sky to heaven - the invisible life.

It was just after the end of the world, and I was walking with a girl in a black overcoat, down a deserted street. The shops were empty as if everyone had just taken a holiday… or as if they had been kidnapped. But there was an artist’s shop, and behind the broken window glass, there was an unfinished buddha, sculpted in grey stone.

For some strange reason I didn’t understand, she liked buddhas. Every time she saw a buddha, she would stand there looking at it, silent and transfixed, and I had to wait there until she was finished. She looked into their quiet eyes, as if looking for some answers, or for some kind of peace or deliverance from the world. But the buddhas did not talk back. They looked as if they belonged to a different world: a spirit world, but this world didn’t seem like there was any spirit left in it anymore. They seemed like foreigners here. But maybe it had been we who had refused to invite them into our world. In the past we only saw them as quaint objects, interesting decorations, and nothing more. Now the people were mostly gone, but the buddhas were still mostly here – scattered around in the destroyed cities and in the forests, like guardians of nature.

There were many buddhas left in the world, but they were quiet now. They all had that same quality of being buddha-like. All were sculpted differently, but all seemed to have that same calm, quiet smile, and an empty but deep gaze in their eyes. They were always sitting down, never standing up; they were never in motion, and almost never expressing e-motion. And she looked at them as if they were trying to show us something, something that humanity had refused to see. But they sat there, unjudging. Maybe we should listen to them more next time. Next time? There might not be a next time. The world is so big and dangerous; only the strong survive – it is the weak and the nonviolent who perish. If we listened to the buddhas now, we would all eventually be dead. And after death, there were no more chances, right? We still had to protect ourselves if we wanted to live.

I said to her, “Come on, let’s go. We have to find the others.” And she looked for a few seconds longer. I turned and began walking away. And in the solitude of my footsteps, I only heard my shoes clicking on the broken sidewalk, alone… and I looked back, and saw she was still looking at the buddha, as if it were going to show her a better place to be, a place of safety and of peace.
“Hey, come on,” I said, “We have to get going to find the others. It’s going to be dark soon.”
“No,” she said, “I think I’m going to stay here. You go on ahead if you have to.”
“If I have to? Of course I have to. What’s there to do here? It’s getting late.”
“I think there’s something here,” she said, still looking into the eyes of the Buddha.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.
“The buddha,” she said.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, I’m not kidding. I can hear what they are saying now.”
And I was silent, the kind of silent you are after you make the judgment that a person who you thought was normal, is now crazy. The kind of silent you are when you suddenly realize there is this big Gap between you and a person who you thought you knew, but now don’t know anymore. I wanted to say, “You’re crazy!” but I knew I wasn’t really qualified to make that judgment under the present circumstances of the world. All of us had seen a few people go crazy after the end of the world. I laughed nervously, to fill in that Gap between her and me. And so I said, “They’re talking to you now? Now? Well, what are they saying?”

“Yes… but they were always talking before. I just wasn’t listening before.” She still hadn’t looked at me; she seemed utterly amazed with the Buddha, just as I was amazed with her. I was trying to understand, but I didn’t hear any voices – in fact, I only heard myself. It was going to be dark in a few hours, and it wouldn’t be safe pretty soon. We had to go. And to tell you the truth, I was afraid. I felt the fear. If evil came to this place at night, I knew I was going to run away from it. I did not have any resources, equipment, or powers to fight it. So I was going to run, and this girl, she should run to.

“We should go – it’s going to get dark soon,” I repeated. “What?” she said, still lost in the Buddha. Their voices, it seemed, were stronger than mine. I walked back to her, and nearly shouted (as if crazy people have a harder time hearing the voices of sanity, as if something is blocking their ears). I wanted to pull her by the sleeve, but I didn’t because I thought she was crazy. She might react in a hostile way and it was important that we leave the area, and any trouble between us would make it harder for me to fulfill my obligation and my conscience to get her out of there.

Why was I trying to convince a crazy person of reason??? I would have laughed at the paradox of it all if I hadn’t been so afraid of the nightfall. And of course, as I should have guessed, she said “I want to stay.” As if that were a sufficiently clear enough reason. It was so childlike in its response. As if wanting is a good reason to do something in the face of imminent danger. “But why would you want to stay??? It’s dangerous here.”

And finally, she turned to look directly at me. There was a glistening in her eyes, which bespoke reason. And she said, “To you, it’s dangerous everywhere. And it will always be dangerous for you. Even before the world ended, when you were living your life in that other world, it was dangerous for you. As long as you fear danger, the world will always be a dangerous place to you. But it doesn’t have to be that way – and you don’t have to be that way. The world hasn’t changed, and it won’t change – until you change.” She was kind of smiling when she said that - as if I were the child. Well, what she said sounded true, I admit. But it was still hard for me to understand. I feel it is dangerous everywhere because it is dangerous everywhere. I couldn’t get out of my own thinking. “But, it’s safer with the group,” I said.

And she said, “Not necessarily. During these times, that’s not necessarily true.” And I knew what she meant. Sure, there was distrust, rivalry, suspicion, fear, betrayal, and self-interest. Mostly, it seemed, for the sake of self-preservation. People sometimes can do terrible things to each other if they think it’s necessary in order to preserve themselves, to survive. Out in the woods with no homes, no weapons, no stable source of food, I’m actually amazed that we had even survived this long as a group. “Then what are you going to do? Stay here by yourself? What if gangs come here? What if something happens? What’ll you do?” And she said, “Yes, I’m going to stay here for a little while. I want to listen more. They are saying the same things over and over again, but, I just want to listen. It feels like I’m hearing music for the first time again. Don’t worry, when nightfall comes, I’ll probably leave.”
“Okay, so you’ll come back to us later then?”
“Maybe. We’ll see. I don’t know what I’ll be doing later. Later is in the future. I won’t know what I’ll be doing later until later becomes now.”
“Well, then, maybe see you later.”
“Okay. Wish you peace.”
“Yeah… whatever. You too.” And that is when I turned and walked away, and went back to my own dangerous world - for I was not ready yet to enter into her world.