July 13th, 2020
story from the book: NOT EVERYTHING IS LIKE IT SEEMS Life-written Fairy Tales for Adults
by Katarzyna Nowocin-Kowalczyk
A woman sat in the park on a bench right next to the water. She liked to come here and she liked her silence. Although this silence was not silence at all, although it was. The rustling of the wind dancing in the leaves of the trees, the sound of water flowing into the pond, the singing of birds, the splash of a jumping fish, quacking ducks, gaggling wild geese, and somewhere in the distance the joyful screams of children playing and the sound of conversations of people walking. Someone rode a bicycle, a dog barked somewhere. A plane flew upstairs. And yet silence. As if time had stopped. But it was flowing.
The woman watched all this as if locked in some kind of space-time bubble, in which there is neither time nor space. She was here and now, and at the same time she was in another world. In a world of her own thoughts and her imagination. As if she were in two worlds at the same time.
She was thinking about her life so far. About how everything was perfectly arranged in it. It could seem as if it had been planned in advance, before she was even born. A detailed script, somewhere up there, in another dimension. And every element of her life, like a puzzle, perfectly combined with other seemingly distant events. She thought about the consequences of every decision made or not made at some point, and how every person she met in life was for something. And also about how everything in her life had its time. As if someone was watching over it, so that everything happened exactly when it was supposed to happen.
She thought about what she hadn't done. About her missed opportunities. She recalled a friend from her early youth. They were teenagers at the time. The friend played tennis very well, she played table tennis. He offered to teach her his game. It ended up with one or two visits to the court. She didn't do well, so she gave up. And then she thought about it all her life. About the fact that she would have liked to be able to play tennis. And the thought was coming back– You gave up quickly, girl. One failure was enough, and you decided it wasn't for you. You doubted yourself. You didn't trust yourself. You didn't take advantage of that time. And somehow she never had the opportunity to go back to it and learn how to play tennis. Although perhaps there were opportunities, but somehow there was no more time for it. Something else was important.
And as she thought about these various missed opportunities, how everything has its time in this life and how perfectly arranged it is, suddenly an older, tall, slim man in a hat stood in front of her. He appeared as if out of nowhere. Or maybe she just didn't notice him, immersed in her thoughts and in her world. She looked at him with a surprised and somewhat unconscious look, as if someone or something had violently thrown her into earthly reality. The man was serious, his face stern, his eyes piercing. He exuded calm and strength. But it was not an earthly force. This force flowed from within. And there was something strangely familiar in him, though she couldn't say what it was. As if she had known him forever. She felt friendship, but also respect at the same time. He smiled at her gently, but as if invisibly. He looked at the spot next to her, as if without words he was asking if he could sit there. The woman also answered without words–yes. The conversation began strangely.
This story is for me. Thank you, Catherine.
🌺💕
awesome story ❤️