Our route: Mykonos (plane) - Tinos (ferry) - Andros (ferry)
***
I want to buy a little notebook. I have a pen. And I’ll be able to write. Keep a diary. Will I really?
I want to write and draw. Make little sketches of everything around me. Or inside me.
But I don’t know how to draw. Unless I can only depict what’s inside me. That’s not hard.
Emptiness. Or chaos. A tangle of thoughts and feelings. Darkness.
Light at the end of the tunnel.
And how do you depict clouds racing across the sky?
There is a quiet rain in Düsseldorf.
We called a taxi to the airport.
As we ride in the car, for some reason I think about Katya and tears run down my face. What do I regret?
That I couldn’t save her? Protect her? From whom? From what?
Maybe it’s pride. Who am I to protect anyone. As if I know better how things should be.
And where am I myself?
The plane.
It’s strange that I don’t feel like listening to anything. I try Mark Knopfler; that was always a safe bet. But now I don’t even want to listen to him.
I just put on neutral music, the kind I sometimes lie to before sleep.
After an hour and a half of flying, I want to listen to an audiobook, “The Dopamine Nation.”
I’m listening to it in English and don’t always understand everything. But I like the author’s voice. It calms me.
She talks about an alcoholic who once came to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and cried through the whole thing.
He finally felt that there was a place where he could be himself.
He had spent his whole life deceiving everyone, playing roles, pretending, at work, in the sports club, in the family.
For some reason this resonates with me, and tears well up in my eyes again.
I’ve been crying so much lately.
***
We arrived at 5 p.m. It’s very windy here.
From the airport to the hotel we walk on foot, half an hour, through the Greek backstreets.
The air smells of something sweet, probably figs. Fig trees grow everywhere here. I recognize them by the unusual shape of their leaves.
I’m hungry and we go into town. It’s a 20-minute walk to the town.
I prepared in advance and found us a couple of places.
We choose the one that serves gyros and souvlaki.
