Lakis Fourouklas's Blog, page 3

Silencio

For a long long time I used to wander like a ghost,In the shadows of the night,From place to place,From nothing to naught.I had nowhere to go, not really,I was simply wandering seeking the yet unknown,A suspicion of belief that kept evading me.But I found it not.And then came other days, plentiful nights,Nights of a solitary fellowship.And I, without even realizing it,Kept continuing my quest,Though somewhat differently,Among people I knew, empty people,Whilst drinking wine weakened by the filters of lethe.And all that while my insides were still bleeding.Bleeding out of rage and sorrow,Out of nostalgia and endurance,Bleeding out of boredom.And then came the explosion,The one inside,The most redemptive,The most painful,And all of a sudden the ears of the soul opened wideAnd they began to listen…To listen to the volumes that silence spoke,Telling all the truths,Which the people were unwilling to hear.Then, as now, they only dared listen to the echo of their own emptiness.
The image was taken from here. 

Malaika - A Children's Story

I’m ten years old, my name is Malaika, and I am an artist. Great word, huh? Ar-tist. Wow! I didn’t know what that means until Marian explained it to me. Marian knows everything, and more; she knows every everything. She’s — what do they call them?— a know-it-all, or something. Probably something. What was I saying? Oh yeah, about the artist. An artist is the boy or the girl who creates art. And I do. I paint all day, when I don’t have to study that is. I would paint all night too if I could but I can’t because we don’t have electricity here and the candles are precious, like the ring in that story, that became a movie, which I’ve never watched. Oh, never mind, painting all day is good enough for me.
I’m not perfect at what I’m doing yet and I know it, but my mama and Marian say that one day I’m gonna be great; and that’s another great word. I like it! Gre-eat I play with words, I do that often. I say, it’s great to be great or things like that. And I’m a fast learner. I can learn anything. Just like that. Very soon I’ll even start speaking Marian’s language, American. My mama says that she speaks English, but that doesn’t make any sense, does it? Since she’s American she has to speak American, right? Anyways…
As I’ve already said my name is Malaika, which in my language, the Swahili, means Angel. I speak Swahili, not African. African is not a language, it’s… I don’t know what it is. Let’s say that African is, or maybe are products. Yes, that’s it. The things that are made up in Africa are African. But, back to my name. My mama gave it to me because she likes a traditional song that became famous because of a fat old lady, and which, she says, makes her soul feel like full of joy —Miriam Makeba, that’s her name; the singer’s, not the soul’s— and I wonder: How can a song do that? Can a song fill something we can’t see with something we only hear? And what is the soul anyway? Is it a tank or something?
I ask Marian and she laughs, so I guess it’s not a tank. Marian laughs a lot, but sometimes I see her cry too. I don’t know if she cries because she’s stupid; she’s been here for so long but she can’t speak Swahili well yet. Yes, maybe that’s it. Or maybe not. I don’t know. Maybe it’s my fault, since I’m not like the other children. Not that I’m too different; I have the same face, the same brown skin but, it’s just that, you know, I have no hands.
I remember that I used to have them, but I can’t really say when I did and how I felt back then. Strange, right? Mama says that some bad people had cut them off so I couldn’t go to war when I grew up, and then she starts crying, and then she pretends that she’s laughing because she doesn’t want me to be sad. Angels are never sad, she says, and I agree, even though here almost everyone is sad; in Rwanda.
Oops, I forgot to tell you that Rwanda is the name of my country and as you understand it’s in Africa. Everyone knows Africa, right? But do they know Rwanda? Anyways (I really love using this word, but anyways) I’m a Rwandan or a Rwandaneze or something. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I have here, right next to me, my mama and this kind-hearted white lady, my teacher, Marian.
She told me that she came here from far away, from the USA, when we first met. She showed me the USA on the map and they were big. I wondered why they had such a small name though, and I still do. Anyways (I told you I love this word), I’ve asked her if she misses something from her country and she said, no, because she had nothing left there. Where did everything go? I didn’t ask.
But again, how can someone have nothing? I mean, I’m poor-poor and I live in a shack but I still have my blanket, and some clothes, and the books that some people brought me, whose pages I turn every now and then with my chin or my toes, while I try to see the pictures and read the words. And I have my mama, and my brushes and paints, and my can-va-ses.
The can-va-ses look like white paper but they are not. I don’t know exactly what they are. Marian tells me all the time but I forget. Maybe I’m a little bit stupid too; just a little. I think that I am but I never say it because everybody thinks I’m clever.
Whatever, I don’t care. I only care about painting, a lot. And I paint, a lot. I use all the things that Marian brings me to do it; made in China she says; the things not her. She showed me China on the map. It’s another big-big country. USA is at the left, China is at the right, and Africa is in the center. That means we are the center of the world, right? Wrong? Huh!
It doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is to have food and water, mama says. We have, so we are lucky.  Some others don’t. They have nothing. And they are hungry, and they are thirsty, and they get sick all the time. What a shame! I’m not saying that we have plenty, but we have something; everyone should have something, even if it’s just a mudhouse, (is this a real world?), somewhere to sleep. Now that I think of it maybe we are rich after all, because we also have a school.
I loooove school, I love it. I can’t write yet because I can only use my legs to paint, but it’s okay. I do know how to read and I have a good memory and I remember it all and I learn a lot and… no more ands. At the school, apart from Marian, of course, there are some other whities, as the old men call them, teaching; two women from Europe and a girl from Asia who’s not Chinese. Oh, there's also a black woman from South Africa.
They teach us how to count, and to read, and geography, and they also like playing with us. They also love it when we sing. The best singer is Christina, the girl I love and whom I’m going to marry one day, but shhhh, tell no one. Marian says that she sings better than Shakira, whoever that is. Probably she’s someone great, but I don’t think she’s as great as I am, because if she was Marian would be with her and not with me, which is great.
Did I tell you how much I like Marian? No? Are you stupid or what? Do I have to tell you that I like her? I talk about her all the time. I say Marian this and Marian that and Marian… Why do I like her? Because she smiles a lot, and she sings, because her hair look a little bit African, and she sounds funny when she speaks in Swahili, and because as mama says she’s a gentle spirit that god sent or cent to us, I’m not sure, to help us out.
I guess god knows too that one day I’m gonna be great and that’s why he sent her. What I cannot understand is why she loves me so much. There are so many children here, and they are all good and beautiful, prettier even than me, so why did she choose me?
When I ask her (and I do that often hihihi) she says that she likes me because I’m an artist. And then when I ask her if she’s going to marry me, in case Christina doesn’t like me, she starts laughing. She’s laughing all the time. And then she cries. All of a sudden, she starts crying; while she’s teaching the glass; as she lies to sleep; when she walks around; while we play, and when she helps me with my painting and sometimes while she talks with the other teachers. I know what’s wrong with her. She told my mama. Her best friend, Andy, died and she’s in pain. I understand that, but why does she have to cry so much? That’s not good for her, I know, because she’s more beautiful when she’s laughing.
We cry too, but not as much as her, and for different reasons. We cry because we watch our best friends, our brothers and our sisters, our mothers and our fathers, die all the time. My papa died the same day they cut off my legs. The Hutus did that. I don’t know who these people are but if I ever meet them I’ll kick them a couple of times on the bum with my good foot, the left one, and then I’ll ask them why they did it. And then I’ll go to the USA and kick the bums of the bums that killed Marian’s friend. And then I’ll start kicking the ball because there are no other bums I want to kick.
Anyways, right now I’m lying under an Acacia tree, I look at the sunset and I’m trying to paint it on the can-vas. This is a very very beautiful sunset, like a fairytale, but I’m not sure if I can make it; paint it I mean. My teacher mixes the paint on the pa-lette and she shows me how to create different colors. And every now and then she messes with my hair and I smile.
As I’m lying in the dirt, using a rock as my pillow, and having the brush between my toes, I create. What a beautiful word! I create, that’s what I do, and she says that I’m a big talent, and if I keep working hard I’ll become somebody one day. What does she mean? That I’m nobody now? I ask her and she starts laughing again and her eyes shine like a green sun.
When I finish this painting it will be my twelfth; that means I’ve painted a dozen, in case you don’t know how to count. But I’m secretly painting number 13. Marian takes pictures of them and whenever she goes into town she sends them, through the internet she says, to a big big city in England called London. If the people there like them they’ll turn them into postcards or get-well cards or posters or whatever, and they’ll start selling them everywhere. That’s how I’ll become famous. Fe-y-mous; another great word. Don’t get angry because I misspell it. Remember that I write in my head.
Anyways, again, when I become famous all our troubles will go away. We’ll have lots and lots of money, we’ll move to the city, mama and I, and our life will be beautiful. But… But I’m ashamed to say that I prefer to stay here, with my mama and my good friends, with my can-va-ses and my sunsets. And with Marian and Christina of course.
If we move to the city I will lose it all, I will miss them all, apart from mama, and I don’t want that to happen. Or maybe I’ll lose her as well, because I’ve heard an old woman say that cities swallow the souls of people. If that happens I’ll be left alone, with no one to sing to me, Malaika, my son, Malaika; I’ll become a lonely angel and a very sad one too.
Now that I think of it I want to cry but I can’t, because if I do Marian will start crying too and I don’t like it when she’s sad. Sadness doesn’t suit her. I want to think of her as the moon and a lake in a picture she showed me once; a little bit dark but smiling. And that’s exactly how I paint her in secret. Please don’t tell anyone. The painting I’ll make for her will be my best. I’ll give to her as a gift for her birthday, and I will ask her again, if Christina is not around, to marry me. I know she’ll say no but I don’t mind. I know that she’ll laugh and she’ll tell me that I’m a little bit stupid but a great artist, and that’s good enough for me.
My name is Malaika, which in my language means Angel.
The image depicts the Greek edition of the picture book. It was painted by an elementary school student. The book was published in Cyprus in 2014. 

Week 16

When they first met none of them two could predict the future. They found each other by pure chance, at a party, and then they found themselves fatefully, in a garden.
From the very beginning they felt something, something new and exciting for each other - something like an expectation and a premonition. "I want to know you better," their eyes cried out, and that command none of them could disobey.
It's been years since then and they are still together. In the same city, at the very same house, and in parks and restaurants, pubs and town squares; enjoying their everlasting love's eternal words and some marvelous silences.

Memories of Drunkenness

1
Alcohol takes me down.It brings me up.And gives me joy.And makes me paranoid.
2
Wine is my curse.Wine is my curse and my salvation.Wine makes me feel depressed.Wine makes me cry.
3
I want to kill myself in my sleep.I want to kill myself without wanting to, without pain.I want to kill myself because I can't help it.
4
This room looks scary, like the world inside of me.I cry for help, no one listens.The walls are bending, closing me in, walling me in.
5
I remember yesterday and I hurt and I bleed.I remember yesterday and I lose my footing in drunkenness.My whole life seeks to be bouncing on the trampoline of insanity.
6
Have I become an alcoholic out of necessity or stupidity?
7
My dreams are the only things that worth something, though they are in black and white.My life is a farce, a zero, for whose ending I can't wait.I'm trembling as I'm begging for death.
8
I have become a loner, absolutely.I have become hot-headed, resolutely.I can feel the injustice in my bones and I break down.Which injustice though?
9
I walk every night.I walk every night in rage.I walk every night and plead for the morning not to come.It always does.
10
I'm a good actor!I handle my madness and my addiction with admirable skill.No one gathers that I'm an alcoholic apart from myself.No one pays attention to me apart from myself.
11
Does anyone, I wonder, hear me now as I fall with a bang?
12
Last night I smashed the side mirror of a car in a dark street.I had nothing against it but…Well, I saw it, I broke it.
13
Silence is bleeding.It's bleeding words.I want to speak, but have no voice.
14
The hatred is raging inside of me.The hatred and the contempt.For other people.I want to kill someone but I can't.I lack the strength.
15
I like this fall, this plunge into the darkness of insobriety.I like this pain, the only thing that truly belongs to me.I like the fact that I'm not me, because truthfully myself is someone that doesn't quite fill my eye.*
16
Mira… Christina… Mira… Christina…Why have you abandoned me?Why are you not here now that I need you?Why?
17
I'm becoming more afraid of the darkness.In the darkness my fears come to life.My mistakes seem monstrous.In the darkness… In the darkness I seek my shadow!
18
I sleep a little, I wake up a lot.I don't live the days, I just go through them.I'm afraid of dark places, I shiver in the light.
19
When was the last time that I got drunk with joy?I miss it, I miss it all, all that I cannot have.Christina…
20
I saw you last night, I saw you with someone else.You've moved on, even you have left me behind.You placed a black veil over my soul.I went and threw myself into the sea to drown.And then I swam to the shore.And then I came home and drowned myself in raki.I've been filling my insides for hours, I've been emptying my being for hours.And as usual, I've accomplished naught.
21
This fall suits me in the end.And so does this madness.This decadence suits me.I try to convince myself.
22
I no longer speak with anyone.I have nothing to say.I can't stand them…It's myself I cannot stand.I haven't got anyone I can talk with.
23
I was laying in my bed crying, crying, crying.I was laying in bed metaphorically slapping myself, hurting it.I was laying in my bed screaming: Get up, get up, get up, but that I could not do.My strengths had abandoned me for good.As I did them.
24
Someone beat me up good last night.I don't remember why.I can only remember the bruises, because I see them.A dark eye, swollen lips, hurt ribcage.The remains of the fight.Oh, yes, I also remember a promise I made:"I will pay you back in kind," I said.The only problem is that I don't know who it was.
25
I've started to confuse wakefulness with sleep.I can no longer spot the distinction between them.I spend days sleeping standing, and nights laying awake.Do I see dreams? Or do they see me?
26
I want to hit rock bottom.I want to hit rock bottom.I want to hit rock bottom.But is there a way back?
27
I will become a beggar for love.I will become a beggar for mercy.I will go to Christina and ask for help.To ask for love.I will go to Christina…
28
I will not go to Christina.No, I won't go to her.I do not deserve her sympathy.I do not deserve her love.I will save myself.All by myself…
29
Little by little I drink less wine.Little by little I consume less alcohol.Little by little I diminish the darkness.I tremble and yearn, I feel passion and fear.Little by little…
30
I'm looking for a chance, something to lean on.Something to lean on in order to rise again.I'm sure that I can do it, but I cannot.The body got used to something else.I must tame it.
31
Sleepless nights, sleepy days.But, at last, something seems to be changing.My dreams have started becoming colorful again.I'm on my way out, into the light.
32
Salvation will not be long now.I know it, I can feel it.Where shall I seek it though?Where shall I find it?
33
I must kill solitude.To kill it, I must.I need friends, and lots of them - where are you Captain?I need love.To give and to receive.I need to exit the highways of silence.I need a cloud of joy to rain on me.I need to become me again.I need…I need so much.I need a life!Thus…So long darkness.I no longer fear you.Farewell depression.You'll no longer oppress my being.Goodbye wine…But, oh no, you I will not abandon. I love you so. But from now on you will not drink me, but I'll drink you, in moderation.So long my goodbyes.Welcome home new life…
* A Greek expression that I've decided to keep intact in this translation. Someone that doesn't fill your eye is someone that you don't think highly of.
This poem, if someone can call it so, is taken from a novel I've published in Greek seven years ago, and which I'm in the process of translating to English right now.
The image was taken from here. 

Week 14

"What am I doing here?" she seems to wonder. The truth is she likes the place and the art, and she simply loves the feelings that come to life inside of her when she sees some other people's work but… But she's somewhere else.
"Where is he now?" Where? And why is he not here? Why is he almost never here? She's asked him to accompany her to this short trip, but he refused to do so. Perhaps because he didn't want to. Or maybe because her interests were different from his.
"You are cat", someone said to her once. "A stupid cat, that's what I am", she now thinks as she climbs on top of the car and lets her gaze, a little bit bright, a little bit wet, wander inside, seeking some new answers.

A Eulogy for Love - Chapter 7

When age chills the blood, when our pleasures are past
For years fleet away with the wings of the dove
The dearest remembrance will still be the last,
Our sweetest memorial, the first kiss of love.
Lord Byron
Yet another day is about to kiss us goodbye. And yet once again I'm here with you to share in the loneliness of the coming night. An eerie silence seems to have taken over the cemetery grounds though the sounds of the city can still reach my ears from afar. The smooth air of August is a bit warm but its breath is getting cooler by the minute. The sun is sharing its last red smile with us. The pale city lights one by one come to life… Banish the light! It tortures me, it denies my soul to me.
Eleni, I sit here, over your grave, and think that the whole world begins and ends at this sacred spot. If my mission was to travel the world all I had to do would be to walk around this patch of land that blankets your body and return to the place that I'm sitting right now. A trip around the world, a trip around a lonesome soul.
I close my eyes. The real world turns black, but through this darkness emerges like a shining light you. Your essence. You are smiling and the air all around me changes scent, it now carries yours. The, oh so few, birds I can now hear sing with your voice. I feel a hot breathe on my neck and as I open my eyes it all dissolves. For how long will you, my beloved, haunt my life, my every waking moment and my dreams?
I knew you so well and yet so little. I could read your every glance, listen to your silences, guess your thoughts, and often enough I spelled the words that you wanted to say. I knew you more than my own self. I could understand you. I could see why you insisted staying with Marios but kept it a secret, I never let slip a hint that I could understand. It would be impossible for us to one day live together. I knew you so well and yet so little, since I could never have imagined that one day you'd decide to put an end to your life. Suicide is only a solution for the cowards, you used to say, and stupid as I was I believed you.
The world, or rather life, is a great mystery and I doubt that there's anyone out there who can fully comprehend it. Is there anyone that can truly understand how life changes from one moment to the next, how nothing is granted, how the wheels of fortune can sometimes bring about some unexpected and terrifying events in our lives, how tomorrow for a lot of us may never come?
Now, like a deserted island I wander into your lands of solitude, with the dolor of the west as my constant comrade.
I could never have imagined (I know I repeat myself, but I have no choice, my words are too poor to express my deep grief) that when I came back from my last journey you'll no longer be here, and along with you all my friends would be lost. Now I am but a refugee of love, someone who has no country. Because my homeland, my religion and my family were you. To you it was that I've always wanted to return, and not to a city, to a land.
I am to blame for what happened. It was me that got you carried away and thrown into the vortex of my madness. It was me that turned his hand into a deadly weapon powered by jealousy. It was me that made you drink that poison that ended up sending you into a bleak never-never land. It was all my fault!
I don't think that it's easy for someone to understand what it feels like to live day after day with a knife nailed in your heart that doesn't kill you. The pain of twisting it around with all you've got, of pushing deeper inside, and not dying. It's unbearable being alive in the graveyard of life.
I have never before felt in so much pain. And never before had I felt so strong the need to rise up again from the abyss I found myself in and stand firm on my feet, and follow my lonely path that more likely than not will lead me to nothingness or simply nowhere.
I look at the stars as one after the other almost shyly show their faces in the city sky. If what they say is true, if every time a child is born on this earth a new star appears in the heaven above, then I wonder which star lost its glow and faded away when you died. I'm so sad that I have chosen in the skies above the brightest of stars to shed for you their sorrowful light.
This morning, when I've finally managed to abandon myself to sleep, you visited my dreams once more. I saw you smile, as usual, but behind you there was nothing, a spotless white canvass, the infinite. But, all of a sudden I saw another face breaking away from yours and coming into the light. It was the face of a girl of roughly your age which I have never seen in my life ever before. Then you smiled at me, smiled at her and vanished. I took her by the hand and together we strolled into the unknown. I wonder what that meant.
To be continued.
The image was taken from here. 

A Eulogy for Love - Chapter 6

For a woman, all resurrection, all salvation, from whatever perdition, lies in love; in fact, it is her only way to it.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Each man kills the thing he loves, according to Oscar Wilde and I love Nikos with all my heart and I'm killing him. I'm killing his psyche one day at a time. He's in love with me I feel it, I know it, but his love for me will never be reciprocated and that he surely understands. Perhaps if he told me about it something would change… But who am I trying to fool, nothing would. It would be better for him though if he stopped keeping that secret.
Secret? Not really. Everything shouts out the truth of his feelings for me; the way he talks and smiles to me, the shine in his eyes, his tenderness towards me, the way he worries when I'm not okay. He loves me with a pure, almost innocent love, whether he talks about it or not. Women always know. They know how to read the signs, yet they act surprised when someone, better late than never, confesses their feelings to them, if they don't love them back.
If there existed somewhere an ideal world, a land of dreams and a utopia, then he would be for me the ideal lover, the perfect partner. I can't think of a single woman who wouldn't want to be loved by someone like him, someone who lives love, and who never says I, unless he's about to blame himself for something. My desperate poet, will, I wonder, ever love you as much as I want to, as much as you deserve?
He's so special, one of those unfortunate souls that no matter how much they try they never find peace of mind. He will keep looking always for something, someone, and he'll keep turning inwards trying to conquer the desolate shores of his soul. And he will always leave, seeking the new, the strange, the different, the unknown.
No woman could ever stay by his side for too long. He's a man without a country, a fallen angel who doesn't quite fit in in our earthly world. He walks in the streets and sings All You Need is Love, he waves hello and smiles to the passersby, he looks up to the sky and his eyes sparkle as if he's about to fly. No woman could put up with him, not a single one. Just a couple of hours ago I've asked him what he did today and he said that he "became by four lines of lyrics richer." My crazy boy, my wise man, women love poetry, but they love security more.
It's painful for me, it really hurts that he's alone, but however sorry I feel for him, I can do nothing to bring him out of his solitude. Besides, what could I actually do to help? He's built his wall all by himself which means that only he can bring it down.
Oh, I wish, I pray that he would simply go away once again. Not necessarily away from here, just away from me. I don't want to find myself in a position that I would have to ask him to go. I simply want him to understand that I'm not right for him. To understand… To understand… To understand what? Oh God! I don't want him to go. I want him to think that I want him to. But if he does, then what? How could I live with myself then? I love him and he loves me… How could I ever tell the only true person I've ever met Do not love me, forget me, go? How?
I love him more than myself, and yet I could never live with him, become his second wing. He's too good and that I cannot stand. He believes that with his mild manners and peaceful gaze and his love, he can conquer everything, everyone. He lives in a world of dreams, while I survive the day to day hard realities of this one. He spends almost all his time, day and night, giving to others, and he never stops to think whether his efforts go to waste or not, or even if those others deserve his offerings. And even worst he believes with all his heart that I'm worth his love. Well, I don't think I do.
I have always been a pessimist, viewing the world through dark-tinted lenses. I've always expected things to go bad. While living a happy moment, I could see things taking a turn for the worse not long after. I don't know who or what to blame for my outlook. Perhaps it had something to do with the things I've lived. Maybe with the fact that I haven't met him early enough. The moment he stepped into my life, things started changing. Everything did. My days, all of a sudden, got rid of the black and  dressed in colors, and my nights were filled with poetry and music. He and his, let me call them, idiosyncratic friends have arrived like a breeze in my life, rejuvenating my senses, waking up my hibernating fantasy.
I admire his friends, almost as much as I admire him. They live the moment, every moment, they suck, as they say, the juices of the tree of life (I'm pretty sure that some poet wrote this, but his name, right now, I don't remember.) I am so happy that they took me, with open arms and so much love, in their company, and I'm so sad that I'll never be able to be like them; someone who can turn life into a poem, a song, a sculpture, a painting. If it wasn't for people like them the earth would stop spinning, the world dream would be erased from all the dictionaries in the world. Thank God there still exist the crazy ones, I've once heard someone say, I think it was Maria. Thank God. Thanks to them love, fantasy, visions, beauty, all that is worthy and true are still alive.
Might I but moor tonight in thee! I've once heard Emily wonder aloud… Might I moor in you? I want to do that, I really do, but I won't. When I've met you it was already too late, I had given myself to somebody else, and to him I still belong. You gave me all that Marios never did and for that I thank you. I know you hate these two words but since you're not going to read them or hear me saying them I dare whisper them in these pages: thank you!
I would like to hug you, kiss you, caress your hair, express my gratitude for you being there, for you being you, but I won't. Instead I'll keep filling this journal with these thoughts, safe in the knowledge that they'll remain hidden. This is my silent way of saying the thousands of thank you's I owe you. If you have, by some miracle, become the listener of my soul, then this thing here is going to be my secret confessor, someone that will never speak aloud, unless I want them to, the things that are best left unsaid. I am a flower that slowly gets eaten away by the secret poison.
Nikos, my poet and painter of my dreams, they say that the paper has no soul, and they are wrong. These pages are more alive than anything in the world. They have my scent, they carry my thoughts, they hide your omnipresence, they see my tears and feel my pain and joy. This paper, I'm writing on, is like a beating heart, it's all the world and nothing at all. Soulless is what soulless people call it.
Isn't it funny, or rather strange, that for some time now I'm writing as if you are right here and I'm talking to you? I feel like I'm composing a letter that I'm never going to send and that's not too far from the truth. But, if this was a letter, it wouldn't be so long, it wouldn't overflow with hurt and joy. I would simply write: Keep leaving (and living,) seek your dreams, reach for your peaks, stay you!
As I am writing these words, right next to me, in bed, lies Marios, the first man that made me feel like a woman, he who made me one. He is the body, you are the soul. He fulfills my desires, you make me want to live, to hope, to fly.
If we were spirits, you and I, we would set wings in our own secret skies, we would discover our personal paradise and we would built a world so full of beauty that in front of it the colors of the rainbow would pale. But we are not, we are made of matter, we depend on it. And that's probably why we two could never be… You are more spirit than matter, I am the opposite. And opposites may attract but in the end they capsize.
The beauty that deep inside me I hide no one will never know. Not even you, even though you may suspect it. I will stay with Marios and the hurt that goes with him. Somewhere inside I feel that I need this pain. The same glass gifts me both bitterness and delight.
To be continued.
The quotes written in Italian, unless implied otherwise, are by the Greek poet Maria Polydouri.
The image was taken from here. 

A Eulogy for Love - Chapter 5

Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.
William Blake
I used to count the life by the minute while I was with you. I wanted to know how many minutes, hours, days of happiness I had lived. It wasn't many. And now, as I talk to you about all this I place my life at your feet, and forgive me, human as I am if I hurt. How could I not be in pain having loved so much? I love today's misery, and the little happiness of yesterday.
I've felt what it meant to be happy when I confessed my love for you, when I explained how deep and true it was. For me it didn't matter much that it was a love with no tomorrow, a one way street. You were there for me to love and that was enough to make me happy. But, alas, misfortune showed up out of the blue and imposed its own rules, making love withdraw in the dark, so the smile became a tear, and the tear pain.
No one can escape their fate, they say. They say. People talk a lot but know very little. Everybody creates their own destiny all alone, day by day, breath by breath. Don't you agree? Every day we add something to the edifice of our life. If we are going to end up building a palace or a shed it's all up to us.
I truly believe that the lives of all those rational people out there are based on the irrational since they think that if they succeed in something it's because of their intellect, but if they fail that's due to bad luck. They philosophy of life consists of nothing more than a couple of labels.
We were not like that. We took nothing for granted. We did not put labels on things. The only thing we were certain of was that the sun would rise up in the morning and set in the evening, even if we didn't see it. We were different, we were special, six people in one soul that has now almost shrunk to naught.
It's difficult, almost impossible, for one to get used to the idea of your departure. He, that used to go away often and for long has remained, and those who always stayed have departed for a journey with no return. Life is mocking us. Pain is not always bad, sometimes it's even good, it makes us stronger, but it becomes crippling once the threads that bind us are shred to pieces. What joy could follow a pain like this? How could a smile again blossom on my lips? What sun could shed its light on my life's path? What soul could caress mine? Oh, why should I lead a poisonous life?
My very own thoughts sound selfish to me right now. You are gone for good, and this pathetic little man only thinks about himself. True be told though, I have a good excuse. I do what I do and I think what I think because I miss you so. Because I am left all alone. Nature is the only thing that can bring a little bit of comfort at dark times like these.
The cool breath of the air, the cricket's song, the sound of a distant melody, they all shout out to me that life is here and exploding with beauty. I search deep inside of me to find the balsam for this destitute, the lost way to love, to rediscover the ingredients of a happiness that I hardly got to know. I look for all those things but instead I find a mine of memories and images of a past that whisks my days away. I see a lovely face smiling at me and then fading, vanishing into thin air, like a phantom, a playing of light.
Not long before you died I have dreamed of you, this time in my sleep. We were together in a little square at the heart of village that was built with stone. It was crowded, hordes of people all around us, but in my eyes they looked like shadows. I saw you embracing my whole being, kissing me, I heard you saying I will always return to you. This kept happening again and again for a long time. Hugs. Kisses. Words. The very last time though was different. You came to me, embraced me, kissed my eyes and said I live in you and disappeared. Along with you vanished all the shadows and the scenery changed in the blink of an eye. Now I was in a desert. I was surrounded by sand that was painted in a strange red hue. The sun was about to come down in the distant horizon. I followed the path sculpted in the sand by its weakening light, and as the darkness begun to fall a whisper started running almost undetected through the emptiness. A whisper that was getting louder by the minute. I could see no one anywhere, and I couldn't make out what the voices said. This went on all night long and it felt to me that it took the next morning too long to break. I was lost and at a loss when I clearly heard a voice saying The light is gone from his soul. Then I understood, and I woke up, sweaty, scared. I wanted to cry but the tears wouldn't come, I wanted to scream but my vocal chords seemed to have frozen stiff. I knew, with a certainty that I couldn't explain, that that nightmare would come to life.
Dawn is upon us. Today is Sunday. I can hear the sound of church bells ringing in the distance. It's time again for me to go, Eleni. I will return tomorrow night to talk to your spirit or whatever there is out there. I want to tell you more. I want to remember even more. I want to break free from the chains of my pain, but also set you free, so that you can wander away from me to some distant skies, unknown to me and to all.
To be continued.
The image was taken from here. 

Isadora Duncan and Greek Traditional Dance by Giannis Zografakis

In this video I have changed the music accompaniment. Isadora uses Greek dress, Greek ritual dance, Greek philosophy, tradition and mythology, but she forgot the most important factor: the music. You can't project mystagogy with the dringis-dringis on the piano. Thus this "surgical procedure."
Traditional music comes from an ancient, almost mystical past. Its purpose is to bind the soul and the spirit with something transcendental, through a continuous and repeated motif.
The music that Isadora uses to express the choreography is pointless and ineffective, and as a result out of the whole exercise comes nothing special; it provides no message, no meaning. It's hypotonic and seems to serve no purpose at all. The ritual dimension of the choreography vanishes, loses itself in the original musical score, the sound of a piano on which the choreography has been based. But when the movement and rhythm of the body is linked with the elements of traditional Greek music, it automatically gains meaning, and from therein emerge the hidden rituals and symbols that have to do with the eternal cyclical or spiral movement of the rebirth of the shapes through the inevitable stages of death and birth.
In the Minoan tradition the Cretaceous Zeus had the characteristics of a dying god that would every year die and be reborn, following nature's patterns. That's why there used to be in Crete a grave dedicated to Zeus, the only one of its kind in the whole of Greece, on Giouhta mountain. This trend was closely connected with the naturalistic dimension that stemmed from the ancient matriarchal worship of the Minoans.
Traditional music replicates exactly those circles through the repetition of specific sound motifs that circle around a spot in which lies the purpose, the meaning, and the fountain out of which stems the original and primordial information.
Ritual dance follows this logic and carries the message of the continuous renewal and rebirth of everything, placing in material frameworks the frequencies that stem from the music.
Dance translates the sound waves of a musical ensemble and turns them into image through the expression and the kinetic flow of the body, thus making the body an intermediary, that brings forth from the virtual world of frequencies the harmony, which it impresses in the material world as movement. The coupling of these two elements can acquire a transcendent sacredness.

Isadora Duncan has approached the ritual and transcendent elements through her dance studies. In the video at hand an effort is made to highlight the values that can bring traditional Greek music and the modern version of dance together.

The video was made by Ana Zumani.

The text was translated by yours truly.
  

A Eulogy for Love - Chapter 4

We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.
Luciano De Crescenzo
Evenings have now become synonymous with solitude in my lexicon. The silence slices through me like a double-edged knife. I want to talk, to scream, to wail but there's no one around to hear me. No, no one will hear my howls, no one will wipe away my tears. There'll be no silent comfort. The longing is, oh, so big and so small are we, the people that make up its parts.
How silly is our life and how fools are we to put up with it as it is! Silly and tragic. How does it change courses from one moment to the next, just like that? How does it break our dreams into pieces all at once? In a moment, in a single fateful moment I've lost everything, I've lost everyone. I've lost you and all our crazy friends; the poets of life, the prophets of doom. Almost everyone I ever loved have become pieces in the labyrinth of my memories: you, Maria, Kostas, William, Emily… You've all turned into ghosts and the sun no longer caresses my soul. We are but shadows of shadows, Kostas used to say, and he was absolutely right.
The weird thing is though that an untimely feeling of sanguineness seems to be currently running through my whole being. I feel that from now on everything will go well for me, but how? How? How can that happen since I've lost you, the most precious stone of my existence, the flame that burned my body and my heart? Am I finally going mad? I sit here, I look at the earth that cages your human body and somehow I feel optimist! How can it be?
This night is, like the ones that preceded it, deadly quiet. The heaven above is dressed in cloudy black and the stars, just like yesterday, are furnishing their light on some other skies. It's as if the elements can feel my pain and trying to silently stand by my side.
Water has started falling from above. A light drizzle. The tears of the clouds come cold and wash over me, and bring joy the grass, the handkerchief of the lord, according to Whitman.
Everything reminds me of you, all of you. And every single thing cries out to me: you are alone. The mask of sorrows has become one with my face but I know that one day I will expel it, I will get used to the new order of things and get on with my life, but, of course, I will never forget.
Eleni! Your name keeps running in circles in my mind, I can hear it whispered by the wind, sang by the birds, and I can see it written on this land by the raindrops.
I wonder if you've finally found salvation, my love. My love! How ironic, I've never called you that when you were still alive and yet here I am doing it now. The distances that tear us apart and bind us together. Everything can be said when no longer anyone has anything to lose.
I'm going to tell you something, something of old that was left unspoken, thus it's still new: I've always made dreams for Us. I would sit in a train, watching the scenery hurriedly passing by before my misty eyes, and think about you. I would fly towards distant lands, looking at the clouds beside me, the sea and the earth below, and think about you. I would walk in green fields and deserted beaches, I would climb up mountains and go down ravines, and think about you. I wanted us to share the same images, to live the same sunsets, to experience the same things, to rise together to the heights of our collective imagination. I've dreamed all that with my eyes open, but the moment I closed them, I could no longer see us together. Why? The answer to that arrived to me in the most cruel of ways, as you well know.
As I look back I now realize that our differences were big, but somehow we've learned to live with them. If we ever became a couple, probably they would be a problem, an obstacle that would pull as apart. Not becoming one is the thing that saved our friendship. As for our common interests they were few, but enough to keep us close: the poetry and the music, our readings and sporadic excursions to the islands or the countryside, the most simple yet beautiful things.
I close my eyes and I bring back to life in my head all that we and our friends have lived together. Our discussions without end, the fugs, the nonstop drinking and the singing in the hidden beaches of Paros, Emily's stories, Kosta's and Maria's silent eye to eye conversations, William's accompanying of our every word and thought with his guitar. I remember you shedding silent tears as Emily sang Imagine with her blues voice, Maria smiling almost inwardly with a knowledgeable look on her face, and the rest of us staying still, lost in the magic of the moment. I remember the sun rising like a red crocus through the sea, the birds waking and starting their morning chorus, the fire, the ecstasy in our gaze…
And the river of sweet memories continues to flow without a break, before it unavoidably spills into the stormy seas of my being.
To be continued.
The image was taken from here.