the yellow line

[because I couldn't find a better thing I wrote in English]

Do not say ‘It is morning’, and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.
– Rabindranath Tagore

There it was. Clear, fresh, new; covered in a veil of innocence but somehow, shallow. It was missing something. It was missing yesterday. Sure, yesterday stains. But yesterday is part of it and it always will be.
“What are you watching?”, he asks.
“The sunrise.”, she answers.
“I like the sunrise. It’s never the same.”
“It has the sun, the sky, maybe even a cloud; what is different from yesterday?”
He points to the sun and says“ There’s that cloud over there, the long one, reaching to the sun like it was losing it; and the orange, the scarlet, the crimson, all the colours are staining the sky in a different way every day. Over there, in the middle of the blanket of blue there’s the yellow line that a plane left for the sun to colour. Every sky has a yellow line. You don’t even have to search that far to see it.”
* * *
A big library can be scary sometimes. Especially when it’s empty. Not only does it seem to hold all the knowledge of the world, but it seems to tell you I know better in a quite discomforting sort of way. Not that I know any way of saying I know better without making someone feel at least the slightest shade awkward.
“Hello!” he says, walking into the library.
“Hi! What brings you here?” she asks.
“I’m picking you up. It’s way past closing time, but I knew you’d still be here.”
“I have some things to finish.”
“I can see that. How about leaving them for tomorrow and I’ll take you out for dinner tonight? “ he smiles, already knowing her answer.
“Well, I am leaving, but I can’t come to dinner. I have to finish this.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an essay about how roman physicians used almost the same instruments as today’s doctors today. It’s quite astonishing, really.”
“I bet it is.” he says, walking her out the library and waiting for her to lock up.
* * *
It is “raining cats and dogs”. No, scratch that. It’s pouring, as if the sky had suddenly declared war on the Earth and was sending troops of clouds to bombard it with waterfalls.
She is running through the rain. In her anxiousness she forgets she could have just taken a cab -- though I doubt that she would have stayed drier.
She knocks on the door. She knocks again. Finally, he opens it. .
“What are you doing? You’re all wet!” he says, letting her in.
“It’s a spiral! It is! I know it now. It’s a spiral!”
“Calm down; let’s get you dry first, then we can talk!”
Five minutes later she has some of his clothes on, covered in a blanket and drinking tea.
“Now, you were saying something about a spiral.” She nods.
“History is a spiral. We are evolving, making our world better, but as soon as our lives are filled with contentment, we don’t look to evolve anymore… so we “involve”. I always thought that the world was a spiral that was going either upward or downward, but now I realize that it isn’t going up or down, it stays in the same plane. So, when we evolve, the spiral is unfolding and when we involve, it goes the other way around.”
“I know that.” he says, as if she were saying that the Earth was round.
She is confused.
“ But don’t you see? We are standing still! We will forever be caught in our own past. Yesterday will always stain us.”
“ Oh, don’t go on like that. I am well aware of it. And I am well aware that we can do nothing to change that. But, don’t you see? The spiral isn’t perfect. It has faults. Sometimes it unfolds more than it goes back, sometimes it takes a slightly different path. While it may forever remain a spiral, sometimes it is different than the one it was before, even by a millimeter.” He smiles.
She opens her mouth to speak, but closes it. Then she says:
“Every sunrise is different.”
His smile widens as he replies “Every sky has a yellow line.”