do you still remember the light?
the one that was shining all the way through while you were winning your battles with the obvious, and man, those battles once were easy. do you still remember that 17-year-old who thought the world was just a huge traveling amusement park, full of carousels and popcorn? you could play out all possible scenarios with whoever you met on your way. you were sure this world had its logic until you didn’t believe in it anymore, and oh boy, this was also to change.
how many more people around us should become weak, so that we can seem stronger? i know that the spades are the swords of a soldier, i’ve seen people who were the light and decided to quit shining, or were too tired to start shining again. i’ve also seen those who use those guns with a silencer, aiming them to dim the sunshine of the others so that the crime goes unnoticed. those who went through a dark, dark abyss will always notice their own kind from a distance. those would be the ones to comfortably stay silent with for as long as it takes to start seeing a tiny white dot of light once again.
when getting stuck in life, i switch some Georgian music on. i don’t speak the language of the country i know i’ve spent one of my past lives in. in this life, when i came there, we many times looked each other in the eye and talked a forbidden language none of us had a right to use anymore. it’s like someone’s guns were silenced enough to give us this gap of understanding. i remember how my mom once tried to mend a Georgian uncle by warming his wine – out of the usual ingredients in a mulled wine kit this poor Georgian house had only black pepper on the shelf. so i was standing on a cold cold floor somewhere north, deep in the mountains, and explained to the housekeeper what my mom wanted, and why black pepper and walnuts which they had plenty of had to be put into their sacred Saperavi, and why heating it in the poor little house with jackals howling outside would soothe uncle Dima’s cough. the full moon was shining on top of an ancient cemetery below our window.
i knew back then i had to write about it. i knew i belong here. "Never part with your loved ones without saying goodbye as though it were the last time." was playing in the car every time i was leaving for the airport. i parted so many times.
i parted and parted until i didn’t know where i belong anymore. changed houses until i had no place to call home until i found a person to create many homes with. cried over many of them. learned that sometimes the only way to enter a house without tears is tearing all its walls down from the start. old inhabitants’ tales have rotted under the plaster and stones, so sometimes it took breaking down every stone, one by one, to build the home anew.
do you still remember the light? i thought i started struggling with this memory, until it was time for a coffee break, we were all gray from the dust, there was one square meter of empty space in between the broken walls, eyes were all swollen from exhaustion and sweat, Latin music started playing in the background, and we smiled to each other and danced salsa. this was definitely a backstage, ghosts of the house took the front row armed with buckets of popcorn, and a shy ray of light shone through the cracked window we were about to replace.
