*

"I honestly hope he'll meet a girl and find a companion in her and will be happy."
"I don't think that will happen," she said. "He's too old to learn how to love and be happy."
And my heart broke in a million places.

Insubstantial

  I like to act brave but at times I feel my knees give way out of me and the trembling continues, the erratic heart-beat is thudding in my head, I feel like I am vibrating. It does hurt in spite of everything - not the way a lie, it's like a fear I caught with my teeth without realising what it is and now it's lodged there and I am not the one who's caught it, but the other way around.

  The headaches are not so much worse, these past few days I've found that a combination of alcohol - not too much, just enough to feel tipsy - and cigarettes helps combat the subdued panic I've been feeling for months and that is good, the realisation came just in time. Otherwise I know not how I would deal with this, how can I be so calm about it.

  I am not scared of the knowledge of not being unique myself. What scares me the most is the possibility of the unperceived absence where presence was expected, of the most solid moments collapsing in of themselves, void of everything, like photographs with gaping holes in them where a whole person or a face used to be. 

  I am paralised by the potentiality of this. How there is no way of absolutely refusing any chance of it, that after all moments when I felt most untroubled were nothing but a comedy played for no one but myself. A pointless play, unnecessary as it is now painful. 

  I don't feel hurt, not in the way I expected to be. I just need to see some things as solid and I will breathe out again, if all is as insubstantial as I feel myself to be, there is nothing to hold on to but the only chance is to let go completely, to chase all shadows in the hope you'll manage to grab one that is real.

It will surreal still

This went
Far too smooth

I tell myself.

It's funny how

we've been conditioned to

believe

that talking things out

is hard 

and

impossible

so that when we talk

we only expect

explosions.

I feel the need to write still about this, more, like I have so much thoughts and emotions around this I feel like I might over spill at any second, moment, at the sidewalk of some street, I might drench everyone with all that's built up.

The truth will set you free

But it will break your bones
I've learnt.

But the lightness of it sears me, like a heavy weight unloaded, liked a voice strangled at the base of my throat that finally comes through. It felt so egotistic. I felt like doing what was right for me teared down some things for her, I felt like I degraded personal moments that I had no right to touch. It made me so fearful but once it started there was no stopping it, I thirsted for this moment of liberation.
  How do you do right by someone? To which degree should you? Do you protect and lie and how far of a lie is a protection, if it is at all? I am an excellent liar - I can weave a story thoroughly, organizing all the details in my head. But I choose not to do so to people I hold in high regard. So when she asked, I answered. I knew I didn't have to. But there was no reason to dance around something and play along for an audience that consisted of no one else but us.
  It felt surreal and perhaps it is vain and naive to say so but in a way it made me feel closer to her. Not just my being truthful but her reaction as well. So many things shared and I was scared that with every passing moment I was tearing down something else for her. I wanted to explain somehow that all those moments she lived were not fake or meaningless, they were not copies she was handed over, a show repeated spectator after spectator. That she was there for a reason. That there was a reason he chose to share them with her, even if he has shared them with others. Even if some things he shared them with me.
  Phrases and words have stuck in my head, like wooden splinters piercing my brain, it's strange, I feel the need to protect them both in a way, but they're not powerless. I feel the need to protect what they had as well. Don't demolish it and pick it apart, I can't quite explain it.
  I can't explain anything. I chase the words and I fail them, or just language, an array of symbols, is just too poor a label to express all that bursts inside, burning coals that explode with the smallest of emotional caress.
  Maybe I'm too strange for my head at times.

*

Ήθελα να σου ζητήσω να σε δω
μα το φοβήθηκα.

Δεν ήθελα
στα σκοτάδια να σε κλείσω.

Hotel rooms

  Every space has its own smell, a form of odour id. Upon entering somebody's home the person is tied with the aroma or stink of their personal space, and you recognise your presence in their small world only when you recognise the particular smell. Sometimes it's an indistinct smell of sweat, the stale air of a room shut down for too long combined with the heavy smell of burning sticks - regardless of their professed aroma they all smell the same.

  But it's a little bit to make you feel safe - you know a little bit more about them, you read behind everything, adding small characteristics here and there in their profile. It has substance and in time, you begin to occupy a certain space however temporarily.

  Perhaps that is why most people feel unnerved by hotel rooms - they either smell of nothing in particular, sterile walls surrounding a sterile space, or they smell of some cheap perfume that is a bit too strong for the nostrils but all hotels seem to favor. It might burn all other odours out. There is a constant reminder that not only are you a visitor but your presence will come and go unnoticed, there is no one to notice it anyway, there is no one to read here. Just you and yourself.

  I've always loved the state of limbo in a hotel room, you're neither here, nor there, you're anonimous, unimportant, unnoticed. For a while you get to be anyone, getting treated raki and tea by turkish waiters or sneaking around and talking with people you have just met. And then you disappear, as surely and decisively as that. There are no rules to bend, just invent them and break them. You get to dream and feel things that in a space that feels real you never do.

  You get to be yourself more than you get out in the so called real life.

*

Your presence

turns the whole city

into a

minefield.

*

  I used to want to write it all down, word for word, breath for breath. I used to be naive enough to think the logical arrangement of symbols on paper could somehow retain some of the original warmth, the original spark, the original... anything. But the truth is far more simple, I pour my self out on paper trying to be methodical, I empty myself and the result of all this out-pouring is just as empty.
  I think that is how my personal writing grew nonsensical, so that unless you have the one word that clears it all out you can never be too sure of what or who this is really about. I try to enslave the fragmented moment, the feel of it in a move that is almost desperate, I know I'm failing and words are always haunting me.
  Moment after moment I lay there breathless, trying to take it all in. "I will remember this," I think, but usually the only thing imprinted on my brain and memory is the desperation of trying to remember. I'm caught up in the fragrances, the feel of warm skin, of cold sheets against my body. I throw my head back and soak in the sunlight when I walk in the streets, this feels too reckless for someone who's learnt to always to be in control but it feels good sometimes to let go. I twirl around nostalgic, I play with the light and then hide, I like to go to bars unaccompanied and just drink something alone, in that moment I escape in others without interacting with them.
  People tell me I'm an odd one whenever I say that.
  But they say so anyway even when I don't.