In the apartment building, someone takes the elevator from me before I can open the door. Fuck it, I’ll walk.
I start going down the stairs and the building is well-maintained, but in places it shows its age – I feel a fleeting identification.
I hurry and take quick steps in a hypnotic spiral towards the ground, where the roots are. In my haste, I lose 2 of my friends.
4th floor, the marble on the stairs is pitch white, and a light bulb burns pale from the years of the crisis – the packaging said “economy lamp”.
3rd floor, I get fired from the Greek Army, I work in Thessaloniki, I have sex with marble bodies, and I leave for Valencia. I learn that running away doesn’t solve problems. My steps – they’re fast – descend the stairs while someone effortlessly ascends in the elevator.
2nd floor, I’m not playing soccer with the kids and I’m listening to the radio. It’s ’87, I have thin hairs on my mustache, Bryan Ferry is singing The Right Stuff from that cassette we got from the marbles of the Edirne market. I call out to my dad and two Turks are happy that a little Greek said a Turkish word. I’m also happy that I unintentionally spoke Turkish, çok bereket.
1st floor and it’s the 70s. I’m born half-suffocated and I burst into tears. The light blinds me and I inhale to experience the captivating experience of earthly life. The Year of the Cat is playing and I believe I just came from another life where I was feline. Cats will stare me in the eyes for the rest of my life.
Ground floor and I reach where the roots come out. I run towards the exit because I am in a hurry to live or to set myself free – I search for the distinction on my mobile phone. Fortunately, I have no signal at all.
For 7 seconds no one sends and I am thinking alone. My thought twists and enters a room I did not know. My soles are made of rubber, they make no sound at all.
I trudge. The white marbles of Formionos street are firm beneath me, almost indestructible and willing to lift up any person they want at any moment of space-time.
– any person who wants to live in a hurry or die free.
I go to open the door of the apartment building. A cleaning lady from Georgia is mopping.
She looks at me and smiles
– she knows I can walk on these marbles to get anywhere.
I go outside.
I missed the elevator
but the world is orange.
