Once upon a time, there lived a girl, a very very sick girl. Nobody really understood her illness but maybe it doesn’t matter for her story anyway. At night, she would look out of her window to the lights in the houses across the street. If you had seen her, perhaps you would have thought “who is this little ghost?” or perhaps you would have waved and smiled a compassionate smile. She would have smiled back, that much is sure.
One day, our sweet little girl was watching television, as sick people are prone to do for hours on end. There was a show about honeymooners and a program on animals you can keep in your yard (like rabbits or chickens). One of these flickering windows into the world caught her eye and sharpened her attention. A man (a reporter?) was standing on the beach, with a microphone pressed to his lower lip. It is hard to say what the show was really about – who watches these things? What we do know is that after the credits had rolled across the screen, the girl was convinced of the possibility of time travel. The key – as she understood it – lied in a little breeze that once in a while passed across the beach. A breeze that would allow one to move in time. Maybe this is not what the reporter meant, maybe the words and facts were distorted by a sudden fever or maybe the program’s producers were making comedy or a fictional documentary – who knows the difference nowadays? But such is the tragic essence of religious belief: it doesn’t really matter where it comes from, does it? She believed in it and that sort of unshakable belief has determined the fate of many lives before her.
Propelled by a need, an expectation that she could not have explained to us, she set about to find this breeze that would allow her to travel in time. Perhaps she imagined all her wonderful tomorrows or a past reshaped in the knowledge of today. Floating on these daydreams she set about on a train ride to the coast. Wherever she went, she could not escape her illness, her burden. She was glad that there were moving images all around her in the trains windows, as she had to admit to missing her TV quite a bit already.
It was a windy day at the beach. As she stood there with her small feet in the wet sand, she realized she had no idea of when the breeze would come. More determined than ever, she devised a plan. She used whatever little savings she had to rent a little room overlooking the sand and water. Every day, she would get up and walk back and forth across the beach, often for many kilometers in every direction. And every minute she would spend listening for, trying to feel, trying to see the breeze that would transport her through time.
Days went by and weeks passed, the seasons changed and still the girl would not give up her search. Through the autumn rains and winds, through the snow that fell on the beach one day, people would see her walking and searching the air for her dream. The girl would wrap herself in a heavy blanket on the coldest of the days and talk to the sea and the birds in little white clouds. On bright days, she would even run and once the warmth returned to the waters, she would swim.
A year went by and still the girl could be found on the beach every day. The wife of a fisherman that lived up in the dunes finally took enough pity on her to go down to where the girl was walking to try and help. “Little girl,” she said kindly, “I’ve seen you walking up and down here every day, for months now. What – for heaven’s sake – are you looking for?” The little girl was a bit startled and had difficulty explaining her reasons, however often she had practiced this speech in the wind. “I am looking for a little breeze that will let me move through time. I am not happy and I’ve been sick for as long as I can remember and so I need this. I need this.” She held her tongue in a moment of infinitely repressed longing and sadness.
The fisherman’s wife stood and pondered the issue at hand. “Girl, “, she finally spoke, “I am not an educated person, but I see what I see. And here’s what I can see right now: You have been looking for a breeze in the windiest place of the country. You wish to move through time and you have done so. You are now a year older than when you first started looking. Time has passed beneath your feet and you didn’t even notice. And to be honest, you do not look sick to me at all. Here, look into this little mirror and tell me what you see.” She took a small makeup mirror out of her bag (who said a fisherman’s wife should be unsophisticated?) and extended it to the girl.
The girl was taken back by what she saw. She had indeed become older – to be fair she hardly could have been called a girl anymore. And the young woman looking back at her did not seem ill at all. In fact she was sporting a healthy blush and an upright and strong body. All these days and weeks of walking and running and swimming in the sea’s breeze had erased any trace of illness and left her healthier than she had ever been. She thought of how she now liked watching the movements of the birds more than she had ever worshipped her television.
She smiled and said “Thank you. I see it too now.”