There is No More Such a Land

 I  got a message from my mom while I was away and therefore read it with a small delay. It started- my brother's wife was in the hospital expecting their new-born any day soon. Small Tom was about to conquer the world.

 I haven't seen my brother since Christmas. To be frank we don't see each other often at all. Some time before I moved to London he had left the place where he used to be my best friend for several years. In my memory I see him always there, even though his life has moved ahead and I don't even know his hairstyle these days. 

 When I close my eyes I see a tiny flat on the top of a massive, old apartment. The gate was wide and always sinking in the darkness, which darkness I had to cross everytime to later keep turning and turning on the narrow, wooden stairs. I was passing the door on the first floor, which, according to the history of architecture, used to lead to the apartments of the best situated habitants. I had a habit to stop there and glare at this entrance, imagining a time of it's greatness, until there was nothing left to imagine. Right now it's just an old entrance, with a misery waiting on the high staircase for guests who are never to arrive. 

 My brother lived in Poznan. The place I used to call home. Still being the biggest mistery of my life, this city had always something sad and final. It was like an old best friend, who will always listen to you, always has time for you even you underestimate it and visit only when you have nothing else to do, whom you pass everyday not bothering to pay attention. Always there, never asking for more. I remember it standing in front of my eyes, covered with snow, with marble angels decorating old walls. Home. Now an illusion. Transformed by time. Abandoned. There is no more such a land, a land of my memories. Deep inside it, there is a deep dark hole made of pieces of feelings left by those who used to love this place, forever in pieces, forever in pain. 

After walking in old stairs, listening to the halo of my own steps, I was about to get to the top floor. The apartment was located just below the roof, which made an impression of a place above, above the world. It felt like being a pigeon. And so pigeons were my usual company, while I was preparing a coffee in a tiny kitchen, watching other people's windows, all lower then the reach of my seight. Only pigeons could do, fly as high as my eyes to steale a piece of my memory and carry it away forever. Between the kitchen and the rooms there was a dark hall, terribly dark and cold. Two rooms were a real contrary to this- warm and modern and letting you know from the door that this is it, indeed, an apartment of an artist. The first room was a warkshop, or as my brother would prefer, a studio, full of cameras, papers, banners, backgrounds and bits of colourful film. The second one was a kingdom.

 The second one had a big window and always a glass of wine, or a bottle of beer, and an ashtrey. Trough the window I was watching my first big city life. The street below us was the busier street in the city. There were numbers of nightclubs just opposite us, how many, who knows. And windows. Windows containing images of a daily life, of artsists and students, full of hope and so far from anything what was outside. Outside the city centre. This city centre ws everything to us, everything to me, everything I could ever dream about. Sometimes, me and my brother were walking down to mix with the crowd of the street and visit clubs where Tom knew almost everybody, and dance till morning. 

 I pass these places sometimes. But there is no people I used to meet here. Students I remember are parents now, The Old Market, Waterlane, Castle Avenue, Liberty Square- don't recognize me anymore. Sometimes I raise my eyes to reach the window of the old apartment, but I am not a pigeon anymore. Who lives there now? There is no more such a land.

 Sometimes though I still see this world. The world of illusion, wiped out thoughts, fading whispers and bright colours. I visit this places as a mist, able to freeze every heart, dispel every thought.