"The days are becoming long, and in the evening I sit in the kitchen reading without a light. On the windowsill is a jug with a flowering branch of lilac, which I cut in a friend's garden. It is pale purple, the color of a much-washed ultra- marine blue shirt. When I was young, I had a shirt of that color, and the great Indonesian painter, Affandi, painted a portrait of me in it. Both portrait and shirt have disappeared. Through the open window I can hear a cuckoo, and the chain saws of the woodcutters still working.
When I glanced up a moment ago, the branch of lilac in the fading light looked like a distant hill of blossoming trees merging into the dusk. It was disappearing.
The walls of the house are thick, for the winters are cold. On the window embrasure, close to the windowpanes, hangs a shaving mirror. As I look up now, I see reflected in the mirror a sprig of the lilac branch: each petal of each tiny flower is vivid, distinct, near, so near that the petals look like the pores of a skin. At first I do not understand why what I see in the mirror is so much more intense than the rest of the branch which, in fact, is nearer tome. Then I realize that what I am looking at in the mirror is the far side of the lilac, the side fully lit by the last light of the sun."
it's not everyday that i enjoy my readings :) beautifully written, and indeed, i miss writing
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