2
june 9th. early morning. another rainy day.
i don’t remember the alarm ringing. waking up into another dream. ash-grey smoke and milky-green glass behind the train’s window.
the smell of dry grass after the storm. humid, electrified air. tiger lilies in bloom. it is cold, and the scent changes as i walk. i can hear finches and blackbirds somewhere high in the treetops.
the same red pine at the crossroads, now become the darkest shade of green in the landscape.
i miss seagulls and the smell of the cold, stormy sea in odessa.
✶ ✶ ✶ ✶
after work, i was running back home to collect my laundry. the smell of freshly washed clothes is the smell of self-care to me.
i got my first coffee at 16:14. just as my hands reached for the cup, i saw a familiar face. i appreciate spontaneous meetings the most. no planning. no plans. no postponing or cancelling. just a pleasant coincidence. ichi-go ichi-e in its purest sense.
we moved to another place. a tiny tea shop around the corner. a slow-paced, ornate gap in the busyness of the city centre. layers of chimneys and windows towering across the street.
she took a book from the shelf in the rightmost corner. i showed her the drawing i had made of the guy who runs this tiny place now. it already feels like past lives to both of us.
talking about presence and the way of looking, as if outside subject-object relations. she was smoking. blue eyes. a silver orthodox cross hanging from her left ear.
the moment would be commemorated forever in the glass stillness of memory. in twenty years, i will be thinking about this stone-paved passage and the layered chimneys. picturing them in my mind. bringing them back to life. or rather, travelling back in time.
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slow evenings.
absorbed by the intensity of fleeting moments.
drinking tea in silence.
