Melis Menent

It’s taking me a long time to get to know Cyprus. I don’t know what the matter is with the pace of my discoveries. It is always open, in some sense. In another, it’s firmly shut to me.

It’s closed of while all the doors resonate the same sound: closure. Closing off while keeping everything that’s inside: the families, the stories, their sentiments… Everything that belongs to people, privately. While I was developing an interest in identity, I could imagine plenty, plenty of windows on large building blocks. Windows which looked like one another. I hear only some of their untold stories, while they keep everything to themselves. They accept to share it with others who agree to sing in the same way. I generally cannot. Singing is not a matter of simple linguistic communication. There are different songs around, all moving around up in the air.

One song told me that that family behind that one door had a different rhythm. The song told me that the rhythm varied and that there were patters observable. Similarities among the emotions, emotions of all those persons who represented themselves once every five years. Democratically. Even the country is called a democracy here. Hereabouts there is little communication. Lots of fear but it’s mixed with familiarity.

The road to Platres is long. It’s full of twists and turns. It takes you somewhere only if you put up with it. It seems like a small place filled with lots of magic. Magic is what happens when you can feel yourself as well as your environment. The tiny roads leading nowhere, the stylish houses which are not presumptuous and the boutique approach toward anything one can use makes platres the small palace that it carries in it. There is handmade chocolate present, there are tall pine trees that are nowhere to be found in Nicosia. Nicosia is the capital which is deprived of trees, deprived of any authentic approach toward nature. After putting up with the time span sent on the road, one can get to see what life could have been like. In an environment that surrounds oneself.

With authenticity…