To follow the peacocks

Nancy, France

A peacock on the roof! My brother points up delightedly, my mom laughs.

“Two of them, even!” she says excitedly. I look up.

One male peacock, one female. One colorful, one white. So white, you’d think the animal wasn’t real. Surreal, pure, noble. The two peacocks stride east until they reach the end of the roof, then they turn and strut back, toward the sun.

They don’t seem to want to arrive anywhere. Perhaps they already are? Perhaps they have found their respective destinations in each other, much like Romeo and Juliet only without their tragedy.

They seem to be talking to each other. Looking down at us from the high roof, tilting their heads. If I were them, I would ask myself where these people are going. Why they are running away from each other.

The sudden feeling of being judged overcomes me.

“He’s coming back!”, I would like to shout. “He’s not gone forever”

But the white peacock only turns away from me in disbelief. Pathetic, they must be thinking. What a sad soul, traveling so far with so much longing, without reaching her destination. She will arrive nowhere, no matter how far she goes.

The peacocks must have understood what it means to say that the way is the goal. They need only themselves and each other, these realities seem to have brought them to the roof. High above our heads, unreachable.

He would say that the dialogue I impute to the peacocks is ridiculous. He would say they don’t judge me, for various reasons. Possibly out of indifference or respect, or perhaps out of stupidity. He would not believe me that the peacocks even know what a goal is. Well then, what is this knowledge good for? If the way is the goal, then for what a definition of the future?

Perhaps for that, so that I can tell you where my destination is.

My destination is on the roof by the peacocks. High up, above my head, deep down in my heart.