The Appointed Day of Choosing
For the first time — possibly ever — he felt truly at peace with himself. He was in control. Sunlight both absorbed and reflected by and from the tall glass buildings warmed the cool streets along which he walked. It filled him with vigour among the emptiness that surrounded him. At this early hour, most people were still frantically racing around in their boxes trying to get ready to face a day loaded with things they did not want but were taught that they needed. Brainwashed. Victims to shapeless desires. He was once one of those people but not anymore. He had found the key to unlatch the chains. He was free — at last! A tune of joy and quiet happiness filtered into his mind trickled into his throat and hummed its way into the as yet, still clean air. What a glorious morning!
He was still a long way from where he needed to be, but he did not care. Time did not matter. Time was his to have. He had all the time in the world. If he did not get there on the appointed hour, they would wait for him. Where else would they go without him? He had bought their time for they remained slaves. The blindness of education and false ambition had still not fallen from their eyes.
As the warmth and light lowered themselves into the streets, forging themselves down avenues of faceless structures — manmade cliffs — psychological havens from a dimly remembered primitive past, the tranquil spaces around him began to be occupied by anxiety. They radiated unease and fretfulness as they chased what could never be caught. He knew this intimately for he had hunted the same things; running along narrow passages of unfulfillment and despair. He stopped at an intersection, watching absently the regulator of city life — red, amber, green. An elegantly dressed, perfectly coiffured lady appeared at his elbow, her perfume cloying itself into his nostrils as she grappled with imbalance. Stepping impatiently off the curb she eyed the oncoming traffic with the beady gaze of a bird, poised to dart across a path which would soon be made clear, chattering incessantly into her mobile phone — the first stages of human/machine interphase. Her antics did not disturb his serenity. He had already passed beyond such petty things. Smiling, he glanced up into the clear blue sky, feeling the lightness of life as the machine beeped at him, trying to hasten his steps across the asphalt divide.
Like a wildlife documentary on TV, his journey was now accompanied by self-absorbed people leaking their inner disturbance into the atmosphere. They were all focussed on the unattainable; racing along on either side of him, sometimes shoving with unintentional and sometimes intentional rudeness. Everyone and everything was in their way, but they had no idea of where they were going. Restless demons, horns blaring to oblivion. May their god bless their souls, for they were lost and did not know it. A small thread of regret tugged at him, but it broke and blew away in the wind. He had his destination, and his spirits were lifted, his mind as crystal clear as the sky.
He floated through a transparent doorway into the lobby of a spacious building, his heart free of all earthly concerns.
“Good morning, Mr Jones. It’s lovely to see you again. They are already waiting for you.”
The young, soft voice that greeted him matched the blond face and sensual lips that issued it, but he felt no desire for what he once would have wanted to possess. He smiled gently and replied.
“Of course they are, but I am not in a rush to go anywhere.”
She thought it an attempt at a joke and laughed politely.
“Shall I buzz you through, Mr Jones?”
“Yes, buzz away.”
He rode the private elevator into the sky, feeling rejuvenated and more alive than ever as he listened to the spiralling classical music with their notes that could never be followed to the end or captured by the mind. Today was his seventy-fifth birthday, and he was happy.
As the doors slid open with a muted swish, he fastened onto the three open and smiling faces. He saw only genuineness, empathy and understanding in their gazes even though they had been bought for their expert services. They were all of his age, if not older, and suspected that they too might one day soon follow along the path that he was leading. They admired and feared him all at the same time. He smiled back at them in an instant and mutual comprehension. To be alive was a glorious thing!
“Are you ready, Mr Jones?”
“I’m here and more than ready.”
“Would you like to undress in private?”
“We are all the same under our skins and in the eye of our maker.”
They smiled and nodded, and a grey-haired soul with tears hinted at in her blue eyes handed him a silky-soft gown.
In the embracing silence of the moment, he disrobed and slipped on the final garment.
They parted for him in reverence as he made his way to the elevated bed that granted him a vision of the brilliant sky above and the panoramic city below. From somewhere at the back of the room or maybe it was the back of his mind drifted the flows of his favourite song; Dance Me to the End of Love by the late Leonard Cohen. He smiled a final smile of contentment and drifted away peacefully into the ether.