fantasia

Asia is awake.

Barefoot, she’s taking her smile up the wooden spiral staircase to the sky, letting the breeze in her home and bowing down to the light progressively overwhelming  the megapolis.

The sip of warm tea before. And the strokes of the cool shower after meditation, seemingly given away by a wild cloud but actually collected from the rooftop lawn, drop by drop. It’s invigorating and bringing back memories of her birth in a fishing village by the Big River. Issuing voice commands to the transparent bathroom, she’s enjoying both the drizzly and the tenderly heavy touches filling up the space, while dancing in the mix of water and final blessed moments of the night.

The Sun is in love with her too. It loves the meanders of her body, her innocent photographic face, her countless party-coloured hairs braided by the stars, the two large lakes, the chasm of life and the tall mountains where it invariably stops for a break. It never bothers her and is never jealous of her beauty. The nature of their love is pure.

“A caravan of a thousand people, hundreds of camels, just as many horses and twenty elephants had been crossing the sands for a month, in pursuit of their goal. In the evening, everyone had sought closeness, in order to tell their stories about the journey, thank for the food, praise advancing life or forget about the death they had been dragging along. That day, in spite of all prayers, all gods retired. Fears quickly invaded the tents and the yurts and turned the hammocks upside down, the shadows started wailing with thirst, the fire went out, the sense of words faded and people took up fighting. Day and night went blind. Children started swallowing pain and sadness instead of food…”

Asia pulls the sheet out of the device and puts another one in. She cherishes the touch of handmade paper as well as its smell. She writes in pencil or ink, with her eyes closed sometimes, and the simple sensor reads the symbols and transfers the information to the screen.

She has a light breakfast and slowly finishes the contents of the porcelain cup.

“… The man stopped by the little ones. He listened to their stories, stroked their heads and handed them dates. No one else noticed him. Madness sucked the last drops of reason out of the clamour. Only the sand was whispering. May be because the desert was the prophet’s mother or because the desert herself had been conceived by him? The stranger then silently took one of the camels by the lead. Its owner pulled out a blade but his brother laid him dead. The animals followed the leader. People followed the four-legged, heads down. A totally timeless procession. They reached the oasis on the second day.  The prophet washed his eyes and legs, bowed down to the ground and resumed his journey along the trails of the Sun.”

The lift in the tower announces a surprise visitor. Asia claps one of her hands. The sound echoes in my dream. It has never been so vivid…

 “Who the hell came up with the idea to replace lifts with Chinese ones too?!  They keep calling us to repair them every two hours…  Hey, mate, you seem to have fallen asleep inside! Did you at least have a saucy dream?  Not in that monkish position. Hey! You’re free to go now.”

( специални благодарности и прегръдки на всички приятели помогнали и участвали при превода, намасте, м.)