Dear Anne, are you truely universal?

Before Elliot and the wife of the journalist became acquainted with each other and received heavenly confirmation for their life-time bond, Elliot and Ari used to be distant friends... those kind of friends that only met in funerals and coffee shops, friends of Jerusalem afternoons and of library cafeterias. Merely intellectual friends, a nightly friendship that would find both of them immerse among Classical books and odes, among glasses of wine and nicotine.

Elliot and Ari used to sit next to the psychology building at the University and talk to strangers, to many strangers.... that was their kind of it. Ari and Elliot were also friends in pity and compassion, pious friends in their own endeavours. Elliot and Ari used to recite aloud "El Ma'ale Rachamim" and stared at each other in surprise, for the words were powerful and astounding:

"God full of compassion who dwells in the high heavens, grant perfect rest beneath the wings of Your Indwelling Presence (Shekhinah), in the exalted places among the holy and the pure, to the soul of ____________ who has entered eternity. May his/her resting place be in the Garden of Eden. Please, Master of Compassion, shelter him/her under the cover of Your wings forever; and may his/her soul be bound up in the bond of eternal life. The Eternal is his/her portion; may he/she rest in peace. And let us say "amen." Elliot and Ari were spiritual friends, those kind of friends that have never met and that found each other a few centuries earlier or later. But do not misunderstand, Elliot wasn't Ari's only friend.

Before her he had romances with a few others, a Rimbaudian teenager was he... "par delicatesse j'ai pardu ma vie...". He was even a secret friend of Holderlin, how much he admired Holderlin... the essence of the Greek spirit, "unterliegt". But in the beginning, in the genesis of our story Ari used to have an only friend, a childhood friend with whom he walked through all different paths and through who he saw different slides. Back then Ari was much more of a universal man, like every boy and girl in our times I think. Back then Anne Frank constituted his only friend.

And this is the question of the day. Anne, are you truely universal?

My eyes are really closing at the moment. Let's give some space for the wife of the journalist to answer this question tomorrow. It'll be interesting, for she's the least universal person I know.