This text is an excerpt from my book “From a Hermit’s Memoirs”, which is currently in print,and now I share with you the first page of these memoirs. 

The First Page 

It was not yet dark,
but something in the light had changed.
The sun was in its place, as every day,
yet its radiance was no longer the same.
Not dim, nor absent…
but as though it had become detached from things.
The light fell, yet it did not touch.

I was sitting near the stone I used to lean my back against,
watching the path where no one passed,
and yet I felt that many were crossing it—
moving swiftly, leaving behind an unseen trace,
as if fleeing from themselves, not from time.

I saw the trees as they were,
but their leaves seemed to be listening,
as though nature itself were waiting for someone
to say what had not yet been said.

The people in the distant city,
which I could glimpse through a gap between two mountains,
walked with balance,
yet their spirits leaned to one side,
as if their inner scale had tilted—
without letting them fall.

I recalled an old saying:
"When light becomes a habit, no one truly sees."

Perhaps the light had faded,
not because it went out,
but because eyes had grown accustomed to falsehood,
to a brightness not born of the sky.

Those who light lamps now
seek not vision,
but denial of the dark.

As for the true light—
it has withdrawn, not out of fear,
but because it appears only
to the heart prepared to behold it.

I will write this day in my notebook,
and I will leave it undated…
for such days are not measured by calendars,
but by the loss of sight within.