The Cutting Boards -reprise-

I was sanding the cutting boards again these days

when a tiny incident managed

to send out a long train of thought from an abandoned station

I was rhythmically sanding away with a 120-grain paper

when a tiny black fly, really tiny and slow

landed on my cherry-wood cutting board

slow but out-of-nowhere too suddenly fast

it landed in the split-second between my sanding strokes

And I pushed the sanding paper over it, squished it, wiped it out

one stroke and nothing was left but microscopic dots

forming a vague little line, inevitably gone with the next

I stopped

shocked by the immediacy of sudden effacement

It reminded me of an incident in the Alpine mountains

maybe four or five years ago

when a massive rock-slide broke loose above the major motorway

a truck-sized boulder came down, breaking all safety barriers

crashed on the road and burried and crushed a small car

In it a middle-age dutch couple on their holiday-way home

from Sicily to Amsterdam, no affinity to mountains at all

The giant just squished the car like a can

and demolished the human bodies inside in a split-second

They might have just listened to the radio weather

or Leonard Cohen, Mozart or a talk of Alan Watts

They might just have had a little road-snack

sharing sandwich, sliced cucumber, an apple or muesli bars

Over

Over

plug pulled without warning

screen black in a moment too short for:

a thought, a sigh, a word, a good-bye

The vital physical body, the brain, the reflective instruments

annihilated in an instant

I wondered in grief and fascination:

What does the Soul do with this?

What happens in these moments?

And: I would wish to be granted a “good-bye”!

Contemplating on this, a dusty 120-grain sanding paper in hand

a window from another room opened

and through it a voice was whispering:

“What about the rock?

It just as suddenly broke away from where it was for long

but does that mean

that the mountain is not there anymore?”