In the silence of the night...

In the cold comfort of darkness, when nobody can judge and right and wrong merge into the same shade of black, when my thoughts surround me, reverberating in the silence of the night, I hear the voice of a young girl, a voice full of hope and verve, joie de vivre in the unlikeliest of places, in the unlikeliest of times - holocaust, Holland - 1942.

It's a long time since I cried after reading a book. I did last night after reading The diary of a young girl. I kept thinking of Anne...this was not like reading any novel where I may feel happy, sad, excited for the characters in the story but after a few minutes, I do realize that the characters are just that - characters given life by the author's colorful imagination, made concrete and realistic by my own imagination - they are not real. But reading this diary was different...a young girl all of thirteen years who shared her most intimate thoughts with her diary and with us, not knowing what fate had in store for her...hell modified as a concentration camp on earth; I couldn't help but feel an indescribable rage against the people responsible, against the injustice of it all...

I wish she had lived to talk about it, to realize her dream of becoming a writer, a great writer...

I wish so many things...and in the semiconscious state between wakefullness and sleep, I thought of many other things, not all of which made sense...

If Anne had been alive now, she would be around 75 years old, would she have been so famous had she lived to tell her story? And a silly little thought popped in my head, if Anne were reborn, then who was she reborn as...could it be me? I brushed the thought aside and thought of the flaw of creation itself...Why would God create us, bestow us with lives that ended, sometimes so unexpectedly? Was he so unhappy with us that he is making us live our unpredictable lives with the constant fear that what we cherish might become a mere memory?

I chided myself for such thoughts but the mysticism of the night and my own confused thoughts prodded on relentlessly...

Take Anne for instance, would she have become so famous had she been alive? Do we only realize what we possess when we lose it? Why can't I just take all I love, everything and everyone I hold dear to a safe haven where noone can lay a finger on them? Silly thoughts, morbid thoughts and the tears hardly dried.

What, after all, is the purpose of life? What are our lives worth - yours and mine? Here now and gone in an instant...will you think of me after I am gone?

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