It was Lucia´s flat again. Only this time did Agnes celebrate her birthday. Everything looked adorably unhealthy.
For the first time I brought along my dainty new guitar. Agnes and I had gone downtown to scavage the local music shops for the cheapest one possible. For a handful of pounds we had purchased identical sisters and with all pride prickling in our fingers had brought them home. I baptized my new purring darling Annabel (Which was really a name out of nowhere, no implications, no burning houses), Agnes christened hers Chaos. Which probably would have been a fitting title for mine too. Now I was constantly plucking about on it, while we all, party garloons in our hair, were playing guess the celebrity. Charming we looked with the post-its on our foreheads.
Things were looking great lately. Only a few days ago, the moon had turned a fire red over Liverpool, and I had thought to myself that if it was to always be red, no one would even wonder the tiniest bit. Instead one would be quite shocked if it ever turned white again. Life, I understood, was a matter of perspective, and it was influenced by our changing character. My ongoing mindgames that had forced me into introspective regions not always pleasant to the visitor seemed to pay off: We had many existences, many expressions and variations of the same basic biological material, enriched with thoughts and impressions that we kept amassing and forgetting and re-discovering and re-forgetting throughout our years. And the like. Once this was accepted, everything looked progressively friendlier. This stage was a new one, and loads of these were yet to come. Indeed, I needed to finally realize that this was my chance of an update to a newer version.
That´s why I was prepared to try new things: I tried The Science of Sleep in the cineasts box of the Fact with the Birkenhead expedition team. I tried places like the boozy Blue Angel or the dark Heebie Jeebie with Rick, I tried falling asleep during a philosophy reading next to Jonathan and Krishanta, for example. Succeeded. I tried fish and chips in the Lobster Pot with Jonathan (where the guy behind the counter wrapped the insanely huge portion at mindboggling warpspeed while we compared the dictionary of Mann and Kafka). I tried Rachmaninov. And Sibelius again. I tried going for a round of basketball with my new flatmate Aristotelis, another clever Greek with a sonorous voice, who was never shy to enter my room and stay for two hours of small talk. He was a die-hard Panathinaikos supporter, and he was, as any male being in the year 2007, a complete victim to the Spartan hype, which essentially meant a good load of loudly quoting Herodotus, especially during breakfast time, and stating that basically anything was madness. It had been the story of the week, heartbreaking to say the least, when his canary had been banished from the flat on behalf of Billa and Mandy, who both a) liked the rules of the house and believed the birdy to be loaded with bacteria and b) thought Aristotelis to be rather awful in total. Together with Jonathan, he smoked in the kitchen at night, an absolute no-go for rules and girls, and his room was a complete mess.
I on the other hand, inspired by Hana´s example, tried decorating my very own four walls more appealing. Annabel, the guitar, in the corner, an unkillable bamboo on my table, manifold flyers on the walls (“Thank Funk it´s Friday”, “Peace No War” etc.), and during a poster sale in the Guild I got myself some flashy beauties, Leon, Tenacious D and one about Bushisms (“I can only speak to myself.”). I also got one from Little Britain for Giorgis (since that´s what he quoted nonstop) and Doctor Who for Agnes, and Jonathan received Einstein.
I watched a lot of Monty Python (and that´s what I quoted) and there were new ideas shooting out of the ground like mad, like weeds, soaked with jazz and classic and rock, concerts, film nights and walks and journeys. We even had ourselves a party in Sidney Jones Library in the middle of the night, just meeting somewhere upstairs and turning the bookshelves into partyprops.
Everything started to feel entirely natural. When I went with the others to see Agnes´ study mate´s band Mind of a Toy in Django´s Riff in Wood Street, a long basement pub with black leather sofas and an endless bar drenched in reddish light, I sensed myself to be as confident as never before here in Liverpool. You could see passing pairs of legs through the red-frame windows over our heads, people bustling from A to B, the clicks of their heals bested by lusty rock´n´roll, mere creatures of moving, following the stream, but down here I had found my new dwelling-place, a kingdom of invention, swinging with groove, the internationals my new troops, music my motor. If there was ever a better time and place for me, I wasn´t sure which one it should be. While Aristotelis made a move on Urte, chatting about Lithuanian basketball, the nation´s most successful export besides pretty girls, my smiles went out to everyone around me, a generous portion of my glee and ardour. Hadn´t Giorgis talked of these stages of being in a new place?
Because I write so 
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