I was 8 years old. Barefoot, resting my head on my palms, I sat on a desolate block outside my grandmother's house, looking into the distance.
What was I thinking at that time ?
I couldn't tell.
A child's imagination, fertile and immaculate as it is, so young and naive, so daring and sublime, is a supernova. There is an infinite of possibilities, and there are no limits.
One moment I was thinking of nothing, the next I was thinking of everything all together, slowly drifting towards the end of the flat cosmos on the raft of reverie, whistling to my self songs of innocence all along.
"Why are you sad ?"
A deep-sounding voice interrupted my meditations. I raised my head to see a tall youth, wearing a warm smile. It was a strange smile. I didn't really register what he said because i sat there contemplating his strange smile for a good while...A strange smile indeed..The best way to describe it is (allow me to borrow the wisdom of Mr. Fitzgerald at this point, dear reader ) :
"He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey".
And it was exactly that kind of smile. The kind of smile that could relate stories without a single word spoken.
Of course I could only seize upon its meaning looking back on it now, after the accumulation of enough years. I wonder why I still remember his face.
Who was this person ? He lived in our neighborhood for sure, as I saw him a couple of times before..But who was he ,really ....the entity inside this physical shell of a body..The transparent soul that could penetrate into the deepest depths of a child's heart and speculate her obscure state of mind, what she ,herself, couldn't realize ?
Such an insightful soul could only be as pure and light as a cloud... He was a cloud taking a stroll on earth..and decided to make a stop to reveal an astounding observation of his own.
For all the world, myself included, I was just a child looking into the distance on a beautiful summer day.
I didn't know I looked sad. I didn't even realize I was sad..
On that warm day in June, I realized that , at the very end of the world, the farthest point that can be reached by an artless boat made of a young imagination , the ultimate conclusion of reverie, there is nothing but unhappiness.
On that warm day in June, I realized I was a Toskliviy.
I don't think I ever made it back home.
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