I found myself yelling, almost screaming.
I was standing outside, it was a bit chilly.
Wearing a black winter coat, close to the entrance of a metro stop.
I had told him I was going to take a coffee instead and started to make my way.
“Why are you always so angry?”
The person I was shouting at asked me, just shortly before I started to walk.
I wasn’t even offended he asked, it felt more like a compliment.
It didn’t occur to him he had done something wrong, it didn’t even cross his mind.
He was so full of himself.
Only he could notice I was angry.
In his mind it was me, who was the problem.
The question was legitimate in his eyes.
He was comfortable when he asked me.
I was the one standing there, yelling at him in public.
In that sense I wasn’t even angry to receive such a question.
At least not the reason why I was yelling at him.
Where the absence of my answer, the silence there next to a metrostop, tells this story.
A song I once heard.
Syren, by a techno DJ.
I looked over so many times the visuals during his live performance.
There was something I couldn’t put my finger on.
There was something about that song, that dance of the siren.
The movements and the beat.
I kept asking myself.
‘What is this story of the Syren, really?’
It reminded me of Odysseus, the Greek myth.
A story I once heard during high school.
I was always so tired during that time of teaching.
The stories could barely keep me awake.
Perhaps with the knowledge I have now, a resemblance close to that reality.
That the sound of a voice can do so much wonder.
Where Odysseus has to save his crew from the sweetness of the songs of the sirens.
A call in the voices of those sirens, would make all men soft.
Fallen by the sounds of the sirens, make them feel drunk in love.
To be lured into a rock island, where they would find their ultimate death.
It wasn’t really the siren call I was experiencing when I was shouting to this person.
And so I was thinking of another myth, involving a siren.
A love story of a siren, living underneath the water.
Where soldiers needed to pass a river, where she was living.
Once they would see her, the men would do everything to seduce her.
Also because she was all covered in gold.
Soft to say she was really beautiful, I can’t blame those men.
The call of her siren, was a trick to see who was real.
When they would hear the sound of her song, one by one would fall in the water.
Grasping to air, but of course it was too late.
Or they would attack one another, leading to a horrible death.
But there was one man just standing there.
He just stood there in the water, looking at her.
Resistant to her song.
At least what she believed.
She didn’t know he was deaf.
They danced all night long.
She couldn’t get enough of him.
Although deaf, he wasn’t blind.
He was mesmerized with all the diamants she was wearing.
While the night was falling, the birds started to sing.
They fell asleep in each other’s arms, till the next morning.
Siren looked around, when opening her eyes after that night of dancing.
She found herself alone, without the deaf soldier by her side.
She stood up, noticed something different.
She looked around.
Again.
Siren couldn’t believe her eyes of what she found.
All her diamants were gone.
She ran to the river.
A place she could call home.
She saw the soldier standing there, with the diamants in his hand.
The sadness was too deep for the siren and she started singing another song.
A song the deaf soldier was able to hear.
And so he ended up death as well.
What the moral is of this story.
It is hard to tell.
I believe there are different things to get from this myth.
Men are only after beauty and women want someone who can look deeper.
Although there might be someone who can stand the test of women.
Women still need to protect themselves.
Since the soldier took the diamants when the siren was sleeping and couldn’t resist what his eyes were telling him.
I believe this is why women have this kind of power, named a siren.
To make sure to not be misled or fooled over.
However, it is still also the responsibility of women to not act out of fear and trust the process of falling in love. Understanding their own beauty.
To come back to my own story where I yelled at someone in public.
Where I had my reasons to do so.
I was angry for sure.
Not only out of compassion for myself, because I wanted to get my message across.
Where I needed to release that emotion.
But to give this kind of negativity back to the person where it belonged to.
Sometimes yelling is the only way to express.
To make sure they will disappear and never come back.