Aug 24
Certainty
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I stood, slightly bewildered, on the docks. It’s impossible not to be, when you’re a foreigner. Which I am. The Balkans are deep. Their history, their culture, their secrets. Their anceint feuds. So deep that you could swim forever, always seeking something elusive, looking for the secret soul that is always just out of reach. So deep that you could drown.
I felt like I was drowning, slowly suffocating under the crushing weight of thousands of years of history. Macedonia is deep. It’s history goes down further than the blackest of undersea trenches, where the night will last until we are finally consumed by the sun. Hundreds – thousands! of years of blood, pain, suffering, the love and hate, devotion and rage of an entire race, the passion of each individual completely inexplicable. Taken as a whole, overwhelming.
I noticed, in a clouded sort of way, that I was walking somewhere. It’s very easy to get me lost – all you have to do is distract me momentarily. My mental map of everywhere and anywhere has been overwritten with maps of places that don’t exist. I was lost somewhere in the old quarter of the city. Luckily, this wasn’t too big of a deal. The old city is built on a hill, and if you manage to go downwards you’ll eventually reach the lakeshore. More worryingly, I seemed to have lost my purpose. Not my overarching purpose in life – which I hadn’t managed to find yet, so losing it would have been a depressing feat, though probably typical of my family. What I had lost track of was the reason I had gone through the hassle of haggling with summer-mad taxi drivers to get to town. Organization was never my strong point, but I usually somehow contrive to know why I am where I am.
stolen
I nearly tripped, though I wasn’t on any steps and the cobblestones were well laid. A nearby man smoking a cigarette sniggered. Ignoring cigarette-man, I leaned against a wall. In the cramped, narrow streets of old Ohrid, they’re always pressing into the street, and manage to never be more than a few feet away.
stolen after midnight
Since I was in a more architecturally sound position, this time around the shock of memories – voices – voices of memories? that weren’t mine didn’t knock me over.
I stayed there until whoever lived in the house chased me away. I managed to find a taxi driver who wasn’t too obtuse. On the way home
at night the lake is black have you ever seen the moon shine on the water isn’t that strange
Our house seemed slightly different when I got back. And my sister’s eyes were a stranger shade of blue.