A SUFFERING HEART THAT ASKS FOR EVERYTHING AND NOTHING AT THE SAME TIME

23.09.04

I finally bought tickets for the Games. I will go watch swimming and athletics and who knows what more I’ll watch. Those tickets are open to any day, any time and any sport. You get in at mornings and you get out at nights. Other sports are performed at mornings and other at nights. I say this because extraordinary things happened in the two hours that passed. People come and people go. Phones ring like crazy. I am wrapped up in cables and swear like a trooper. It’s those old cables that are tangled up. I have to untangle them every now and then. If I don’t, I raise the receiver and the whole telephone at the same time. Then it falls down and the poor citizens wait on their receiver, screaming ‘hello, hellooooo!’. I am sure I look funny at such moments, if not stupid.

Today Nikos (a good pal) came here with his nose bleeding. He says he stumbled upon the stairs of the Prefecture and had to have stitches. Poor fellow, he looked really sweet in his state. Without doubt, pain makes people look sweeter. Those who know that can pretend that they don’t suffer and fool the others (Nikos would never do that). I tried that trick once or twice, hoping to get a biscuit or something, but I didn’t succeed. As soon as I understood that those who are always whining have no hope, I became cruel and decided to treat them with the same cruelty. The truth is that nobody has asked anything from me until now (I am not speaking of material things), at least not directly. People usually don’t tell me what they want but what they don’t want. They say: ‘Nicholas, don’t be like that, don’t believe this, don’t do that, don’t write like that, don’t hate, don’t love, don’t talk like this, don’t make mistakes, don’t be sad, don’t be weak.’. In the end, of course, they don’t forget to remind me that I must always be myself.