A nightly visitor

I was up late reading last night - this has become a habit lately - when a beautiful visitor suddenly drew my attention. My reading was lit by a desklamp - my wife was sleeping in the same room; she could not sleep with the lights on - and its soft, yellow glow had attracted a butterfly. It was not a moth, I am sure, but a small butterfly, white of colour, with beatifully drawn thin green lines on its tiny airy wings. The lines formed a pattern that was divided between the wings in perfect symmetry. The butterfly sat still on my desk, as if warming its back in the lamp light. I thought that it had probably gotten in during the day as I recalled my wife's words about a butterfly that had somehow made its way inside, although the window net had been tightly closed. "Maybe it was afraid of the rain," she had said.

There was something strange in this butterfly, some weird calmness one does not usually expect of an insect in the vicinity of a night lamp. It was sitting with its back to me, its beautiful little wings fully exposed, resplendent in the light. It was as if the butterfly sat there to draw my eyes upon itself, to make me aware of its presence in the room. I could see its tiny black eyes, no bigger than pinheads, reflecting the lamp - it appeared the butterfly was also watching me.

I have never been a superstitious man, neither have I taken mysticism too seriously. But I believe that even diehard materialists must have second thoughts in their lives, so I was not too unwelcoming to a strange idea that visited my mind out of the blue. To be precise, it was rather a recollection of a weird hypothesis I had read about somewhere long time ago. It said that the souls of late relatives, or loved ones, sometimes came to visit those still living in the disguise of nocturnal insects: moths, or butterflies. At the time I had liked the hypothesis, although never believed it; the resemblance of a specter to a light-coloured nocturnal flying insect with airy wings had seemed quite plausible - and reasonable - to me. After that, for a short period of time I had become mindful of butterflies, moths and other flying insects inside the house. But this was a long ago experience, and I had comfortably forgotten the whole thing, buried it deep cobwebs of my memory, well until the last night encounter.

A warm feeling arose deep inside me as I observed the butterfly. "Mother, is that you?" - I thought. And waited for a reply, believing, for a moment, that the butterfly would answer me. And had it answered, I would have not been surprised too, as I think about it now. Over my head, one the bookshelf, was my mother's photo in a frame as white as that butterfly's wings. The photo was taken on the day I saw my mother for the last time; she was seeing me off on a long journey, I was hugging her with a happy smile. I didn't dare to look up at the picture. I simply knew that my mother was smiling back at me, and I felt content with that knowledge.

Football

Now that the English Premier League and UEFA Champions League seasons are over, as are those of other major European football leagues which I used to watch, watching football has given way to playing it once in a week. Last Saturday I was late for our weekly match at 9 in the morning - I suffered from most terrible insomnia the night before - but still played for 3 full hours, scored an unlikely goal, and injured my ankle. The injury was not serious, the goal was reassuring, and the day of football was exhausting and exhilarating in equal measures. I felt so good during the match that I spent these three hours running, chasing the ball and opponent players now and then, despite the increasing heat of the June sun over our sweaty heads.

Today we had another meeting with friends, and I proposed playing twice a week. The proposal was met enthusiastically by most, so we decided to play on Wednesday morning. I am looking very much forward to this day and will report on my own performance after the match.

A train encounter

A little boy - two years old, maybe three - was travelling on a Tokyo train with his father - a tall, bearded man, who was reading a book in Arabic and paid little attention to his son. The man had silver streaks in his beard - if it was not for the way the boy called him - baba, which, as far as I know, means "father" in Arabic-speaking lands - I would easily have taken him for the little boy's grandfather.

The boy was cute, his smile was sweet and his soft brownish hair fluttered under the breath of train ventilation. He prattled unintelligible words to himself, sang childish songs. At times he fell silent and studied with his innocent round eyes the surrounding bustle, the sleepless metropolis and its inhabitants on various errands on a warm Saturday evening. I couldn't get my eyes off of him. Inside, I wished him a long and beautiful life - he felt my gaze and stared back with curious eyes, not knowing that the words I hastily jotted down in my notebook were about him. His father kept on reading his book with enthusiasm.

I thought about the boy for a moment, about the way he made me reach for my bag for a pen and paper. The way he inspired me. I imagined a world depraved of this kind of inspiration - the world of a desk and a chair in a quiet, gloomy room. Of pale paper and a lonely pen that runs back and forth on it, without touching the real world, detached from the things outside of it. This made me think about the importance of seeing other people. I thought about Auster, his long walks on New York streets, his fondness for observing people.

At one station the boy got off his seat and straddled hesitatingly towards a rail handle in the centre of the car. The train was motionless and the boy almost made it, his eyes glowing with adventurous joy. I watched him with a smile, encouraging him to take the challenge with my sympathetic eyes. But right at the moment he extended his white plumpy hand towards the rail the train launched abruptly towards the next station. The boy's face changed immediately: the expression of alert took the place of adventure and he quickly climbed back into the safety of his train seat. The father had at last noticed he was not travelling alone; he picked the boy up into his lap. For the rest of the journey the boy cuddled there, his eyes moving thoughtfully from one commuter to another. He saw me off with his eyes, when I got up and off the train on Tokyo station.