A new era. Or maybe not.

Ξαναρχίζεις να γράφεις. Είναι κάτι σαν διαταγή απ' το υπερπέραν.

Ξαναγυρνάς εκεί όπου, όταν ακόμα ήμασταν άδολοι, αποθήκευες λέξη λέξη τον χείμαρρο των σκοτωμένων πιθανοτήτων για μελλοντική απόσταξη. Μεθυσμένος τώρα από αναπόφευκτο, περιφέρεις την εξαγορασμένη σου ευφορία, ανταλλάσσεις τη φωνή σου με ένα σύννεφο άγονης σιωπής.

Άδολοι; Όχι, ποτέ δεν ήσουν άδολος. Ούτε κι εγώ.

«Ξέρεις,ο έρωτας θα νικήσει στο τέλος», μου 'χες πει. Όχι εσύ, ούτε εγώ. Ο έρωτας. Αυτή η αλλόκοτη φρίκη, που ορμάει να σε πνίξει, όπως ορμούσες κάποτε ν' αρπάξεις απ' τα χέρια αγνώστων ευχετήριες κάρτες και όνειρα. Όπως ορμούσες στο λευκό χαρτί να το γεμίσεις έμμετρες απειλές προς το σύμπαν.

Η επικοινωνία ναυαγεί στα ανοιχτά του φόβου μας. Τι λέω;

Στο ρόδινο σου παραμύθι, τα βράδια γράφουν οι φασίστες συνθήματα. Θέλουμε να σκεπάσουμε το «αίμα» με αίμα, αλλά απ' τις φλέβες μας τρέχει νερό. Μόνο νερό. Διψάμε.

Γιατί διστάζεις να μου πεις «Σ' αγάπησα μόνο επειδή μια νύχτα μου ψιθύρισες σε άγνωστη γλώσσα όσα λαχτάραγα ν' ακούσω, μα το ξημέρωμα βρήκα δίπλα μου ένα κορμί από καιρό παρατημένο στην αφθαρσία της πρώτης άνοιξης.

«Στα βλέφαρα σου διάβασα μόνο σκόρπια αποσπάσματα απ' τις βραχογραφίες της αθανασίας. Στα χείλη σου αναζήτησα μάταια τις τελευταίες αποτυχημένες απόπειρες ποίησης. Κι αντί για στάχτη, βρήκα στις τσέπες σου νεκρά τριζόνια απ' το περασμένο καλοκαίρι»;

What does the full moon on a warm night look like to a person who's actually walked on it?

Less magical, just a dark empty piece of rock with the earth's huge shadow looming over it?

Or less so? A once familiar place bringing home half-forgotten memories; feelings of fear and awe; the self-satisfied tiredness that comes with the completion of a long and perilous journey; nostalgia for this strange blue-green sphere in the distance, so misleadingly still and quiet and full of wonders, reminding you of the warm moonlit nights of your youth...

Exercise in surrealism No 1064

When the heart of the city burns again and the children lash out at each other with insatiable rage, bury your dead deep, for violence is an old beast that only pretends to sleep. I saw the man with the tattered hat, I heard the fireworks, I was forced to choose between wisdom and oblivion - the dilemma left me paralyzed.

Blindly we followed the screaming crowd. On most nights, we dared not sleep, and when we did our dreams tasted like rusted iron. Some said the end was coming, others said it had just began. We prayed for rain to wash our sins away, and when the rain came, we retreated back into our caves- by now, sins had become our second skin and we refused to peel them.

The prophets withered and died, the visionaries lost their touch with sanity, the innocent were slaughtered and onwards we moved, laughing like mad. In the darkness, we devoured each other with hatred and lust; under the merciless sun we οnly walked in silence.

First our clothes began to fade, then our kisses lost their taste; in the end, we forgot all the names we knew- the names of our friends, the names of our enemies, even our own. Perhaps we never reached our destination, perhaps we did, and marched through it all the same...

Of fear and longing: Chapter 647

Am I truly content to live with the thought that one day I will only be a sub-folder in your folder of memorable moments? This is always a possibility, perhaps even a certainty, yet it becomes too hard to swallow when you're not even allowed to hope for a miracle.

Last night, I tried to get you out of my mind by employing the only reliable removal procedure I know of. I must confess it failed spectacularly.I guess I'm losing my outstanding ability to go with the flow. At the same time, I am becoming more myself than I've ever been. All the masks and guises and armor are gradually falling to pieces. Perhaps my perpetual wrong choices have already doomed me to decades of loneliness. Still, I find it impossible to let rational thought reign over my feelings.

What really hurts, you know, more even than the awareness of an inevitable ending, are the silences, the words never uttered...and time is running out. You asked me to let go, but you're the one who couldn't- or chose not to-, and most of the barriers I have stumbled upon, whilst struggling to reach you, were not the work of my own hands.

Fragments of life on the outskirts of reality

She walks alone at night; she does not need protection- not the kind they'd offer her, anyway. When she gets home, she longs to share a thought or two with a certain someone, but her pride only allows her to use telepathy as a means of communication.

She is hungry for love but, in its absence, she can get by on lust alone. She likes the feeling of a warm body lying next to her, but will only fall asleep on her side of the bed.

In some dreams, she weeps bitter tears, wishing she was stronger. In other dreams, she laughs like mad, wishing she was weaker. Yet on most nights she is blessed with a dreamless sleep...

Wise tree

If silence was a card, the note on the windowsill read, it would be the joker, for it is like a blank page, always deriving its meaning from the context.

The problem with silences, thought the old crow sitting on a tree branch across the window, is that they always seem to have at least two meanings: One is bestowed upon them by those who remain silent, another one by whomever vainly attempts to interpret or, even worse, to break the silence.

The wind carried the note away, the crow moved on, she whom the words were meant for woke up to an emty windowsill and he who wrote them was long gone. As for the tree, it had always favoured silence, anyway.

Of fear and longing: Chapter 236

Something old comes to a final and irreversilble end, just as something new is beginning. Such are the simple and immensely complicated ways of life- and who are we to disagree?

When we speak of fear, what is hidden behind our confessions? Is it truly and purely the uncontainable need to reveal ourselves completely? Or are we driven by the undying hope for reassurance, the mad desire to see an equal quantity of panic and longing reflected in the other person's eyes?

To fall in love is to gaze into a mirror of your own fashioning. Beware what you find inside.

Been a long time. They tried to silence us, but they could not. Censorship comes in different guises. Sometimes it's your enemies; sometimes it's the ones you trust.

Inner strength or self-expression have little to do with the loudness of our voices. We are driven by this aching need to rid ourselves of all that keeps us down, to slowly unpeel the countless layers of grief, disappointment and fear.

The caring strangers we meet along the way may pretend to listen, but they rarely grasp the truth hidden behind our rivers of words. Still, the night is long; to give up all hope is to sink like a stone in the velvet depths of sorrow.

Did you really think it was going to end so smoothly and painlessly? We are back at this dark familiar place where dreams come to die and hearts give up all hope of mending.

Then, after several weeks, or months, of bitter tears and angry vows and self-pitiful melodrama, the cycle is more or less complete: You are ready to fall again. And to fall well, you must first climb as high as you can.

Sometimes you begin to believe that you have been cursed. Other times, you assume that you’re just irresistibly lured by paths leading to emotional dead-ends.

And, once in a while, you wonder if maybe this is what it’s all about: Life was never meant to be sweet or easy, and the amount of disappointment you end up experiencing is directly proportional to the size of your expectations.

So is this what we asked for? Isn't it frightening, when dreams seem to be coming true? All these years, all these perpetual disappointments, we have become accustomed to dreaming but not to living. Would you dare to fly, if you were almost certain you'd fall?

The fragile promise of something new, yet again, just as you were starting to believe that the game was already over for you. Nothing ever ends, you're never too old to feel young again as you're never too young for suffering- just don't expect anyone else to understand your passion for self inflicted pain.

One life, one body, one chance to break free of all that holds you down. Call it love, or call it inspiration; it is the eternal need to express what lies buried and inexpressible inside you. To truly share a moment, or even two.

Can you grasp the hope, and the agony? Or am I risking to irreversibly injure my soul in my futile struggle to break invisible walls separating me from willing, albeit imaginary strangers?

Of dreams and waking No3

She'd have her periods of freedom and lust and total randomness, when she'd hide her sorrow behind a porcelane mask, until she'd almost come to regard that smiling face in the mirror as her one and only self- the flawless illusion disrupted only in rare moments of doubt and existential agony.

Then she'd fall in love and eagerly erase all trace of past frustration from memory; everything else receding in the background to make space for her one and only current obsession.

And when love began to fade, she'd refuse to acknowledge the fact- as you ignore an alarm clock sounding early in the morning, hiding your head under the pillows and struggling to pretend that the noise isn't there, you're still deeply asleep and lost in the sweetest of dreams. But the dream has already ended; it ended the moment you started to pretend.

She'd wake up, at last, wishing she was a ghost, longing for death or at least a deep dreamless sleep. Eventually she'd once again summon the strength needed to immerse herself into a life of quiet evenings and unexpected encounters and drunken late-night confessions and a consciousness, which requires no other half to feel complete.

So the cycle went on and on and on, solitude turning into loneliness, then back to solitude again...