A girl known as a little
I am riding a bicycle. It is my favorite thing to do – cycling and cycling over and over again, faster and faster. Like I am creating a wind. I am not on the ground but not in the air, either.
It is safe here.
I ride around my house, cycling on the circular road, dreaming about the highways, crossing the borders, deserts, and oceans. Yes, I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one. I had a friend. She was so sure she would achieve anything that she wanted, even going to America, that she created as many faces of herself as possible and tried all the ways she could.
She went.
I hope that she is not lost. It would be a pity to disappear with such blue eyes.
I am not lost, indeed. I am cycling on the circle. I can think here. I know every corner of this place, every single centimeter. My parents were also riding their bikes here. It is like a tradition. I am a good girl, you know? A little girl, they say. But I don’t know what does ,,little’’ mean. I tried to look into my mind and could not find an edge. I am enormous, I think.
In my head, I am always in my room. People come to me and tell their stories, like I am a train and they are waiting on the station platform, ready to hop in. They don’t care if a railroad car is already full. They are trying to cross the queue, and they quarrel and cry at each other. They think they are all different, even though in the stories they tell me, non of them has a country or religion, like there is no heaven or hell for them.
I try to stop from time to time and get off the bicycle. I know my limits. I can’t ride constantly. I want to, but I can’t. I am mindful. My teacher was telling me that every day. She taught me to listen to the voices in my head. I was a good student. Once, we started reading ,,Huckleberry Finn’’. This little boy just climbed out of the window because he heard a voice and followed it. Some voices are too blurred, too far to hear. If I want to listen to them, I must cross this circular road and go down to the cliff because the gate is too high. I was thinking of using the chain of my bicycle as a rope to climb down, but it is too short. This chain, this cycle, is too short to become a line.
Now, my mom is calling me, I should go. I am a good girl, remember?
Goodbye voice, it was nice not to hear you.
Giorgi Tchkadua
Giorgi is the graduate of the Faculty of Governance and Social Sciences at the Free University of Tbilisi. The fields of his interest lay in Literature and Philosophy and his first research project was the Trauma of Holocaust, Narration and Self-reconstruction Practices. The next work of Giorgi was the study on a documentary novel “If This is a Man”’ by Primo Levi. While working on it, he discovered that there were no sufficient texts and research about the recent past and historical traumas in Georgia. Therefore, Giorgi prepared his bachelor’s thesis, entitled Georgian Traumas in the First Part of Twentieth Century and their Narration in the Literature. Simultaneously, he started writing articles for the Journal Indigo. Also, he continuously writes short stories and takes part in literary competitions. According to Giorgi, every other step was a sign that the most valuable thing for him is a story about humans and therefore, he thinks that the best combination of the Academy and his interests appeared to look up real stories, see the struggle and trouble that people came over, see battles that were won, or the frustration of defeat. Further, he entered Ilia State University to study The History of Modern Georgia and after the graduation he focused on writing and developing his own skills to create texts that will be mediums between present and past, reality and history, and people to people.
