The click of the pendulum was a thread of sound in a fabric of silence. A mixture of waning daylight and the warm glow of a solitary bulb stretched across the white walls of the room. He was seated at the head of the dining table, surveying his surrounds with a curious gleam in his eyes. His dog lay at his feet, twitching as he ventured through a mysterious realm of sleep. He watched his mother's beige curtains flow upward as a delicate wind wafted in through the open windows, suspended in air for a precious moment before easing into place. His gaze shifted between objects in the room; the antique furniture, the African masks, the crystal ornaments, the paintings and old photographs. Each with an origin and history far beyond the space they now occupied. Yet they were at home in this house in Colombo, fragments in a network of memory. A smile dominated his expression as he rested his head on his left palm. He muffled a cough with tight lips and a clenched right hand as he rose from the chair, careful not to wake his sleeping companion. He walked towards the grills on the windows and looked out onto the garden, the bright green of the palms were fading with the retreating sun. Traces of orange longing clung to the clouds in defiance of fading prominence. Witness to transition, the words and pictures in his mind awoke and fixed upon his chords.
" The yolk of past circumstance wore me thin. The marrow of my consciousness has been but a stream of melancholy, secretly welcoming adversity. It is only now that I differentiate between a chronicle and the person beneath. It is only now that I feel with a sense of certainty, the treachery of time in my mind and the length of my preoccupation. This near silence is pristine in its spaciousness. I am adrift and feel no containment in this supposed solitude."
He heads back towards the table and kneels next to the chair he had been sitting in. A quiet surge of affection drifts through his eyes as he watches his dog, still deep in sleep. He bore little trace of aging as his chest moved in rhythm to his breathing, his paws stretched across the tiles.
"I may never see you again boy. Yet I feel no great sadness in this as I did before. It's no exaggeration...I've had more time with you than with my own father. In truth, next to no one has been a part of my life as you have. And it may be... that no other being will be as consistently happy to see me and show me affection with such simple immediacy. But we've had so many years...we've grown together. I could so easily slide to the sorrow of reflection...but I'd much rather revel in how peaceful you are right now. In this series of moments, a link of liberating truths have dawned on me. I can only describe it as being the death of a shadow and a lightness of being. We as humans fall prey to the very complexity that fuels our vanity. You have little need for words and intellect to just be...free of wasteful cognition and resistance. What use have we for life stories. Our minds can be the very smoke that shrouds our spirit from all things of consequence."
Lying on the floor. Moments trickle with the grace of long awaited raindrops as his eyes begin to seal. He thought of the strange but beautiful punctuation that had ended a most turbulent sentence. Hours later, he was greeted by the familiar touch of a wet nose. The clock chimed with self importance but found no ears.