Yesterday I noticed that I had two shadows. One short, rich, which is still tangled under my feet and the other long, obscure, pointing somewhere in the distance. I don’t even know where they came from and whether the short, rich one is just growing and getting stronger, while the long, obscure one is aging and disappearing or whether it’s the other way around. I turned back to be sure, but there was no living soul on the dark road disappearing between the forest and the fields. This is not to say that only living souls have their shadows. But do they have them dead? Scientifically, light is needed for every shadow, so two shadows need two lights. A running watch is lighting my hand. I wonder if the shadow can cast a shadow. I instinctively try to skip the shorter shadow not to trip over it, – the longer one watches me with amusement. It freezes me to wonder if it all has something to do with the Image of Dorian Gray, which I use to read at night, but it also freezes me in a small prickly rain that spills over my shoulders. Are those shadows my image or am I an image of those shadows? It is certain that I am the one who, unlike shadows, ages, but it is also possible that only the shadows age – however the “refresh” button is missing. I’m getting out from the path into the forest in the thoughts and I don’t realize that after a few days of snow melting, there will be a flooded creek. The creek is flooded. I step carefully on the stones merging in the dark with the water surface. Only the stone blocks forming the dam of the weir are darker than the water surface. But maybe it’s darker the water surface flowing over stone blocks. I feel the coolness of the fresh water that fills my sneakers. Damn water! the important thing is not to slip and end up under the weir. I gather the courage to jump into the darkness that divides me, or rather connects me, with the opposite bank. I take off. I perceive the luminous ridges of the ripples that smolder like a lighted city, over which an overloaded boeing brings me from a slippery runway, and the joy that my leg did not slip. Firghtened ducks take off from a nearby pond…
On the other bank, I turned back and I see my shadow drifting away from the water. It looked distressed and frightened. There was nothing I could have done for it, as I did not ask for its friendship. The charming energy of the leap into a new stage obscured the moving look of how the water swallowed the melting shadow and how its disparate body tossed in the wild current of the past. Here, on the opposite bank, I felt free and easy, like a person without a shadow. A herd of deer passed by and offered me to join the lunetic run across the wide plains. I want to take a photo with them, but the light from the mobile phone scares them. In thoughts I run out on the street, and as I approach the first blurred street lamp, a new shadow suddenly appears. It’s young and strong, and it’s trying to trip my legs. It’s not easy to get rid of it, but fortunately there is only one. I’m trying to skip it. – Or is it the old one?