"Thessaloniki, December 2015,
Life and death, the two sides of the same coin. Opposing forces, which together achieve the long-desired balance. Only a naive person would choose eternity over the moment, the eternal repetition of oneself over uniqueness. Death and life. The same person, half touching the light and half sinking into darkness. Life and death. The one who approaches death should not be pitied by people. Pity, mercy are vile expressions of the greatness of the boundaries. The boundary between the beginning and the end. The boundary between the end and the beginning. The boundary between the last breath and silence. The boundary between dreams and nothingness. The boundary between light and shadows. The boundary between existence and non-existence. The border between life and death.
At such times I feel like I want to be close to death to taste life. At such times I feel like death will be my greatest experience, my last stand. Death inspires life and life submits to its commands. How many times have we faced death and instead of being afraid, have we felt more alive than ever? Has the death of a loved one only made us cry or even want to scream that we are here, more alive than ever? I get out of bed heavy with these thoughts. Soaked in sweat from the nightmares, I crawl to my computer and open the window. I put on music. I choose a song, stop it and get up. On the border between real life and conscious death, I start and dance. Let the neighborhood wake up, they will thank me in the morning for this unexpected interruption of the slow death of routine. Nightmares of death have always made me want to dance.
Life and death, two shadows of the same entity. As the sun sets, the shadow gets shorter, the truth becomes apparent. Pray that the sun never sets, naive! So that it doesn't take you out of ignorance. My hand trembles. At 4:30 in the morning I capture my nightmares on paper. I fell asleep drunk. Now I wake up and continue drinking. The shadows are chasing me. The dead are chasing me. Not just my own, but all those who were forgotten. Dark stories that were never captured on paper, the souls of dark heroes enter my room through the cracks in the door and invade my dreams uninvited.
"Write about us," they shout to me. "Forgetfulness is the real death."
I write sleeplessly so that I can finish and the shadows become light and I myself. Is this the curse of the writer?
"Since when did you become a writer, little one?", I hear the shadows mocking me. "No one has recognized you, no one has read you, you've never even written a book! Did ghosts make you a writer?"
I listen to the shadows and write their story. Which is the shadow and which is the light? Which is the truth and which is the imagination? One thought freezes me, numbs me more than all. Not forgetfulness, nor death. The thought that I am starting to go crazy…”
That morning, a strong gust of wind blew through the open window. The open door banged noisily against the wall every now and then from the strong draft of the airy house. The man had fallen asleep in the uncomfortable chair, exhausted, motionless, mute as if dead. The leaves in front of him piled up, rising into the air and one by one being sucked into the vortex of the icy east. With the last strong gust, the last leaf rose and initially stuck to his hair, before finally being carried away by the wind on its last journey. Then, the leaf took off in a dance of words and thoughts, which celebrate life with passion, even if they do not have the same life. The leaves scattered on the streets and rooftops, with this last one insisting, escaping its prescribed course and climbing higher to the wall of the Towers. There he chose to make his last stop, the altar of the grandeur of the borders that it should be. He climbed into a crevice with such momentum that the wind could not detach him again and quickly gave up, blaspheming. It rained non-stop for the next few days and then for days there was sunshine. The ink flowed incessantly from the leaf like tears of farewell and most of it detached and became one with the wet soil.
After weeks, someone who would stroll through the Tower, if they had a clear gaze and a curious spirit, would notice in a crack a small scrap of a wet page. And if this someone had not had his mind burdened with the "great" problems of everyday life, with the problems of his job and his family, with money and his old car, which he is sad about not being able to buy another one, or if this someone had lost sight of the stressful rhythms of modern life for a while, where anyone who stops to think and admire simply gets left behind, then - perhaps - he would have approached and pulled the leaf from the crack carefully, as if it were a fragile treasure hidden - only for him. Then - and only then - he would have read only:
"Nightmares of death always made me want to dance».
From “A Tale of Shadows”
Thomas Kalokiris
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