“Daddy”

            Finally, I decided to go and make peace with both future and past, and to get an advice or two from the one that used be an existence, and now I am one of his existences. There I can reflect on the future of the effects of form, existence and the spirit of my father, or on his future in my non-existent present. There—a place to bury a human ordinary value, an enclosure of two by two meters where the body of a man is lying, where "daddy" is and sends me across time and space the effects of its previous existence. For the others he is just a stranger whose effects cannot be taken into consideration, if any, even if they exist.

So close to me, or even he is me and I do not realize it yet. Maybe I am the illusion/reality, and he is the Reality Itself, or maybe we are both the reality that we do not master, but that ultimately defines us beyond our conventional, limited and perishable spirit, beyond our sorrows, our state of panic, or uncertainties in the face of nonexistence.

A beautiful early autumn morning, I can still feel the sun, and I would still run over to the river that simultaneously unites and separates, to see the water and its pleasant coolness, and not be afraid of its future coldness anymore. I am heading towards the cemetery. There is "daddy," waiting for me with so much patience and understanding. I feel much younger and closer to him if I call him so; I have always called him this way, even now at my retirement age, when I think slower and I walk carefully as if my body has become unbearably heavy, pretending it is not the legs’ fault. My steps are also slower, my eyes more blurry, my voice lower, and I only hear what I want or what I can. This is what the children say whenever they tell me something, they know best, they feel my spirit passing slowly through the gate of this world which I loved beyond my illusion/reality and my inability to understand it.

I enter the cemetery, the gate creaks along, I was among the first to disturb it. A simple cemetery, the graves are still as they were in the past, still made of earth and grass, the concrete did not succeed here in conquering the nature. A simple alley, with the graves arranged on both sides and nicely maintained side by side. After a few steps, on the right side, there is the tomb of the one who was and remains "daddy."A slight dizziness makes me stop and see with my cobwebbed eyes the light dimming, as if it were dusk and the sun did not rise. An immense fog covers the present and it seems that everything is waiting to be covered by dark clouds, even my heart seems to stop, I do not know for how long, or maybe all this happens out of time.

I try to move, but my move has no effect, I feel my movement but I continue to stand still. Darkness covers everything as a nonexistence and then an endless ocean of light and dark, without horizon or limits, no breath of wind, no feelings and no existences, not even dreams or ideas, I could say nonexistence, but I would be wrong. I am an existence, I am an unlimitedly small sequence in this unlimitedly large immensity, and I could say just as well that I do not exist. I am that nothing that you do not think there even is; I, like you, like the others, am the unlimitedly small, unconventional sequence, and I, like you, am floating in the unlimitedly large vastness of the Universe Itself.

Somewhere close to me, maybe just as an idea or maybe just spirit, in no case existence, a plain cross blackened by time is the only presence in this universe. My name is on it and under my name, there are only a few lines, hardly legible. I try to decipher what is written, it is quite difficult, as if I read an invisible writing, just as a breath of wind, no grave, no existence, no spirits to help me out, only those words that make me tremble:

     “I am the neutral being of your past,

You, the limit of this past,

     I am the anonymous being from this limited present,

You, definitely only a reflection of it,

     I am just the eternal future nothingness,

You, just future nonexistence.

     I am the anonymous being of your contraries,

You, a limited sum of contraries,

     I am the nothingness that represents you,

You, just the illusion of the representation.”

Everything disappears and I, though stunned by what Reality Itself is, was starring at my dad's marble cross; I have no tears and my dread disappears slowly. I have returned to normality, to the illusion of my existence and of the one who is gone.

Those words are still in my head, but I refuse to accept that reality, I prefer the illusion in which I used to live; anyway, I know that I have no better option of being myself. I have remained with the feeling, instinct, and intuition that that was the future, the limit of my destiny, and I am still at the present that tells me I exist. His entire life "daddy" helped me to go over my limits; he did not give me the solution, he gave me the hope and the optimism of his own existence, without telling me anything. Now he helps me understand that it is better to live a limited existence once, than a nonexistence forever, and those who do not know or believe this or do not feel like this, those ones do not have their dead, or have never lived, or do not know that they still live.

I close the cemetery gate behind me, in my opinion just another gate through which people pass, and not one that transforms. A calm and seemingly reconciled walk that I talked to "daddy"; he listened to me carefully and I was able to draw the right conclusions, or rather I accepted the existence as it is, or I could say I became that simple man who had never understood in the past, how a man could be reconciled to his fate. Now daddy made me realize that I am a simple man like him who "accepted his fate”.

With the same soft look, though more energized, I walk towards a new day. The time to meet with my limited destiny and to find the neutral of my contraries has not come yet.