Χριστίνα ΖερδεβάArticle: Christina Zerdeva
Translation: Vasilis Xinorodos
The night falls as usual every single day. These are moments for reflections, the time when your thought – released from the everyday burden- starts to run away, to deviate, to spontaneously create its own stories, traveling you to its majestic landscapes. I do crave these nights and I enjoy them the way I want to, when I have the time to do so. These nights I sit comfortably on my beloved, colorful armchair. I persistently avoid my couch which evokes undesired evergreen threads. I cunningly isolate with an acting manner, so as to convince myself, whatever would distract my inner serenity and I grab a cup of steamy-hot tea from the kitchen to keep me warm and relaxed through my evening wandering. These evening wanderings are usually a pleasant procedure, under the condition that the unasked “quests” of my self-criticism, which unwillingly decide to “judge” me for the “major events” of the day, don’t prevail. -Yes it may happen, you could say that. This is how the human beings are! Maybe not all of us but certainly some of us this is how we are. However there are these “comfortable” ones, I know you are right, these “fearless” “airy” types who don’t break a sweat about anything. But I talk about myself and the ones who feels like me .-I hear you manipulating my thoughts and I want to continue on! So, I move on… The mind sometimes plays its own games, actually teases and plays with no remorse and it takes control over us if we don’t stand in our feet in time. This trend is depended on how we will develop our mind throughout the years so that we control it and it doesn’t do whatever it wants. And that’s a big trap to buddy. But this is another story that we will discuss in a future conversation.
It looks like today I am in a good mood; my thoughts are in hurry, to be drowned to imaginary beautiful pictures. It was a truly difficult day the one that passed, a lot of things, so I desperately seek a midnight “reward”. It is cold outside, snowing all the time, endlessly. I hear the wind struggling with force my outdoor tent, which is flouncing in every hit, somehow heard worried and tired because of this long last battle. My blurred glass seems to challenge me, so I draw a ship unconsciously, a ship that sails its line, crashing the waves with grace. It is that ship, you know, that travels you in the summer to all the places and destinations you long for and it’s the same that gets you back, with that knot in your throat when you stare the turbulent water, as it departs. When you look up from that deck it seems that the sea level lower before you. It is like an “oil stamp” that spreads and then your sight distinguishes all the “possible blues” of the sea wrapped up in a ball at the end of the horizon, competing one another in which will dominate them all. Memories are then flashing in my mind and I unconsciously watch myself perform again and again in the stories of my life, in the same scenery that I imaginary drew tonight. The waves are moving so calmly, so softly that you think they are trying to take you on their side and make you their “secret judge”, they want you to participate in their hypnotizing move and make you choose the most fatal , the most desired amongst all. You watch them gently from the edge of your eyes, carefree and focused on their game. And then you smile and you tease them when one splashes onto another making a slight rustling. So there, in this corner of the horizon, colors are painted by the light of your own choice. Whatever color, whatever hour you think at that very moment, only in order to give an essence to beautify the majestic scenery. I gaze with my eyes closed at this improvised game and I am really amused to think that my ship is traveling to unknown destinations, to feel fresh breeze in my nostrils and watch its image fading calmly and slowly, leading where to, I wonder! It is like our summers that slip away and drown into their vivid colors, leaving room for the next, darker ones, which hurry to take place in the stained glass of our thoughts.
But suddenly it feels quite chilly in here, -it looks like they forgot to turn on the central heating, and there, I “moved” from my warm summer thoughts to the chilly winter in a blink of an eye. Once before, there was an intermediate situation, a redeeming season. It all started with little rain falling in September and then the first pastel discolorations of the fraying season, leading you smoothly to the cruel and dark backgrounds, “washing out” the latest persisting summer illusions. These illusions that “lock” the summer in our heart and it would stay there forever, if there weren’t for the two big forces called logic and will. So that was it, it was over. Summer fainted like a lamp which in its final moments starts flickering and blanching before the eternal darkness of its inexistence. Nowadays the seasons are a bit confused. We have polluted them with our lost dreams. One day it is summer, and the next it is winter and you have to make huge efforts to adjust to all these changes, as you are not a chameleon. It is difficult to do so, after all the big loves you lived so strongly but were carried away by the waves and all those dreamy moments “sprinkled” with your summer craze. How could you return to the long waiting queues so abruptly from the one day to another in order to run some errant, searching for your light jacket, which still smells naphthalene, since you didn’t make it to air it on time. All these differences and contradictions became the best “regulars” of your own reality.
It is cold outside, but I only see summers and I seek their warmth nicely covering my body like before, a consolatory influence on my brain now. -Delusion buddy, it’s just a delusion. The cold of the winter reminds us the truth that summer is an illusion. Everything is constantly mutating in a timeless process, -everything is in our mind, this is what I repeat to convince myself. My ship continues its journey far away at the event horizon, just like winter started in the timeline. I put my blanket just above my shoulder, so that the breezing cold can’t reach me. The snow is getting stronger outside my window and it starts to slowly cover everything that catches the eye, reminding my isolation. The humans, you know, get warm in every way, but there are people that feel alone and their soul suffers, bowing their heads, so as not to leave the others see the void that they try so hard to hide inside them.
This “seasonal” verge is so graceless, that may get on your nerves simply because you don’t so quit so easily on something that made you happy even as a plain thought. There are times like tonight, lovely to sneak into your own worlds, even for a while, into the people you lived, spent time with, gave and received. Having the illusion of these carefree moments, when you gracefully buried your head in the sand feeling like -I don’t know and I won’t answer to nobody, I just want to enjoy the moment, while you very well understand what follows when you go back. At the end to break even, you think that time runs fast, you know what they say “it is from March that summer actually starts”. This thought comforts you for a while and then you realize that along with the summers, time also runs very fast! You know it well, that every summer would never be the same. So you restart the speedometer, but your memory records and mercilessly adds up all the years passed and whatever memory wants to pile up in its holiday luggage. I put my cup on the table and I sit up, slightly pushing my head at the window, so I can see outside. Even from the inside my breathing seems to crystallize from the freezing air! Only passing memories are left now, my ship is gone beyond the horizon into the dusk. I let myself to fall gently on my beloved sofa. Night and fatigue overcame me tonight, but I was left with an imperceptible smile; you can make your own guess about it, but I will be the only one who knows the truth behind it!