The density of a moment

 There have been a few times in my life in which I noticed that in intense and dangerous moments of life in which you know that it could all stop in the next second, your senses extended to superhuman clarity and you can pull sensory information in such large volume that time itself slows into granular segments. Very similar to when you reduce a filmstrip to its individual frames of pictures. Time becomes a choppy slideshow of second after second pieces that it seems you could actually walk around the scene carefully looking at everything around you. There is something deeply alien about it too. Ironically, it is one of those fascinating exercises you do not want to duplicate.

That is the involuntary instance of this. There is another way. We grasp onto a fleeting moment that captures us at a level so deep, that we really cannot explain why. It could be a moment of eye contact, a touch, a word, a smile. It has no definition and no description. It is one moment in life that after it happens, our mind begins to unfold, looking for every molecule of it so that we can feel it more. To appreciate it more and perhaps, find even more within it by magnifying it.

For us regular people, this is the un-describable. But for one of the most creative genius of our time, he actually did it. I am talking of course of the late, great Leonard Cohen. 

Leonard transports us to this beautiful depiction of instant love. The moment happens so fast, that he replays the moment over and over in his heart and incredibly and futilely extracts all he can from something that at best was 3 seconds of his life.

Dear Heather Lyrics

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the winter
And your legs all white from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the winter
And your legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the W-I-N-T-E-R
A-N-D-Y-O-U-R Legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

Dear Heather
Please walk by me again
With a drink in your hand
And your legs all white from the winter
Your legs all white from the W-I-N-T-E-R
A-N-D-Y-O-U-R legs all W-H-I-T-E from the winter

I recall hearing this song for the first time and it brought tears to my eyes and made me smile and laugh too.

If you know Leonard, his capacity for the most impacting lyrics was hard to top. This abstract departure from his usual poetic apocalypse was a wonderful surprise. By exploring the very words that describe the moment, Leonard psychs himself up to believe that his interaction with the mysterious Heather was more than those 3 seconds. By doing so, he historically augments an actual relationship with Heather. It is an admiration that will never entertain the possibility that Heather is anything but the most incredible woman to have ever lived.

Who was Heather? Maybe she was a waitress, who by the way, was not actually serving at the songwriter's table, otherwise, he would have reported an actual conversation. Maybe Heather is more of a symbol such as youth that disappeared in a flash of time.

We may never know. I recall as a child, extracting every pixel from something that caught my attention. I am thankful that Leonard happened our way. I am glad that he is, as he put it: “speaking to you (me) softly from my window in the Tower of Song.”