From the Rift — Story (1/2)

1. By the Lake

Where thoughts drift

Looking out at a small lake, I watched the black ducks drifting.

>{1} They are so much smaller than back home.

The light wind from the east created gentle wave patterns on the lake in front of the gray palace, where botany from all over the world was at home.

Perhaps a sign that the world is large, yet somehow becoming smaller.

Another thought drifted through my head.

Back to the stars
back into the expanses and depths
of our being

The windows of the gray palace were fogged over from the humidity within and the cool single-digit air outside. The green of the plants shimmered through only as vague outlines. Everything around me was artificial, artificially beautiful. The sun was shining, warming me through my black coat that fell past my knees. A group of teenagers sat down beside me, perhaps already young adults. I did not even look up. They spoke a language I could not understand, and never would. To my left, an old lady in a purple-yellow jacket, a complete lapse in taste from where I stood, was lecturing her grandchild. The girl was hopping skillfully across the stones by the water.

A question cut through my sinking into thought:

Why are old people so afraid something might happen? If nothing happens, are we even living?

A small smile crossed my face and I sank deeper into my world.

In the end, neither left nor right held any interest. The athletic girl and the boys beside me existed only at the edge of my peripheral vision, though I still gave them the attention they required. Most of my focus was on my phone screen.

System: Mail received - Importance: very high

The message had appeared two minutes ago.

>{2} I felt it was time to sink deep. Once again, I was grateful for my phone's special capabilities. Right now, no one should know how much I communicate, or with whom.

>{3} Instead of getting up and rushing to the nearest metro station, I closed my eyes and enjoyed the stillness of my own world, the one that opens within me when I turn my attention inward.

II. Color of the Soul

Years ago I had an encounter that began with a question and ended in empty space. The question kept me thinking for a surprisingly long time before I gave an answer.

>{3} Intuitively, the answer was clear to me at once.

I had closed my eyes only briefly - *everything as always in my inner world* - and after letting my gaze drift, I saw a gray figure. The outlines were blurred. I could see without making anything out. I knew no other world before my inner eye.

Admittedly, I hadn't really thought about it; I just wanted to sink briefly into my world, and that process simply takes some time. Only when she asked again:

She: And? What color would you describe yourself as?

and clarified:

She: And I don't mean your favorite color.

I said, in a stoic tone:

I: Gray. It was so, it is so, and it will always be so.

Weeks later, after trust had built through hours of shared experience, during a platonic visit to her small basement flat, she showed me a little book. In it she had written the same roughly two-hundred-word text hundreds, maybe thousands of times, in handwriting that was tiny in places but always beautiful. She wrote it every night, truly every one. No page had a square centimeter of space. Every corner, every gap, every margin she had filled with this text. It was hauntingly beautiful. She would not let the book leave her hands. She only leafed through it for a long moment in front of me, this book so clearly precious to her. She never gave me the chance to read the text she wrote every night, not even when I asked.

Perhaps she sensed I was not yet ready.

One thing I have known since that night her book fell into my world -
no matter how gray-ve the world, a good soul never loses its color.

She revealed to me her answer to the question from weeks before; her soul color was not black or white. Nor gray. With the vision of her book rushing past my inner eye, I surfaced again and looked at the message for the third time, still flashing on my phone screen.

My intuition told me: >{4} you don't need to open it. You know its content, you know the lines.

I opened it anyway. I looked at my gray screen and let the message slowly drift past me.

At every crossroads she stands
Not always do you take her path
And if she does not go with you
I come from the darkness
From the shelter of the shadowy forest
I pull her from you
From you into the depths
Darker than the night
She sees your dream
Does not understand what you mean
Take heed - I am not your friend
Yet wait in the empty space
Meeting at half past seven

When the last line had fallen into my depths, I felt an emptiness inside.

>{5} It looked blue-gray to me, with a grainy background of dark gray-green. Calm chaos, somehow. Stormy stillness. If this emptiness could be described at all, it would be like that.

III. Beautiful Memory

It didn't take long for the emptiness to fill again. I had no desire yet to resurface and lingered in my gray. The message had to rise deeper within me to the gray landscapes of my being. Sink to the summit and climb up into the valley. Suddenly, I thought of my grandfather.

I remember little of what my grandfather told me - he died too young, from the mines. Grandmother said he used to say: *"The work has dyed my lungs and soul the color of the mountains."*

Grandmother: He may be right. Only he knows why.

But I remember very well a few lines from him, directed at me. He must have told them to me on the second Christmas evening, not long before my fourth birthday. I often dreamed of it, sometimes even today. He sat in his simple wooden armchair with minimal padding, which is why there were always at least three checkered, folded wool blankets there. I sat on his lap and he bounced me with a smooth movement of his right thigh. He looked at the Christmas tree, where about twenty real candles, three-quarters burned down, cast warm golden-yellow light into the room. He had just begun to sip his second glass of wine of the evening. The rest of the family had gathered in the kitchen a few minutes earlier for a crisis committee due to problems with the gas stove. I was alone with him in the living room. Suddenly he said:

Grandfather: Listen to me.

I looked at him and we held each other's gaze for an endless moment before he began to speak. I had stopped playing with the two wooden blocks in my hands, eager to hear what would come.

Grandfather: People think black is death and terror - white the light and the good - and green nature brings the color.

He paused, longer this time.

Grandfather: But I tell you - no matter how dark and deep the black void seems, at its depth it is gray. No matter how bright and blinding the white light, at its height it is gray. No matter how colorful nature - beautiful violence brings its patterns back to gray, here and there trimmed in color. In your eyes I see beauty in the cruel. The most beautiful thing I have ever seen. When my time comes, my soul's vortex is yours.

We were still looking deeply into each other's eyes when he finished. I intuitively took my right index finger and held it up, blocks in my left. He set his glass on the windowsill and, with his right index finger extended toward the sky, made a flowing motion downward, slowly letting his arm sink past the armrest until the finger pointed completely downward, toward the floor.

That must be how it happened, because I saw it over and over in my dreams. So often I woke just as his arm sank past the armrest. He died a few months later, shortly before my birthday.

>{3} I felt no grief. His death left me indifferent. I knew he was still with me.

I was he, he was I,
and yet we both
are so much more.

So it was, so it is,
so it will always be.

IV. The Melody Resounds

I had sunk deep enough. Slowly I opened my eyes again. The gray gave way to a blue-gray lake, the glassy botany palace with its fogged windows to my right, the now-deserted stones to my left. I looked up and gazed into the distance, over a stone bridge toward a small hill beyond. The trees a muted red, here and there a few muted greens or yellows - it was winter, after all. I looked higher, into the sky, a pale gray-blue.

>{1} Something seemed off.

I turned around. The sun still shone in full brilliance, just as when I had arrived at the park, not a cloud in the sky. I turned back toward the hill.

>{2} Something was definitely off.

I stared up at the cloudless sky again. For minutes. It was the colors. They were all muted. Gray.

>{3} Not sure if I was back in the reality of the outer world or still in my gray inner one.

I closed my eyes again. Everything a dull gray once more. I shook my head, and chaotic patterns in shades of gray flowed into my world. After a short while, I opened my eyes anew. And the colors? ..radiant once more, yes the colors, no longer dull, no longer with those gray depths and streaks.

The phone was still in my hands. I looked at the black screen, pressed the side button with my thumb - no message on my lock screen. I entered my ten-digit code: numbers, Arabic and Cyrillic characters, and at the end one of personal value from the language of the North.

>{1} It reminded me of a fir tree, with a small bend at the lower right edge.

Then the fingerprint. Then another iris scan.

>{2} Surprised to find no new text on either of my two prepaid SIMs or the four eSIMs, I opened my mailbox. It was still deep night at the main office; no messages should have come through, my assignment was clear.

The loading process - bouncing through satellites, private servers, a clever chain of networks - a true Iain cyber-labyrinth - took its time.

I looked once more at the water before me, then up the hill, then into the cloudless sky - the colors radiant.

>{2} I was in reality.

I swung my gaze back to the screen and saw exactly one new message.

Incoming: Subject - Change of Plan // Going Hunting - received 2 minutes ago.

V. Tea in the Smog

I loved the hunt. It fulfilled my being, and unlike most hunting practices, our goal was not to kill or weaken our prey. Often, finding and scouting it was pointless. It was not a classical hunt, and the methods we used were our own. Our prey did not camouflage itself with natural patterns in its surroundings. It hid behind uncertainty and multiplicity in the chaos of the modern world. Often found, but never caught.

>{2} The state, which loves order and hates chaos, usually dismisses our prey as insignificant - here and there, as evil.

Surely you wonder what we did with our prey once we had it on the line. My boss, who was also my closest confidant and hunting companion in the virtual cyber world, said something at our last meeting in person - at a chai stand near the airport in New Delhi - that still echoes in me today. I had met Iain only twice in my life, and I have my doubts whether that is his real name.

>{4} What I never doubted was his good heart.

The last meeting with him had not started well. The hunt was unsuccessful, we had been outplayed - *completely fucked over* - and in the end I was nearly taken out. You could also say they wanted to get rid of me while I was visiting one of my contacts in Rishikesh, in a side alley between a Hindu temple and a yoga resort, with a view of the breathtaking sandy banks of the Ganges. The holy river, which rises high in the Gangotri Glacier of the Himalayas and winds down into the jungle, passing Rishikesh on its right before heading east.

>{1} Fortunately, the river is not yet completely polluted this close to its source.

In that alley I was talking with an instrument maker; he built strange-looking guitars, sitars. The sitar had dozens of strings and looked like an overcomplicated, bulky acoustic guitar. From my four previous visits I knew that not all strings were played - the majority served for resonance.

>{2} Fascinating instrument.

I was looking at a particularly worn one standing in the corner while listening to the instrument maker describe his observations from the past few days, when intuition struck me. My stomach cramped, and I knew I had to run. I moved slowly toward the window, and when I heard the door creak below, I knew there was only one way out. My intuition saved me - that, and the jump into the raging Ganges. I nearly drowned in it, and again it was my intuition, and of course the raft full of rich Indians from Mumbai, that saved me.

>{2} Tourism is somehow also a form of pilgrimage.

How did I get back to Delhi? Through the jungle, then over and through the foothills of the Himalayas, more or less, hitchhiking in overcrowded Jeeps, overloaded trucks, and on the back seat of an old iconic motorcycle whose name the young driver enthusiastically tried to drill into me. I had deliberately not taken the direct route back to Delhi to cover my tracks. At the end of my motorcycle ride, I felt sick from all the curves of the mountain roads, and I had arrived in Mussoorie with great detours. I pressed a few bills into the driver's hand, for the ride and to do me one last favor: Order a taxi to take me to Delhi.

Fortunately the taxi driver was silent the entire seven and a half hours, and dropped me at the roadside three kilometers from the airport - we had gotten stuck in the absolutely insane rush hour traffic of Delhi. On my way to the roadside I was honked at only seven times and nearly run over three times, when a hand appeared from nowhere and pulled me toward a thela - a simple wooden cart with an improvised roof of blue plastic sheeting. It was a small chai stand that also sold some vegetables. There were countless such carts in Delhi. And suddenly I stood before him. He was dressed entirely in black. Black sneakers, black pants, black hoodie, black cap pulled low over his face, black breathing mask - only his eyes were visible.

Perplexed, I spoke, after what felt like an eternity of making sure it really was Iain standing before me:

I: What the goddamned fuck. I almost died. I want to leave this hunting shit behind me. My hunt keeps turning into a flight.

Iain: You cannot leave me and the hunt behind. Our patterns will echo into eternity. How do you think I found you? Do you know why we do this shit?

A moment of emptiness hung between us, in which we both looked into the depths of the other's soul through the gate of the eyes, before he continued:

Iain: We hunt seemingly evil people because the necessary task of bringing balance to the world is a thankless one.

I was still looking into the emptiness, and he continued speaking.

Iain: I can express it more beautifully so that it reaches you. We seek stars because the sky is not enough for the balance between good and evil.

Still gazing into the empty space behind his eyes, where the flow of a person from past through present into future is reflected, I lowered my head slightly and closed my eyes for a moment - a gesture of assent.

>{4} It was too deep for words.

Iain reached into his pocket and pressed a small gray package into my right hand. He spoke quietly:

Iain: Sometimes the flow rests in the darkness, but it never stands still.

It came from my depths; I answered gently:

I: So darkness is a friend of our hunt?! Our shadows have apparently met in the depths for good reason.

With our hands slightly raised upward, we shook, pulled each other closer, and paused briefly in the embrace, with lowered heads. Then we went in opposite directions, but both through the dirt and smog of the beautifully chaotic Delhi.

VI. Angling

Turning my attention back to the email from Iain, which had arrived three minutes ago, I opened it. A single sentence.

Iain (Email): Follow the melody; you can hear it.

>{2} I heard nothing yet - perhaps my frequency was not properly tuned.

Iain must have picked up a signal or pattern, and I trusted him. I stood, glanced at the patterns in the stone I had sat on for so long, and made my way back toward the metro station. Not thirty meters walked, heading toward the bridge I had been staring at, when a girl came toward me. Her little brother was right behind her, holding their father's hand. The girl had a light step, a bright smile, and a small blue speaker dangling from her neck.

>{1} A speaker?

I pricked up my ears and listened. After a few seconds I realized she was learning English. From her speaker came a mythological epic, a fantasy masterpiece of Chinese literature. I sharpened my attention.

Sun Wukong, "equal to heaven," had just been subdued by Buddha Shakyamuni. Or one should rather say: Sun Wukong had been deceived. Instead of leaping from the hand to the end of the cosmos with his heavenly somersault, his jump ended at the Buddha's fingertips. None of the deities in heaven could harm a single hair on the stone monkey, let alone end his life - not with weapons, not with the elements, not with poison. So the Buddha imprisoned him in the Mountain of Five Elements, where the monkey would be fed molten metal and wait in the depths of the mountain for his redemption.

>{3} I remembered - my Ma always read to me from her favorite book at bedtime. That is why I loved the book too. It gave me many lessons for life.

The masterpiece - an old pilgrimage of a simple monk with his mythical companions, from the East to the West and back, in search of holy scriptures. A story of cosmic importance.

Lost in thought, I saw my mother sitting beside me at the bed, her necklace with a cross in her left hand, a Turitella in her right. She often told me what they stood for.

The cross for the sacrifices we make
And the pain
That we carry on our shoulders until the bloom of the beautiful
The sevenfold spirally wound shell for the circles
That we turn and thus carry the upper downward and the lower upward

Before she left my room, pulling the door nearly shut, she usually said:

Mother: Except at the end and beginning of reality, it's always about balance.

On a small card she had written to me:

I am always there
when you need me.
Whether hard or soft,
poor or rich -
to me you are forever mine.
So you remain wholly your own.

Find one with a great heart,
who shares your dreams
and unites her flow with yours.

Then suddenly the scene changed, and I walked with her toward a large wooden door with beautiful medieval carvings. It was the door of our city library. I held my attention on the carvings until they blurred, then opened my eyes, let my gaze sweep over the meadow behind me, spotted the girl with the speaker around her neck, spoke a small prayer into my right hand - or rather a small thanks:

We shall meet again in the whole
For I thank you
You do not know for what, but I carry the memory within me
Our shadows dance
And you take me with you
On a journey into balance

... and tossed the words to her with a smooth motion. I looked to the sky, then to the ground, and knew:

The hunt has begun. The dam is broken; the wave cannot be stopped.

VII. The Yellow Sea

Swift steps drove me through the crowd pressing through the park. My vision was slightly blurred, yet I found my way without thinking, without actively orienting myself. I got on Line 7, stood by the door, gazing out the window, and rode through the underground, forty minutes, all the way south. Out of the underground and back into sunshine, breaking on thousands of glass facade panes into a radiant mosaic, finally splashing onto gray streets - a gray-yellow metropolitan sea.

Dark green cap pulled low over my face, I walked eastward for three blocks and turned into a side street. In the distance I saw it - a yellow sign with black lettering at the bottom and a calligraphic character in the center. It was a restaurant, not just any restaurant - the best kebab in the city, at least according to a street artist who painted melancholy, brightly colored, very abstract oil paintings and stacked them to the ceiling in the tiny back room of his studio. He brought his never-ending dreams of fallen tightrope walkers in modern love dramas to canvas. Colorful paint, but in dark gray forms and figures.

After my visit to the "Yellow Sea" a few days ago, I too was convinced that there could be no better place in the city.

>{2} Fresh lamb on a spit over special quince wood charcoal from the north of the country, prepared in a semi-covered fire pit made of light, sand-yellow firebricks, is simply unbeatable.

The kitchen with three chefs dressed in black was completely visible through a large glass front on the right side. The three chefs wore black bandanas with a single gossamer-thin yellow line in the center and bustled through the heat of the brick oven in - clearly - coordinated chaos. I stood on the opposite side of the street and now looked through the large window front to the left of the entrance. I gazed into a large room, some twenty tables of dark wood, surrounded by couch-like benches with ocher-colored fabric covers. What was special was that the tables, the seating, the candle holders on the walls and above the guests, like the room and its walls, had no corners. Not a single corner, and the longer I stared in, the more the room began to move. Apparent waves flowed from the light sources across the tables and disappeared into the wooden floor. The room appeared like a yellow-brown sea in gentle wind.

Nearly lost in the yellow sea, I surfaced again and turned my attention to the patterns of the woven, close-fitting, colorful little caps worn by the waiters, who were dressed in khaki shirts reaching almost to the knee, with black pants and shoes. According to my research on the phone during the ride on Line 7, the little caps were called doppa - a traditional head covering of those regions. I recognized one of the waiters. He was on duty as he had been a few days ago and walked with smooth stride, tray full of empty plates and glasses, toward the at least five-meter-long food counter of matte black stone. This counter connected the kitchen directly with the main room, and the faint smell of burnt quince charcoal completed the atmosphere, bringing it near perfection.

Slowly I drew my gaze back from the yellow sea and turned my attention to the entrance door. Seven wavy, horizontal silver stripes on anodized matte gray aluminum, winding upward from the very bottom, ending at different heights with slight flourishes. Without further thought I opened the heavy door and stood in the small entrance area, separated from the main room by a door of frosted glass. The anteroom was lined entirely with dark wood, floor included - only the left wall was ocher-colored clay, and I stared at it. In flowing script, all in black, something was written there in a distant language. On the ride with Line 7 I had fed the photo from my first visit into my phone's translator. It had returned:

On yellow sea in great distress
In a vessel made of sweet wood
The scent of black coal pulls through death
And makes us, our ancestors, our children proud

I still stared at the wall and let the calligraphic characters sink deep.

>{3} They possessed an intangible elegance, as if painted by the wind.

Seven times I whispered the lines softly to myself, then I turned toward the glass door and went through. He stood before me, nodded briefly, and made a clear hand gesture to follow him. I followed, observing the pattern of his doppa.

>{2} At first I thought the woven yellow-white pattern on dark brown background was meant to represent a butterfly, but the wings were not curved. They extended from the head, going outward, straight backward. The shape of both wings seemed more like an inverted heart and not like curved butterfly wings.

I followed him to the back right corner of the room to a small table with two chairs and little incoming light. He pulled back the chair facing the window and took my coat. I sat down and was about to tell the waiter that I would like a white tea with a jujube, as last time, but he was already three meters away at the wardrobe hanging up the coat. I turned my head back toward the kitchen counter and followed with interest the actions of the waiters and chefs in the yellow sea.

Suddenly a voice very near to me:

She: Beautiful to see you at sea again. Long enough has your storm rested.

I turned completely toward the window front and thus toward the person sitting opposite me at the table. Her gentle face barely visible, turned away from every light source, her hair appeared vanilla-yellow in the golden shimmer of the room, and on her folded hands resting on the table, besides long white fingernails, three rings were visible on the right hand and four on the left. I could only fully see the three rings on the right hand. On the middle finger were two thin silver rings that merged into one ring through a tiny golden stone at their center. The ring on the index finger must have been through quite a lot, the bronze ring had much black patina, which made the dragon winding around the finger appear even more mythical. On the ring finger was a simple silver ring with an engraving of flowing characters that I unfortunately could not decipher, no matter how much light would shine on them. I gathered my self and let her sentence resonate within me. Then I answered:

I: I am always at sea, only without storm can I find no one and no one finds me. I follow the flow of my intuition, which streams from its center. What I wonder is why I encounter you here.

She shrugged slightly, the corners of her mouth pulled upward slightly, as did her eyebrows.

She: I believe in you because you gifted me your faith. You let your faith die between us, so that it might sow life within me. Thus I now lead with me your army of the believed-dead. Death is but a shadow of everything that was lived. You will say 'But? But a shadow?!' I say yes. They spring from light and yet have power over their creator. Light's creation paints with them. Shadows are everything we see, everything we are, and yet the light is so much more.

A long pause fell between us. She took two sips from her wine glass before I spoke.

I: The flow of the whole decides when dead faith sows new life in the depths. It is a blessing that you can lead them. You seem to do justice to the thankless task of creating balance. That which I need most in great storms.

Over time I had learned to stop thinking at these meetings, to speak from somewhere else inside me. A place from which we spring, and which turns us into shadows.

She: We will stand by your side. The believed-dead have always stood in life's storm. Like stones on the table, four blocks from here, where the light extinguishes late.

I had no idea what she was talking about - 'stones on the table...' Yet I sensed - I was where I should be.

I: Beautiful to hear that one is not alone at sea. I follow a melody, do you hear it too?

She: Which melody? I hear only you.

I nodded and she continued.

She: And now to the business part, so that you're well equipped in the storm, even when we're not with you. It will be in the inner pocket. Small, light, a loose iron, if you understand, not very long-lasting, but effective, surely half a dozen, with much luck a whole one. Everything understood, do you need anything else?

First I nodded slightly, then I pushed my outstretched right hand from left to right while lightly shaking my head, to symbolize that everything was understood and nothing more was needed. Then I said:

I: Let us order food and enjoy the yellow sea.

She beckoned a waiter over and answered:

She: Before the storm rises.

VIII. Golden Wind

This time the encounter had not begun with a question, and did not end in emptiness. Rather the opposite - "Beautiful to see you at sea again." - and moreover, something now rested in my inner right breast pocket. I stood again before the far too beautiful aluminum door of the yellow sea and already missed the hem of her being, cast upon me from her soul. Her soul a violet-tinged pink in the gently dancing shimmer between yellow and red. The hem can only be felt when she lets her dark fog fall - her veil that lets no light through.

During our silent meal I had noticed how we could tell each other things without speaking.

The visit to the yellow sea echoed deep in my streams of thought, and the many kebabs grilled over quince charcoal, deeply savored, now lay heavy at the bottom of my stomach. I wondered briefly what she might perceive in me - closed my eyes for a moment - and steered my stream of thought toward other shores. Opened my eyes and walked, against the wind, down the street.

I stood two blocks north of the yellow sea at a large intersection in the middle of the mega-metropolis. The pedestrian crossing light had just turned red and I used the time to touch my chest once more and then let my hands slide into the side pockets of my jacket. I felt the fitting outlines - my insurance - the business part of the sea could be relied upon.

>{2} I still needed to inspect the objects and familiarize myself with them, but this was surely not the right place for it.

The light would not turn green and my stream of thought gave me no peace, and my stomach too was overfull and announced itself with loud rumbling. I decided on a small wall behind me and sat down, while leaning slightly into the hedge of green-red bushes directly adjacent to the wall.

I watched the chaotic bustle around me, which compared to the last hours seemed like a still mountain lake. The last hours felt like a dream, and for me it had been a beautiful one. I dreamed little in recent years - only with my glittering medicine did I sleep truly peacefully. As a child it was different.

>{4} I was never in the military, but my ancestors seem to have carried the war into my dreams.

Their cruel deaths in the chaos of worlds had woven themselves into my life's flow.

I learned early to interpret my dreams
And their depth and magnitude could simply not be overlooked
They were nonetheless simply knit
And their message I have internalized:
Every decision that is not mine
Can - no - will mean death

Whoever wants to live must sacrifice, their family, their friends, their love, but also their hatred, their will, like their desire, and above all their own thoughts, to let their Self dissolve in great beauty in the small soul. But the value of beauty, which is opposed to the sacrifices, must balance itself in the whole against the chaos of the soul.

Suddenly my vision blurred in the chaotic bustle, the traffic at the intersection drove, on the left side of my field of vision, into a black nothingness. My gaze sweeps to the right and a dense yellow-brown veil clouds my sight. Before me the high-rises crumble to gray dust and a strong wind carries it upward. The sky slowly turns gray, the modern metropolis around me transforms into a dirty-gray wasteland. No matter where I look, a landscape as if the city had experienced nothing but destruction of ungraspable magnitude for the last decades.

>{5} Rubble and ash.

I let my gaze sweep again from left to right and then, as if from nothing, a golden ray struck me. Looking into the distance - it was not just a ray, it was an entire trail, gold-yellow, it played with the gray of the dust and flowed through the rubble landscape. Gold-gray patterns emerged, into which I truly could have let myself fall, however I did not, I heard steps from the right - many steps, in uniform rhythm.

I remained calmly seated and released my gaze from the trail and turned my head slowly back to the right. About twenty men in old-fashioned military clothing appeared, not too far away, from the yellow-brown veil. The clothing was covered with a gray layer of dust, with weapons in their hands they marched with iron determination after the golden trail, into which I had just wanted to let myself fall.

My focus was entirely on them. One of the soldiers let himself fall back in the group and as time passed, he inconspicuously separated himself toward the rear. Without looking around further, he turned left - in my direction - and walked straight toward me, while the remaining soldiers marched on. I still could not make out his face, but he cut a heroic figure, with the fading golden trail at his back, while the wind majestically lifted his gray dust-covered coat.

When he had come closer, however, something else was written on his face - indifference paired with penetrating determination. Every contour was underscored by deep, broad, small, large, dust-filled wrinkles. The closer he came, the more complex and manifold the wrinkle-landscape became, shaped by his gently shifting features.

>{4} But what truly streamed into my soul was his deeply piercing gaze, from eyes that opposed reality itself.

The normally white background, the sclera, was a dark black-brown, as if coal had been roughly mixed with dark earth. The iris a matte gray with shallow lighter and darker streaks in gold-gray tones, as if the trail of the rubble landscape had begun a dance with the gray dust of the air in the depths of his soul. And the pupil glittered silver-white, like fresh-fallen snow in the reflected light of the full moon.

Soldier: You here, in the dried riverbed of my being.

He said with a scratchy voice but gentle undertone.

I: I don't know where exactly I am, but it is somehow beautifully cruel, cruelly beautiful.

I answered honestly.

Soldier: Beautifully said, you must know, our beds are all like this. Chaos has formed them and only my blood can see the traces of dried beauty. To then flood them again with a flowing wave of being. Like water, seeds seep into the bottom of the bed.

I was not aware of what exactly he wanted to convey to me, nevertheless I nodded in agreement and after a short pause I asked what was burning on my tongue.

I: Into which battle are you marching with your comrades, or are you just coming from one? And where will this golden trail lead you?

Soldier: We fought a battle on the bottom of the sea, where our sacrifices to reality lie.

I: What sacrifices do you speak of?

Soldier: Let me elaborate. We sacrificed our being up there...

He pointed to the ground before he continued.

Soldier: ...sunk our potential in the infinity of the whole, so that a seed in the light of our past darkness can bloom anew in the future.

My gaze met his and the reflecting white light from his pupil would not let me go and drew my stream of thought into emptiness, while he continued speaking.

Soldier: We went together into the frozen night, my comrades and I, believing we could give it light and find meaning. In the end we all perished together in the chaos of our time. For a long while everything was dark and the fight, like the search, hopeless. But we know nothing else - it has become habit. Then a few days ago we broke through the front. At first there was only black darkness. A black that made dark coal look white. But instead of being swallowed by this darkness, we paused. After an eternity, a tiny crack opened in the black emptiness where we stood, and a small creature crawled forth - or rather, only its shadow. It spread its wings and pulled a tiny golden trail from the depth of the crack behind it. Since that moment we have been marching - without pause.

I: I hope the shadow leads you out of the darkness. I wonder why you are telling me all this. Do not misunderstand - I am glad to listen. But you seem to know me. What do I have to do with any of this?

He took his right finger, pointed to his ear, led the finger to the middle of his face until it was at the level of his nose tip, and from there made a smooth arc downward toward his heart. Arriving there, he drilled the finger into his chest and led it in a swirling movement upward until it pointed straight up above his head. Then he spoke.

Soldier: You are neither light nor shadow, you reflect deeply sown balance. You are my future, I your past, we lie in the same bed. You have rekindled the fire of your source, given me some hope with just a drop of water, and brought us the golden flood.

I: The effect of your words within me shows how great your sacrifices were. I will take your spoken words seriously and weave them into my being. May the flood swell between drop and sea.

Gift this world balance
Death swims in frozen chaos
On the sea of emptiness
Into which you have managed to sink

Soldier: I must catch up to my comrades. You don't want us to be late.

He turned around and walked in march step, without turning around again, toward the fading trail once more. I stared in his direction and spoke quietly to myself.

I will do it for you. You are my...

IX. Red Crossing

In the gray dust, a red light suddenly appeared.

And a moment later I was staring at the traffic light at the pedestrian crossing again. Still red. A thought formed as I recalled the encounter in the yellow sea, especially the moment when she said - "The believed-dead have always stood in life's storm. Like stones on the table, four blocks from here, where the light extinguishes late."

>{3} The light... perhaps it refers to the exposing red light that glows in the darkness, no matter in which city.

They were, no matter where in the world, peculiarly human places. Four blocks from the yellow sea - I took it literally, I pulled out my phone, opened the map and drew a circle with my finger around the position of the yellow sea, so that it stretched at least four blocks in all four cardinal directions - the search radius. However, it seemed to me, in this metropolitan jungle, very unlikely, if not impossible, to find the building by chance.

>{2} I needed at least a direction.

I still stood at the traffic light, as if rooted, when suddenly words echoed in my ears. Next to me stood a couple of Western origin, she wanted to cross at the light, he presumably back to the office. He said something to her that took on a life of its own within me.

"Please do not forget!"

In my imagination, a room constructed itself.

A few seconds later I stood in the middle of an empty courtroom. I looked around - not a soul to be seen. But after a moment, a voice echoed through the hall, sounding serious, as if a judge were pronouncing his verdict:

Judge: Please do not forget. Only when no call for revenge resounds in the region of darkness will peace flourish in your world of light.

I nodded, turned around and left the hall through curved double doors and stood again at the red traffic light.

Finally the light turned green and I could cross the street in the stream of hundreds of people. I simply let myself be carried along by the stream, I was still internally processing the message from the courtroom.

It seemed to me as if I had heard the words before. Not just heard, they were preached to me.

Then the memory returned - the masterpiece my mother read to me at bedtime. After the Tang Emperor in the underworld had left behind the eighteen-fold hell beyond the Mountain of Perpetual Shadow and had arrived with Judge Cui at the six-fold wheel of soul transmigration, it was time for the Tang Emperor to stride upon the path of nobility, the path of aristocracy.

Judge Cui expressed it in his counsel
For the Tang Emperor
Who was about to ascend again into the world of light
Only when no call for revenge resounds in the region of darkness
Will peace flourish in your world of light

I knew it was time to celebrate a mass for chaos and beauty, to redeem the wretched, homeless souls.

Where this mass could take place was not yet clear to me, but I knew - at the latest after my visit to the yellow sea - that I was on the high seas, and it was now time to find chaos.

I had arrived on the other side of the street, opened my map on the phone, realized I was heading north, turned instinctively to the right and walked down the street without further burden of thought.

X. No Hunger

It was getting dark and the last two hours of my search had been unsuccessful. One building scraping the clouds looked like the next to me. Every other one I could not even enter without access authorization. I had just arrived at the next intersection and looked down the street to the left - dozens of grocery stores and restaurants invited me to stroll and feast, yet I still had no hunger.

The first shop that caught my interest had countless variations of nuts and dried fruits, I looked through the window for a long while and wondered where all the nuts might come from.

>{2} I found no answers within myself and walked on.

The second shop that attracted my attention was a small ramen stall. Perhaps twenty square meters, simple, transparent plastic curtains at the entrance, three tiny tables in front of the kitchen counter at the end of the room. The menu was written with chalk on a black board and in the kitchen was a giant steel pot in which the fragrant broth simmered with huge bones swimming in it. From the street one could already see how the cook behind the counter was transforming noodle dough into ramen with smooth hand movements and extraordinary dexterity.

>{3} I had found my place for dinner, but the hunger had not yet arrived, so I left the ramen fragrance behind, stomach heavy.

I pulled my cap deeper into my face and walked further down the street. Past a fish shop, two enormous stores that sold nothing but fruits and vegetables, these had all types and cultivations one could imagine and more, a leather manufactory, a porcelain and jade dealer, as well as a shop specialized in cooking knives.

>{4} Something pulled me past these shops, my attention did not stick to them, as if I were sitting in the passenger seat of a fast car, from where I can see the landscape but not enjoy it.

Shortly before the next major intersection, a small alley opened up to my right and my gaze caught on a round sign. I walked a few steps into the alley. The sign looked as if a serpent were stretching its head out of it and not only cunningly observing the people passing beneath from above, but also hissing at them with a forked tongue.

The longer I stared at the sign, the more the serpent's head moved in my direction and its red glowing eyes emerged.

I felt how my right hand became heavier and weight fell from my heart.

The serpent hissed in my direction, I raised my right hand and a pitch-black object was in my hand and my vision darkened. The shape and form of the staff could not be recognized, no light could penetrate through to it. The waves of red light emanating from the serpent's eyes were broken by the darkness of the staff and then swallowed.

Just before the last light of the surroundings disappeared into the darkness, I managed to wrench my hand free and let the object glide back into the inner pocket of my jacket. The little light there was returned to the alley and the sign revealed itself as a stylishly curved teapot.

I touched my chest discreetly, felt the same shape as before, a smile flitted across my face and a wave of fulfillment washed through my body.

My soul spoke to my Self -

No matter what happens
We descend together into this depth
For a new time
Born in the chaos of this world

I looked around briefly to see if I had attracted attention, saw nothing conspicuous and strode with empty determination toward the door, above which hung the seductively smooth teapot.

XI. Clay Vases

I set my first foot into the room behind the door and could feel I had landed in a special place. The four walls of the room were virtually invisible, on all four were shelves to the ceiling filled with clay vessels of various sizes and colors, from white, gray, yellow, brown through red to a greenish clay vase standing centrally in the room filled with seven bright white roses.

>{5} The most beautiful flowers I had ever seen.

Shopkeeper: Hundred-year-old peonies, be assured no evil spirit will overcome you here.

Came from the left in passable English from the shopkeeper who was just placing a gray clay vessel with a flower-decorated lid back on the shelf behind him. I turned to him and answered with a slightly puzzled face:

I: Beautiful blossoms, what besides keeping evil spirits away is attributed to these plants?

Shopkeeper: To effectively ward off evil spirits, the roses must be deeply rooted, at least fifty years of growth upward and downward, otherwise you might as well just trust your superstition. But those I have over there in the lower corner of the shelf, in the white vessel with the black circle on the front, they are not very old, but effective in pain relief, nourishing the blood and regenerating your cool and calm energy, your Yin. You know... in balance with the heat of Yang. Also used much by women to prevent menstrual discomfort or relieve muscle cramps. With your tension, though, I would rather advise acupuncture.

I: If I had a lady by my side, I would buy some from you. And yes, the tension in the body is high when one has set one's sails into the wind. You must have good knowledge of human nature to read the tension from me so quickly.

Shopkeeper: Set one's sails into the wind. Do I have a little poet before me?

I: No, sometimes my soul speaks and not my self.

Shopkeeper: I'm glad you stumbled into my shop, sit on that stool over there and I'll prepare you a tea that gives you the necessary calm in the great storm.

I sat on the small stool next to the small table, made of dark wood, decorated with green jade, with the greenish vase in the center, from which the seven peonies flooded the room with harmony through their beauty.

>{3} I would have expected differently, had I not laid aside all expectations, as one must do on the hunt. Perhaps the same applies to life.

I looked up and down the walls, trying to catch a sense of what might be stored in all the vessels. Meanwhile, the shopkeeper fetched a small wooden stepladder from the corner and gathered one container after another from various shelves.

He placed them in the front left corner of the room, where there was a round hole in the wooden floor, diameter a bit more than a meter, twenty maybe thirty centimeters deep, and in the center stood on black earth a small metal frame with four legs, beneath which was already some wood, neatly arranged in cone form, so that air could draw into the structure from below.

I sat on my small stool and absorbed the energy of the room, letting my gaze wander again and again and watching the shopkeeper as he carried an iron teapot to the circle in the floor. He placed the teapot on the frame in the center of the circle, sat on the edge and opened the containers one by one and began filling the pot with dried leaves and herbs. What was conjured from the last container puzzled me somewhat, he had fished it out of the vessel by one of its legs, an elongated, black, dark-looking, dried locust. Tenderly he threw it into the pot and directed his gaze at me.

Shopkeeper: To come from six to seven, on the path of eight, you must still pluck for me a rose petal from the hundred-year-old peonies.

I nodded to him, looked at the harmony of the seven roses in the green clay vase directly before me and decisively reached for the first, white radiant petal that had drawn my attention. I let it glide from my fingertips into the pot. Now he nodded to me with a satisfied look, reached for a glass carafe and filled water into the pot, ignited the wooden cone under the pot and we both looked into the blazing flames, as if our souls were merging there with each other.

The crackling of the flames hung in the air and wove itself into the harmony of the room. Beneath swelled an intangible scent that streamed from the pot in gentle waves. An indescribable feeling permeated my being, a full emptiness, a superposition of all emotional states of my experience, all were there but no feeling truly present.

>{4} My stream of thought dried up and I felt like an intangible form in the shape of light gray, rearing clouds.

He looked physically weak as he sat by the fire, in his simple dark green shirt, black cloth trousers and open dark brown leather shoes. His black-gray hair combed to the side, round glasses with black frames on his nose. The wrinkles of his skin spoke of life's experiences. But as soon as I looked into his eyes, everything shifted - his dark, deep brown eyes drew my attention with tremendous strength into their black center.

>{5} There unfolded a bright space full of emptiness, and so began our conversation over a pot of wondrous tea.

Shopkeeper: Be so kind and fetch us two cups, they're over there on the shelf, behind the bright yellow clay vessel.

I walked over, took two of the tiny porcelain cups and went with them to the circle.

I: A barely describable scent lies in the air, what fragrant tea have you brewed together for us here?

He took the first cup from my hand, placed it on the floor beside him, and heaved the heavy iron pot from the fire.

Shopkeeper: A seven-tea for your eighth path. An immaculate lotus flower from the black mud of reality. A yellow chrysanthemum that radiates against dark desire. The locust for clarifying connection to the underworld. Some saffron for a protective shield around the mosaic of your heart. A piece of ginseng for a calm spirit in the storm of your thoughts. Some leaves of green tea, Longjing, for the fullness of your attention. And the peony petal for beauty in your doing. Thus you will be able to gather your own being in the present moment, to let it flow back into the stream of reality.

I absorbed the information, like the rising scent of tea from my cup, with every breath. When he had finished speaking, I simply lifted my cup slightly, he did the same, and we both drank the first sip.

I drank three more large sips and then...

A feeling rises from below into me
It permeates my fibers and my spirit
It does not settle and does not rest, but swells
I feel the connection into a filled abyss
That stretches into the expanses

I begin to feel like a ship
Half underwater, half at sea
Every wave lifts and lowers my being
The waves that carry me come from the depths of the sea
And lead me straight into the storm of my being
That towers on the horizon

I directed my attention fully outward and sat again with tea in hand on my stool. My stomach cramped slightly - I should probably go to the bathroom.

I did not need to say a word. The shop owner looked up briefly and pointed to a passage in the corner of the room from which he had fetched the stepladder.

I placed the cup on the floor and staggered, slightly cramped, into the corner of the room, until I could see around the corner where the stepladder must have stood.