Whisper Yet

If that's what you really want, my child. If you want to be an assassin, the assassin in your comics, then yes. I can see you walking soundlessly through streams of mysterious moonlight, scaling walls impossibly high; I can hear your nimble, light-footed steps as you pass by the village of the unforgivable. If you were an assassin, what would your weapon be? I can see you in the middle of a vast plain under the moon's white halo, trying to decide which way your path lies. But I can't visualize the weapon rising from your hand. Perhaps a small glowing wand? Like the light of your eyes, so clear and bright that they glow green in the night? Yes. Your weapon must not have a sharp cutting edge. Like light or air, it must be impalpable, yet it must make everyone stand stock-still before it and look about himself. Yes, my child. If it is so, you may become the child assassin of your comics. If in that way you can stand in the face of a tidal wave. If in that way you can transcend the hearts and minds of those who are hurting.

Allow me a cigarette, my child. A wisp of smoke disinfects the inside of the belly. Like the fog. Like the light of the setting sun. Look at the woods out there. Ah, why should I long for the bramble patch that once seemed so desolate? It's no use. Whoever has lingered at dusk on the shore of a woodland lake knows. Knows that the boundary between day and evening, water and sky, one utterance and another becomes blurred at a certain moment. Knows precisely where that boundary becomes blurred. Isn't the world's most beautiful scenery located at such boundaries? Tears flow from my eyes at such a moment. Why? Is it because of you? I see now that no tear is ever entirely pure. For dissolved in joy there is sorrow, just as the most extreme sorrow invariably brings with it, however small, an expectation of happiness. So tears are like a narcotic: if not allowed to flow at their appointed time, they awaken the convulsions that lurk in the depths of our very existence. So, my child, we must learn to see the tears of those who cry unseen, or who want to cry but cannot.

Yes, it would be a good thing. If only people were honest enough to cry when they must, my child, flowers would bloom inside my belly. Why there? Because nothing is more honest than the inside of the belly. Doesn't everything happen because of what happens inside the belly? After the world was made and since the very first day humans appeared in it, has it ever been different? Long live the inside of the belly! Inside the belly where once you were. Yes, long may it live! I must put on my sunglasses. The sun is still hot.