Sylvie Brodi

After they came home from their favorite restaurant where they have gone every Friday friends with whom they have met up with more-or-less regularly since high school, they didn’t say a word. The children were already asleep. They took a shower. He sat in a comfortable armchair in the hall. Usually, when he comes home late from a pub, he turns on the TV whatever is on and has a shot. Not today... They can’t say that the evening went wrong. They sat at their table, back behind the tall rubber plant and talked. Everything went as usual, calmly, peacefully – like always. He got up. He didn’t put on his coat and went out in the garden. He opened the gate and went out into the night. Suddenly he was in a different and unknown world. Unknown? He had seen it so many times he had been there so many times, so often at this time, just before going to bed. He wasn’t thinking of anything, he felt that he needed to experience something extremely beautiful. Maybe he wouldn’t be embarrassed to say – I desire. Although... no, no, he simply wanted something, something tiny but unusual, something very, very short which you never forget... It crossed his mind that it was like in a picture. Is art itself this journey or does it only show it? Or is that all just a surrogate for things we usually miss? Is good art always self-therapeutic? Maybe. And the better the artist, the wider the circle of those who await such signal. But beware of the most visible signposts with the most legible writing! Now he was in the woods, it was drizzling. From afar he could hear the voices of night creatures which were crouching hidden in the undergrowth. It was a deciduous forest, thicker and thicker. He was struggling through the grey-green twilight... He stopped. Something was happening. The whole time something was happening. Something was penetrating him, it was light and matter at the same time, it was black and white. Did it hurt or was it pleasant? Was it pleasure or just some kind of a strange illness? He had an angel overhead, a devil by his side. Where do all these unclear desires lead? At first all sidesteps and evasions, and ifs. At first the eternal hesitation and then a sudden stampede. Covering of our own eyes and then blinding the others. Where does all this deciding and contemplating lead, all this correcting of what cannot be corrected, all this putting off and waiting? One can only push the handle and go... He was standing there for a long time. The tiny drops were rustling in the leaves and trickling falling down his face. He lifted his right hand in front of his face and looked at it. At the moment a bird flew to him... a small bird, a tyrant bird maybe, a siskin, maybe it even wasn’t from this world – and sat at the tips of his fingers.

01.01.2007