"There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time"

Yesterday by noon, I found myself at the old town center (as I do every other noon since the day I arrived in Prague) and I sat on a bench by the municipal clock, practicing my daily exercise which consists of observing the tourists and guessing their nationalities before hearing them speak. An old lady came and sat next to me on the bench, and without inquiring first whether I speak Greek she started telling me her beautiful story… She comes from Komotini and she found it very natural that I replied in Greek. I only realised later that she speaks Greek to everybody and she always makes some sense out of their reply (and eventually the answer that she desires). She tried to convince me that the Tirolo dancers who were performing on the stage in the center of the square, were Cypriot . For her it didn't matter at all that I come from this little part of the world and that that I have valid knowledge regarding what the Cypriot national dance(r)s should look like. She said that she had heard the woman who introduced the groups on stage mentioning Cyprus and talking about the Island (only later did I realize that her understanding of every foreign word was achieved by attaching it to the phonetically closest greek word). In a blink of an eye and just after the clock statuettes came out for there parade of 7 o'clock, the sky got covered with black menacing clouds and the rain came pouring down…The old lady and I said goodbye and started running off in different directions, she run to get the bus and I run to the nearest refuge, i.e., a tourist bookshop on the other side of the square. Wet as I was, I stood by the window and looked at the empty square and at the remaining few running people; they were the dancers from the folk festival who had heroically neglected the rain (at least for as long as they could). The costumed dancers of all ages were now running in all directions, contributing thus, to a perfect re-enactment of what we all want to live in that preserved complex of buildings… some sort of (impossible) experience of the past. Nothing to watch after five minutes… everybody was safe under a roof and the square was freed from the avid tourists and the colorful dancers. Bored I took the first book I found in front of me: Milan Kuntera – Immortality. I started reading the first chapter which gives sense to time via a beautiful observation and which describes beautifully this dilated moment of (es)sence. I haven't read Immortality but I remember my friend Lia telling me about this chapter in one of our rehearsals…







“The woman might have been sixty or sixty-five. I was watching her from a deck-chair by the pool of my health club, on the top floor of a high-rise that provided a panoramic view of all Paris. I was waiting for professor Avenarius whom I’d occasionally met here of a chat. But Professor Avenarius was late and I kept watching the woman; she was alone in the pool, standing waist-deep in the water, and she kept looking up at the young lifeguard in sweatpants who was teaching her to swim. He was giving her orders: she was to hold on to the edge of the pool and breathe deeply in and out. She proceeded to do this earnestly, seriously, and it was as if an old steam engine was wheezing from the depths of the water (that idyllic sound, now long forgotten, which to those who never knew it can be described in no better way than the wheezing of an old woman breathing in and out by the edge of a pool). I watched her in fascination. She captivated me by her touchingly comic manner (which the lifeguard also noticed, for the corner of his mouth twitched slightly). Then an acquaintance started talking to me and diverted my attention. When I was ready to observer her once again, the lesson was over. She walked around the pool towards the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a bright colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drawing in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments ans most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn’t control himself and burst our laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name.” […] Chapter 1, Immortality, Milan Kundera