Sunset

I sit in the middle of three armchairs, each have several old pillows, remnants of dog biscuit, the gas fire to my left hisses quietly, the thin yellow and blue tipped flame quivering. In front of me the rectangular enemy of awareness jabbers on.

Three dogs slumber about, I reach out and briefly pat a small pudgy brown one. I really am not joking, but earlier, when I looked at him, he raised each eyebrow alternately like Austin Powers. When he walks his belly waddles, and when he sits back on his tail, head held high, it reminds one of a fat businessman in a brown suit, proud of his millions. The other I have previously mentioned, thirdly there is sweet docile Norman. Whose gentle eyes know the sadness of being the softest, oldest dog among scatty youth. Not often, when the other two aren't looking, it will lumber over and ask for some attention, he knows it won't last long - moments later jealous Natasha is at my heels.

The rectangular awareness sucking device continues it's prittle-prattling, my gut is at work digesting a madras curry, outside the moon is nearing the end of it's in breath, and far away the tango coloured President, perhaps, for a holy flash of nanosecond, discovers there is somewhere, distant, and no larger than an electron, such a thing as a conscience.

The room around me has trinkets collected over a long, sporadically wild, often diligently lived life. As a lifetime reaches towards it's dusk, the gaze casts over land covered, shining it's last rays on the joys, the drunken rapscallion escapades, the mountains climbed and countries explored, before those final rays diminish, and life sets. 

Hand over hand on a steel ladder, and I'm on-top of the roof. Another band of Cyprus clouds gilded by the setting sun. The Krishna golds, peachy yellows, and furnace oranges, are saying something, or even attempting something. All the eyes that gaze up, it is what's behind them that they tenderly usher towards a place they know we feebly call freedom. Unnameable shades of sunset that are singing over and over - 'you are the unnameable itself'.

Leaves and Petals

The cheapo kettle starts it's boiling, aftertaste of honey and porridge, outside the growl of an electric drill and beyond the island of Cyprus recently dowsed from last night's rain and hail storm. Today I must continue rinsing out cat shitted upon flower pots, sweep away fresh pink to mud brown leaves and petals that have been strewn by a bougainvillea that hugs the house. It is an odd scent if one stands in between the garden and the back door - floral sweetness mixed with the thick doggy catty smell coming from the living room. Electric drill has got louder and been joined by a distant hammering, in the mirror a green shirted man, behind him palm-tree fronds dither through the window. 

A dog flashes into the room, leaps frenziedly, flailing it's front paws about like a deranged conductor on crack. Little dog spirit, maniac of love. I don't mean to make little Natasha jealous, but how fortunate to have hands, and more so to be able to move love through these hands onto another. How extremely odd - that we wake up and go about our day without exploding in rapturous awe at having become what we are - human beings. And furthermore, what we are becoming.

I'd like to note: Cyprus, or at least, this corner of Cyprus in which I reside, seems to be coaxing a further slackening of my perception of time. 

So the weekend has appeared and disappeared, now only marginally more real than memories of last night's dream. Within it, two mystic blue planets, that seem, as I look closer, to fall out into themselves and contain more, more to see than I can comprehend. With flecks of gold and yellow brightly glinting away. His eyes were lighter than hers though, simpler, more alert in the moment, not sunk in on themselves. The whites are whiter, yet those touches of red, tiredness - 'you must wait at 5a or 6a for your bus' he says, and so my weekend trip to Nicosia ended. Before it ended I enjoyed bathing in mountain woodland, drinking sweet amber coloured local wine and appreciating the serene Xyliatos reservoir. 

Clouds

 It's odd how clouds and the sky seem different here, I feel as if they are more prominent, more framed. I took the picture below and tried to upload onto instagram, but I can't from my laptop. So I thought I'd make this little blog post, and perhaps have it as my Cyprus adventure update blog.

The day I travelled here -

A lady with steely blue eyes the colour of a Nordic sea checks me in at Heathrow. Later on I wake up from a snooze and gaze out the plane window. A mesmeric orange ball is dipping silently into a horizon of cloud, the sky is aglow with layers of colour that don't have words. Moments later it's gone, and even more quietly, the secluded scythe of the moon introduces itself to the scene.

I saw it again this evening, above a large white villa overlooking an empty terracotta beach, the Mediterranean sea stretching out towards Lebanon and Israel. I sat on a jagged rock and dipped my hand in, warm and clean, the rocks beneath clear, splashed it on my face. If there was any location on this earth I would call home, it would be the Mediterranean sea. I have never felt more at home, completely at ease, than when my body is submersed, a moment of suspension, holding my breath.

As I write this, I can can hear cicadas, the metallic gurgling of my little apartment fridge, occasional cars, in front of me is a mirror, and in it a human with green eyes and a mole above his right temple, gazes back, that self I've been bought up to believe is 'me'. So here is me, myself and I, away from my country of birth writing this blog about my adventures in Cyprus - a place where the sky expands and the clouds announce themselves on the horizon as if they were a work of art, somehow knowing, teasingly, that their artistry makes the finest human painter a moron.