in memoriam of Nikolay Vatov

. . .

 

        I sensed somebody’s calming presence. Someone I couldn’t see but could only sense grabbed my hand and we both flew into space. We were surrounded once more by the soft glow of the night and then I knew – we had no bodies, we were just spirits and thoughts. Our physical shells were still standing on the shore, holding each other in silence – I could see us from afar. We rose up at top speed. The beach, Celesta and the surrounding hills remained below. After that I saw the enormous colorful globe of the planet, cut in two by the line of the terminator. It grew smaller and glistened like a sparkling blue pearl, and then started to melt, turning into a tiny ember. We were flying towards the sunrise, towards the sun. Isabella was guiding me. We dove into the bubbling fiery abyss. Light. Streams of light, moving from the center to the surface and back in a constant cycle, forming the mighty tongues of the protuberances, pulsating and erupting entire oceans of energy every second.

        We were flying over planets and alien stars. In a single moment we overcame cosmic distances of thousands and millions of light years. We walked the streets of abandoned cities, built by long-gone civilizations, and stepped inside deserted temples of forgotten deities. We found thinking clouds of prime matter  - enormous structures, so different from us, it would take billions of years to understand them. We were present at the birth of the galaxies. We met strange creatures on planets, bustling with life and death, and we fought them to survive… Can you imagine mountains of quarts which flare up in every color of the rainbow at the first light of dawn, or canyons - tens of miles high? I didn’t think so, but we flew over them! Have you seen a prehistoric jungle? Or icy cobweb-like ravines… or the simultaneous breathtaking sunset of four suns… or a night sky sprinkled with so many stars, you want to reach your hand and grab them… Have you seen the entire beauty of the world in just one flower, one pebble or one butterfly?... Can you feel the harmony of eternity, dissolved in the whisper of the cosmic currents? Or hear the song of the giant hairy ants, inhabiting the deserts of a planet in the end legs of the Andromeda Nebula – so pervasive you inadvertently forget your human essence…

 . . .

 

translated by Iva Doncheva