trance

it was a normal humid afternoon like all the others; a thick greyish layer of air hanging low, people muddling through the noisy streets with eyes fixed on the tip of their shoes; you knew, or had the slightest desire to know, none of the strangers you rubbed sholders with. i swam through the vicous sluggishness of blue monday and found a spot away from the sliding doors of the train, then i began to flip open the pages. i heard a sound of silence.

precisely put, i was sucked into this void of silence, a blackhold of all sounds and distractions; i was beamed into another world.

it was my olfactory nerves that first discovered the scent of the new surroundings; a fishy, moldy smell like that before a great storm. the air was still dense and heavy, but the budging crowd was gone, i was all alone in the inner-chamber of a castle (or a prison perhaps). distant thunders penerated the stagnate air. but soon i was aware of a pattern behind the sound, like someone leaping in fixed intervals; and as each "thunder" grew in strength and volume i realized those were no thunders but footsteps of something gigantic, something that was coming my way.

"Man has learnt to cope with all questions of importance without recourse to God as a working hypothesis, so what we call "God" is being more and more edged out of life".

"what if one day they (these ultimate questiosn) no longer exist as such, if they too can be answered without "God"?"

"Bonhoeffer is not prepared to find a category for Christ... His question about Christ is never, 'How?', but always, 'Who?'..."

with each approaching thunder-like footstep the ground shook, and a chunk of the castle/prison where i dwelled fell and was broken into pieces. rubbles began to pile up at my feet and i could no longer stand still amidst the earthquake. each step of this giant shook my world to the core.

finishing the last sentence of the preface, i closed the book. i was at the same old metro station again, squeezed between countless wanderers in this 'open prison', feeling a little surreal.

i think this semester would be quite interesting.

now reading: