The Buzz

It’s 2am. There is a buzz, as there always is at 2am, a metaphysical one, a buzz that’s not really about half a bottle of red wine and a couple of shots of cheap whiskey that’s been drowned inconsistently of realities of everyday life, more about the consistency of itself regardless of everyday life where it makes one eventually forget. 

I’m having hiccups as I am typing. Regardless, I managed to finish my cigarette. Have you ever gotten hiccups in the middle of a smoke? It’s a battle. In the bathroom, there are two oversized slugs that look like obese baby snakes, light brown in colour with a pattern on them that resembles a faded kilim carpet. They appear mostly in night-time, always in a different place. A friend of mine once told me, if you swallow three times in a row while holding your breath, the hiccups go away. These slugs are there. I am not doing anything to get rid of them, only because I can’t think of a way to get rid of them that will suit my abilities. I’m not naming them either. I accepted them through focusing on the two little antennas popping out of their what I assume heads and ignoring the rest of their forms. They move very slowly, so they seem harmless.

The bathroom has plastic wraps instead of a roof in a house located right by the sea on an island with no heating. It is soon to be winter. It’s not so much about the cold, it is more about the wind. The wind wears its unpredictability proudly like a gold medal in boxing after accomplishing to have switched cardinal directions in a matter of seconds leaving one disoriented, battling layer options for clothing, occasionally getting smacked on the head with an ongoing triumph of windows and doors that shut by themselves in a startling manner.

We often find ourselves spying on fishermen’s activities on the shore to see if there will be a storm or not. Just the wind itself is never an indication of an upcoming storm on an island, as previously established, the wind is a bully. The accuracy rate of predicting weather might boil down to a life-or-death situation, so we trust the fishermen.

There is no shower, there is a shower head however, loosely holding onto a wall above the toilet seat, a toilet seat that’s mounted on the floor with raw cement that looks like an alien creature smothering it. It leaks every time it is flushed. We flush rarely. When taking a shower, the toilet paper must be removed, otherwise it will get wet. Wet toilet paper is a problem.

Every floor surface in this house makes me feel conscious for the bottom of my feet. Slippers are a constant necessity. Although, I sometimes can't help but feel conscious for the bottom of the slippers too.

It rains quite frequently. When it rains, it rains loud. The house is bare, lacking basic infrastructural necessities that make a better shelter which I think people take for granted simply due to ignorance. I’ve been one of those people until I realized ignorance is in fact a bliss, sometimes. The rain directly hits the house, with a little push from the wind ends up knocking on the windows. Windows are somewhat penetrable.

First time it rained, a mouldy leakage from the ceiling greeted me good morning. I got up to grab a bucket and reposition the bed and went back to sleep.

The house as impractical as it may sound has character, being a part of an ancient district with Greek heritage. The ceilings are high, the walls are effortlessly industrial, the floors are wooden that tell a story with every drop of paint that’s been neglected and left to dry. Its fragility is in the eye of the beholder.

I spend most of my time in my room, with a little creature that lives under the bed. It is super fast. I think it is either a mouse or a lizard.

Couple of days went by for me to have found out that it is a mouse. Repeatedly, I found myself in a dilemma whether I should name it or not. I did not name it. In that moment, I refused to visualize myself as a cat in a cartoon.

Mentioning cats, there are a lot of them. Couple of more days went by for me to have found that cats don’t really care about the mouse under the bed. The mouse remained.

There is also a dog. An old one, with dementia. I’ve witnessed wonders in his eyes. The spectrum of emotions is not necessarily about the quantity, rather the intensity in contrast between two given emotions.

In the mornings, when I wake up, he runs to me with the excitement of a toddler, stares deep into my eyes with nothing but pure affection and innocence, while trying to reach out to my cheeks with his scratchy tongue. In the evenings, the very same dog wraps himself in complete darkness, in a way he complements the day and the night deservedly. Even a slight movement of a person in his close range of presence is enough to have him looking with vengeful eyes, growling to the point his bones hurt, appears as he will attack any moment, yet he doesn’t, continues growling until the movement stops.

There is a sense of rawness in a dog with dementia.

When I say “we”, I refer to me and my grandfather. I haven’t seen him in over ten years prior to my current visit. As I’ve transitioned into a young adult from a late teenager during this time, he seemed to have been washed over with another stroke of white. Despite his forgetfulness, occasional aggression, and a general state of being “hard to live with”, I feel grateful for this time that we get to spend together. I will find out later, unless one dies, it is not easy leaving and remaining gone.