Unexpectedly, twilight filled the room.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Care, attention. Simply look.” I did.

For three months, I gazed into the night, felt its impenetrability, sensed its pull and rejection, stared into the somberness. Saw nothing but vague shapes, blurring into one another. Neither contour nor color. Indistinguishability prevailed. And I recalled: “Darkness over the face of the primordial deep.” So while I found nothing tangibly there, I marveled at the abundance of sensations: How do I grasp the darkness? How is it composed? Did the night conceal something, or did it give birth to it? Soon I could no longer tell: was the experience of lightlessness, inner or outer? Imperceptibly slow, something emerged from the dark space. Subtle outlines and forms came forth. Does the night yield, does it surrender? Does it disappear—and to where? Does it merge into the solid and reemerge as its shadow?

Dawn is breaking. Pale, colorless twilight lies leaden over the world of things. In the transition without boundaries, without status, between no longer and not yet, twilight demands patient endurance. It is an interregnum, a refuge for the irreconcilable, a liminal space of ambiguities.

Then, very gradually, the world and the sky take on a glow and begin to shimmer. Delicately, the first hints of color appear between the spheres. As black shadows and icy cold descend upon the earth, the firmament begins to turn blue. The Blue Hour magically envelops this planet alone, and only for a precious, brief moment. It lifts the day and owes its existence to the light.

Twilight, an obvious mystery—unfolding before our eyes yet eluding being seen. Was I, or did I, grasp it in the twilight?

Translation Laura Liska