Greek Dance
5 July
Greek dance came to me instinctively as I tried to keep my balance on the ferry approaching the island of Serifos. The wind had only just begun to rise. I stepped forward, stumbled back on the next; my bag on my shoulder, a third step crossing over—until on the fourth I finally found my balance, only to realise the whole pattern was starting all over again. The night before, I had watched you and your mother dance on the creaky wooden floor of the living room while laïkón played in the background. She was behind the beat, you ahead. The cigarette smoke drifting above the table curled around itself. I was mesmerised by its slow dance and watched it dissolve into the heavy air. I would have liked to stay in that moment for much longer.
Lately I’ve been painfully aware of movement—its beginning, its middle, and, sadly, its end. An opened bottle of wine is a lingering emptiness; clearing the table suggests leaving; loneliness comes closer as the door closes. Beginnings are crossings from the familiar into the unknown, visible only when something else comes to an end. The unfinished and the possible offer hope when the certainty of beginnings and endings feels suffocating: the moment before a smile, a glass of wine still untouched, the first buds on a tree in mid‑winter. The first confession of love. And so disappointment, a bleak November afternoon, a headache, and the greatest pain of all—heartache—fall away.
As someone who finds comfort in the unfinished, I still need clarity in feelings and actions, especially in others. If I notice deviations or inconsistencies, my whole sense of the world begins to shake. Suddenly I’m at the mercy of liars and betrayers. In those moments, attack feels like the safest defence. In these storms of my mind, I swim like a fish in water.
The greater the love, the greater its movement and its consequences. On the most difficult days, I answer the Greek dance with Russian roulette. Two worlds collide. Is there something in between? Finnish letkajenkka: one jump forward, another back, hands on the hips of the person in front, three jumps ahead. I leave the pistol on the table. You leave that back‑and‑forth, maddening dance.