to digest the whole situation on her own before talking about it to her friend. What was it that she needed to assimilate? Two young people had dinner and conversation. Was that too hard to understand? It was to her! She yearned to be like a mirror which never retain things that are gone. She felt tired of living in her own tragedy, her brother's tragic life. Her wisdom was tired of it, but it was her heart that ruled her brain.
She thought of all good memories with Aria, their growing up, the sneaky things they did clandestinely from their parents, and many other joys they shared. As a smile blossomed on her lips remembering those, she felt that one recollection from youth could keep a man from suicide, lead him away from hopelessness and despair. She wondered and questioned her brother's vision: "Didn't he have those memories?" She thought. "There is no reckoning with life."
*
As Anna gently bating Joseph, she remembered the time that his warmth had invaded her, shivering away her last chill. She introspected his laughter in his heart as she had nestled into him, while her eyes had filled with tears at his innocence of happiness. Then she had felt that his body dissipating into her and sinking away. Then they had had a vigorous passage of life; now everything was lethargic. Nonetheless, Anna worshipped every second of her time with her dying Joseph.
Should a stranger witnessed this slow dying of a body and soul, he would perhaps had an unmistakable perception that both were not living but existing, that both were disappearing in a deliberate, deviating way. Out there, city was full of lights and nameless people; inside, she was obstinate because their conditions were also baffling. The despicable attribute, to her, was a gratification falsely was considered sweetness. She questioned in her mind love, love to others, nature, the Creator, material things, and love between a man and a woman. She introspected an earlier conversation she had had with Joseph, when he was not sick.
"Why do we love what we love? What makes me to love you and you to love me or whoever that loves someone?"
Joseph had smirked at the depth of her very simple question. "We can love completely without entirely understand it."
His intelligible answer had brought a glow to her eyes; however she retorted: "Are you saying that we love without consciousness?"
"No, no, that is not what I said. Our awareness is always intact, but most of the times, we don't know it, like loving what we love."
Even though Anna had a hard time to comprehend entirely what he said, she had understood somewhat. His ability of being a natural teacher, perhaps, was one of the element in her cognizance that made her to love him, for she loved to learn.
*

To Be Continued