"You are my safe and sound"

I know that I would not be able to rest in peace until I write something about it, it's a matter of time, and that I have. Enters March it rains everyday, in the intermission the sky is handed to ravaging wind hailing from inner sea. In this particular rough patch, I read Rilke at night and sat gallantly in the wind listening to "You Want It Darker" in the morning. When I felt a shiver sent down my spine by "Treaty", I thought, "Lord, it is time". The first reaction I had to the album, or maybe the first retroactive reaction I had upon learning his passing away, was disappointment. I mean, the last-ditch effort feels too obvious, even banal. The album on a whole sounds like Copernicus recanting on his life's work in order to live, only here Cohen was doing it in order to die. It feels inadequate because of course it is, it has no other choice than falling short. In contemplating the imminent inevitable, he, not so much as tried to put himself on an equal footing with, but nonetheless attempted to assume a relativity to, whatever it is he thought lies beyond his reach: a counter party of the "treaty" he wished to sign. But all the time he knew it's something he cannot fight. He proclaimed "I'm ready my Lord", it sounded like a plead to be taken back to the blossom of the Lord as a prodigal son, but then he blatantly said "Only one of us was real and that was me." And I thought, in exasperation, you cannot come to a negotiation table with total resignation, it won't work. Engaging in a constant contemplation of one's existence is a transgression on life, it's no less a sacrilege than playing God. I wish he did not do it. I wish he did not die. And if he had to, I wish he did not decide to talk about it. But to all these frustration I was told soberly, "But he has a right to die too." I don't know why when I set to write about something that deeply moves me, the words always come out derogatory. Like when I read again what I wrote about Bruno Schulz, it felt all wrong. It was not what I wanted to say about what propelled me to sit down and write in the first place, and I certainly did not do him justice with all the presumptuous judgments. There is a theme running through the whole book and the world Schulz conjured up might be chaotic but it is coherent on a whole. Maybe it's a subconscious, coward act of atonement, motivated by my own total resignation. So let me dwell instead on that one phrase that set off this avalanche of emotions, the moment of shivering when I heard him saying "You are my safe and sound". I felt instantly connected on the many layers of sorrow and solace that rolled off his tongue with that one phrase. To say it's a smart word play would totally offend the profundity he miraculously brought off, the manifestation of the quintessential Cohenism in his swan song. "Safe", as in safekeep, a haven, the Promised Land that eluded him all his life but is now benevolently open wide to him as he gets "ready" for the journey beyond; "sound", is his sound, the "golden voice" gifted to him by the Lord. To me, that is the ultimate reconciliation, the total submission to the great beyond whose light he forever baths in, in this world or else.