Lakis Fourouklas's Blog, page 5

The Silence by Jiorgos Christakis

The agony, the passion for life, the terror, the composition and the decay, the matter, the spirit, the soul, the heart, the howl, the silence, the hope… Everything is spinning around at vertiginous rates in an immense circle full of fire that is incessantly propelled by the force that we call apeiron, mystery, total darkness, full light.
Everything undulates in a perpetual rhythm.In this incessant dance, in this unstoppable swirling, the muddy paths of the mind are illuminated in time. Then you discover that everything moves, fights, flounders, falls in love, hates… everything inside the mind… Wine, smoke, sweat… Fire…
The body, the inside matter, the mind and their derivatives pulsate in a twirling maelstrom that grows even stronger when counter currents are met.
Agonies, conflicts, battles, losses, loves, joys are spinning without pause in her bowels. Airy thoughts, wet thoughts follow her circular orbit and her persistent powerful rhythm. The whole universe in the circle of time and space is struggling to reach nil and infinity… Two dark spots… the beginning and the end… The angel and the devil… Zero and one… and then zero again…
The maelstrom that wipes out instantaneously the present and sucks in the past and the future.And then comes the silence. The silence is not the most extreme despair, the annihilation, the incurable ignorance. Each person reaches it by following their own road, redeemed in their own way, passing through their materialistic construction.Silence hidden in the wolf's breathe…The spirit… the wind… the indecipherable matter…
Silence is the highest peak… a simple glow over the wet meadows…
Translated by yours truly.
The image was taken from here. 

Maelstrom by Giannis Zografakis

The world.The absolute whole.And everything is spinning in its center during the big inhalation.And everything is un-spinning spiraling from it during the big expiration.Every circle is a birth and a death. The eternal gives birth and kills whatever it gives birth to in order to see its existence through the mirror of everlasting change.The world is whirling in its self, in the infinite horizon of events that no mortal could bear see.The purgatory of forms. The eternal spin and consumption that brings all temporary patterns against chaos and the great despair.The center is one and punctal, without substance and everything between the spot and infinity is infinitely bigger than the spot and infinitely smaller than infinity.The mountains echo the Wolf's song as it calls on the moon to show him the eternal path and the moon weeps, because only to the voice that's leaving it can reveal the secret road.And the Wolf stands alone, on the faraway peak, in the center and the brinks. In the emptiness of the big maelstrom that gathers the similar with the similar and separates the world from existence.There, at the brink of the world, no one else can stand, and is not worthy to declare to the world that it exists.
Translated from Greek by yours truly. 

Pain by Maria Polydouri

Pain… Pain… No longer enough are the tearsand the sigh; it's not enough, it does not escape.Like a bird flies out the thought insaneand beats its wings and smashes them.
Blood is the sweat of agony. The templeshave been painted in tragic blooms.Like poison in the veins scurrythe secrets of a possible life.
The iron wheel of martyrdomis taking its last spin.Knowledge stands aside in defeat.And love inconsolably weeps.
Translated from Greek.
The image was taken from here. 

Old Summer, Late Afternoon by Ana Zumani

"I can attract but not captivate," she said. She was wearing a sky blue dress with a white bow and a straw hat with lilac irises.
"There's a beautiful path, " he said and pointed towards the forest. "There are thistles and purple flowers and birch trees; look, you move straight ahead and down below the river breaks into white foam…"She looked at him as if saying, "you want to be right there with me and breathe the scent of my dress…"
But they didn't move straight ahead towards the clearings of the thistles, the purple flowers and the birch trees, instead they had coffee in a big gathering on the wet grass and played badminton…The hair of the girl had absorbed moisture and tender curls are now framing his temples…She was beautiful…And it started to rain…The still wild prairie smelled of May. The grass was shining. The pebbles in the street were being washed clean and the poplars were trembling while drinking rain…She was holding the beautiful hat with the lilac irises in her hand and he was holding an umbrella over her hair, like a good mother would…
They then went to the music room of that facility.It was a bare, dark place that smelled like a cellar…The girl's brother was playing Schubert, Impromptu E flat.It was like when the waves of the lake sing; they rise and come, they fall and dissolve… some big, some small…It became dark.Outside, on the other side of the window, the chestnut tree leaves bowed to the gusts of the wind and the storm was going shh… shhh… shhhh… A glass lantern was shining into the distance…And then the E flat Impromptu would rise and come, to fall into their hearts and dissolve…
The woman and the man were smoking.Only the flaming tips of their cigarettes could be seen…He was sitting very close to her, shaking…"Let's dance," she said…
Outside the chestnut tree leaves were bowing to the gusts of the wind, the cigarettes were illuminating the windowsill, the brother was playing and the two of them were dancing in the dark, slowly, silently…
"What's the title of the piece you played before?" she later asked."Schubert E flat," replied the pianist, "a composer has said something wonderful about it… Why do you ask?""Because…"The young man seemed as if lost in another world; he could also sense something wonderful about the E flat but he could not express it with words like the composer… so he slowly bend his body towards the girl and whispered… "My queen…"
Translated by yours truly. My thanks to Ana Zumani for allowing me to reproduce it here.
The image was taken from here. 

Book Review: The City of Blood by Frédérique Molay

I have to say that Frédérique Molay wouldn't have much luck if she first published her books in English. In that occasion the best she could wish for was for a small independent press to take her on. But, fortunately for her and for us, she writes in French, a language in which a crime novel doesn't have to be a door stopper to be popular.
Anyway, to the book at hand. “The City of Blood” is the third volume in the Paris Homicide series starring Chief of Police, Nico Sirsky. Nico is a living legend among his colleagues. His record at solving crimes is great, but what really makes him stand out is his humanity. He feels real sympathy for the victims and their loved ones and giving them closure is his number one priority.
The crime that he investigates this time is one that happened many years ago, but just came to light, under more than unusual circumstances. During the unveiling of a modern art project in a park the remains of a corpse are unearthed. How did they get there and who is the victim? Nobody seems to know the answers to these questions, but Nico is certain that he can find out the truth. And so the investigation begins. An investigation that will lead him and his team through the clouded paths of the past; a past that is more dark and full of secrets than one would expect.
There are no wild car chases or big thrills in this story. However, there is a great mystery at its heart that will keep the reader guessing from start to finish. Maybe the identity of the victim will come to light quite early, but that of the killer will remain secret almost until the very end.
I've read this book in just a day and the thing that I enjoyed the most during that time were the psychological portraits that the author built for her characters. Most of them are damaged goods, living in a past that is far gone, trying to create a future that will never come. The damage inflicted by that past on their souls is quite extended, and the only way to repair it is to come to terms with it, by knowing the truth that for so many years evaded them. However, as expected, not all can let sleeping ghosts lie. Some wounds heal, others don't, but at the end of the day what really matters is delivering justice, and that Sirksy does, in a story that the fans of quality crime fiction will surely enjoy.

The Walk of Life - Chapter 2

Can you still remember the night that I've met you? It was a cool August night, with a smooth wind caressing or in my case engraving our senses. The stars were shining strong and bright on the blanket of the sky, it almost felt like an illusion, and the new-born moon was hardly able to make its presence known on the pathways of the earth. Music was in the air, reaching as from afar, distorted, like a symphony gone wrong.
You were sitting quiet and desperately alone at a remote corner of that small park in old Nicosia. It was a very late hour but that didn't seem to matter to you, as you looked inside, licking a wound close or trying to make it even bigger. You were smoking, almost without realizing it, a soon to be dead cigarette, letting tears rush down your cheek like torrents and rain down the land. I, a creature of the night, and constant wandered of the city streets, did not quite find myself there by accident. Passing through that park was something I did often, almost every night, but the sight I saw that night was a first for me. People usually hide away in dark rooms or deserted corridors to shed their tears, but there you were, hidden though in public, crying as if the world could no longer impose its rules on you. I've heard your cries. I approached you. I wanted to see if I could do something for you though I was sure that if I were to offer my help you would refuse it. That's what most people would do. As I was standing by your side I could clearly see the flood of tears running like wild rivers down your cheeks and lines of pain cutting through your face also, and I knew that the source of your torture would not run dry any time soon. So I walked on for a few more steps only, and went and sat on a bench nearby.
The song of your sobs would be the only sound that could reach my ears if not for the cars passing outside the park or the notes escaping the nearby pubs and restaurants.
Since I had nothing else to do and I was in no hurry to go anywhere, I've tried to escape your sounds and sight, by turning to my inner world, by concentrating on something that wasn't really occupying my mind. But that proved to be impossible, so I've decided to focus all my attention to your face, without seemingly doing so. Of course that was ridiculous since I couldn't look straight at you, and the weak lighting in the park didn't help much either. You seemed to be half-hidden in the shadows, physical and emotional. As you were sitting there, head bowed, I couldn't see your eyes. The only thing that stood out was the flame on your cigarette. But I already knew how you looked. A pale face. Long straight painted-black hair. Not tall nor short. Thin but not too thin. I don't know why but I felt an instant tenderness towards to you, a sympathy that had no real reason to be there since I didn't know you. It was as if a sixth sense of sorts was letting me know that, well, being there was where I was really supposed to be.
Now, as I look back, I cannot exactly find the words to describe how I felt when I met you. Joy? Perhaps. Wonder? Definitely. Uncertainty? Of course. I was overflowed with feelings, questions, hidden sensations. It was as if your tears were entering without really trying my soul and penetrating my kingdom of silence.
Anyway, as you know, I stayed there watching you for a long long time. Watching you and waiting. For what I did not know. Or, perhaps I did know, thus I'm now lying. Yes, I knew. I was certain. You would make the first move and talk to me. About what and why, that I really didn't know.
I was observing you, and yet you took me by surprise. I don't know for how long I took my eyes of you but then I heard you walking with light footsteps towards me. I'm glad I wasn't watching you when you did that. Instead I was looking to the sky, or the shadows of the trees, or whatever. It doesn't matter anyway. You stood right in front me and asked me if I please had a cigarette. I didn't, but being the pedestrian knight that I was I offered to go and bring you some. Never mind, friend, you said, but I insisted and you gave in. When I came back a few minutes later, you were standing still exactly where I left you, staring into the darkness with eyes that could hardly see. Will these do? I asked you, showing you the packet, bringing you out of your bleak trance. I have forgotten to ask your choice of brand so I just bought the ones that looked good to me. They will do, you said, and gifted me with half a smile, sad though it was.
You sat on the bench, lit up your poisonous comforter, and remained silent for a while, watching the fire as it burned it, following the curls of its smoke as it was driven away by the wind. I asked you if you wanted to be alone and you were fast to cry out, no. You seemed afraid of solitude at the moment. Even your voice, though harsh, sounded wounded. So I sat next to you, listening in secret to your irregular breaths, which I wish were smoother, like the sounds of the night waves in a serene sea. I gave, now that I could, your face a better look, studied. It was really beautiful and it was cracked by pain. Your eyes were black, tar dark, eyes that could speak. You were a creature of sadness.
Your cigarette came to the end of its course and you put it off. It was erased like every moment lost. You lit up another and asked: Why? There's no reason that I found myself here, I said, there's no answer to your why. Things happen. This just did. As for the cigarettes I brought them because you needed them. You took a big breath and let it out, and then you offered me or someone I could not see yet another melancholic smile. I don't believe in coincidence, you whispered, and then rushed to ask if I always went out of my way to satisfy other people's needs. Not always, I replied. You asked whether I'd like to walk with you for a while. I did. Besides, that was what I set out to do in the first place anyway. But I didn't say the latter part. Instead, your wish is my command, madam, I said and smiled. A little laugh escaped your lips and for an instant the grey clouds of sorrow seemed to abandon your tear-washed face…
Excerpt.
The image was taken from here. 

The Love of the Poet by Maria Polydouri

You saw me in your path, oh Poet.I was the first flower of April.The thirst of the love that seekskept aflame your thoughts and lips.
I was the first flower. My fountainof reflections was locked, my heartonly, innocent and adored, could talkwhen that first gaze you've sent my way.
In time, your lust for me you daredget close to admit. Alas,we were the children of our epoch. Our heart
would love with a passion that soughtto take, we felt that in a hideous wayand our gazes have drifted apart.
The image taken from here. 

Mademoiselle Fantine by Ana Zumani

After dinner.The man is sitting in a low armchair and smoking a cigar.The young woman is sitting next to him, wearing a black silk dress. A lace made of tulle embroidered with white pearls adorns her tall neck.All of a sudden she places her hand over his, as if flattering him, as if pleading with him…
"What's wrong with you, doll?" wonders the man, "you've danced so much, laughed so much… what is the matter?"
Silence…
"Nannita?"
"Nothing… we are cumbersome creatures… the acrobats aren't… not to feel yourself… how great would that be…!"
"Does your head hurt, Nannita?"
"No… where has all the movement gone… the one which wherever it is, something beautiful is born? The swallows for example, the wildcats, the hurricanes. The Greeks used to run… the earth runs around the sun and itself… that's why everything is beautiful… the water runs, it flies… and if it doesn't fly it will become a fen… the wind runs, it flies… if it doesn't fly the clouds won't leave… but we are unwieldy.  Cantatrice grotesque. Ballerina."
He: "And Mademoiselle Fantine;… The great eccentric?"
She: "What is the nozzle? Movement! The maelstrom, Katrakis? Movement! Strange attractors. Event horizon… movement… Pavlova… how wonderful was that arrogant disposition of the joints…"
"Nannita…!"
She: "Mademoiselle Fantine… yes… she is movement… a movement that celebrates her own orgy… that explodes because of excessive speed… explosion… implosion… that beats herself… that shakes… who could self-sarcastically laugh herself to death. She's a gamin, a girl, a genius, a whirligig… something alive. Fantine will never grow old… the age of the cat cannot be guessed… to be like nature… how wonderful!... Fantine will never grow old… she is like running water, like crashing water… a waterfall… Fantine… yes!... I say, Yes!..."
He: "Fantine is an intoxicated majesty, a majesty that became arrogant and is now oscillating…"
She: "No! She is life… life like it should be… whatever living comes out from deep within contains its inebriation, its highs, its lows, its eccentricities, its craziness, its childishness, everything… but we have the "indispensable", that creeping "indispensable"… to everything!... I say, Yes…"
He: "Sweet, beloved, you are out of control, jubilant. Do you love Fantine that much?"
She: "Yes, I do. Are you jealous?"
He: "Almost…"
She: "I love myself in her. She's a side of my being that atrophies, withers… that cannot grow in this hard life. Sometimes I want to be something like a resounding laughter, something to kiss… something that has become insobriety… a doll that shakes her legs…"
She throws her head into her hands…
He: "What is your problem, Nannita?"
She: "Nothing… do you still love me?... say yes… say yes!... but I have no movement, I am not a whirligig…"
He: "Is jubilation not a movement of the soul, honey? Doesn't it spin you? And not only that. I'm dizzy myself… in what a wonderful way it is that you admire a ballerina grotesque!"
He kisses her hair, tenderly…
Translated from Greek by yours truly. My thanks to Ana Zumani for giving me the permission to publish it in this blog.
Image taken from here. 
 

The Walk of Life - Chapter 1

They say that the best things in life are always fast to come to an end. Sometimes they don't even get the chance to begin. So people say. And they are right. Absolutely. Since the best moments of their own lives, the few that they really enjoyed, came to an end that was abrupt but not unexpected not so long ago. An abrupt end designed by other people. Those others that for some unspecified reason always seem to know, or at least think they do, what's best for us, which person or life perfectly suits us. She doesn't exclude herself from the latter, or their victims in that matter. She played the blame game in the past. And she's been a victim of the rules of normality. She's been spineless, a puppet in their theater of fear, a soul who's been sacrificed on the altar of security, social or otherwise. She's angry with herself. She's in tears and she blames her weak soul for everything. I have lost him, she thinks and weeps; I have lost him because he was what I always asked for, what I eternally lusted after, a man of integrity, a real human being, so real in fact that he seemed fake.
Now she sits all alone in a loveless sofa and tries to enjoy in a half-hearted manner the remembrance of his existence there, right alongside her. She mourns his loss, while trying to deny it. She punishes herself by whipping it with guilt. And she dives into the shadows that now seem to mock their once common life and desperately seeks the thread that used to bind them, in a futile effort to try and make him come back to her.
But why would he? He left because she was not longer herself. He told her that: I'm leaving because you are not you anymore. She knows he was right. She knew it even back then. And yet she could not admit it. So, she let him go. She did nothing, not even the basic minimum, to stop him. Up to that day she loved him blindly, she trusted him completely, she loved him and she feared him. She was afraid of his power, of his authority over her, and of the way he could read her like an open book, how he could guess her thoughts and almost divine her secrets without even trying. He'd been able, from the very first moment they met, to read her eyes, or rather the thoughts hidden behind her gaze, and anticipate her every reaction to his words. It was scary. It was as if he entered her brain and treated it like a manuscript being written at that very instant. He saw it all. And he understood it all. Every time. Though she insisted that he was mistaken. Always. And that would make him smile, a half-ironic half-tender smile. Do you know how frightening it feels when someone invades your inner world and makes you feel as vulnerable as a little child without their mother? That's exactly how he made her feel, defenseless, as if in a castle that had no high walls and no gates whatsoever. He didn't do it on purpose, he'd say time again, but that gave her no comfort. I could always swim in the eyes of others, he explained, and that scared her no less.
Whenever anything remotely bad happened to her, and that occurred very often, she used to run and hide in his embrace, to exorcise her fears and feel better, to get over whatever it was that was bothering her. But her port was at the same time a place of disquiet because ever since he's entered her life she never felt alone, even in her own head. It was as if he was hiding behind her thoughts, sometimes their creator but most of the times their silent observer. Crazy, right? And that's exactly how she feels right now. She feels crazy for driving him away. But, she drove him away for making her crazy. And because she got tired of him. She got sick of the power he had over her, and his silent self-admiration. He was so proud of himself, the fool, she knew it, though he took care not to show it. But, alas, the worst things were that most of the times he was indeed right, and his courage to admit he was wrong when that was the case. Nevertheless, she couldn't take it anymore. His almost constant serenity enraged her. And so did his capability of guiding other people's thoughts and his merciless self-sarcasm. She got sick of everything about him. And all of it she now painfully misses.
She misses the special moments they spent together before the glass of their relationship cracked, his tender smile and understanding eyes, his leveling humor and the way in which on some beautiful summer nights, he would paint in her inner canvas a parallel, fairytale world. She even misses his flaws, since they also were an integral part of himself, and herself also.
And now he's gone. So close and yet so far. He took his backpack, his camera and a few books and rode his bike into the sunset. Or, to be precise, he boarded a ship with it and sailed to Crete. I'll leave but I'll never abandon you, he said instead of goodbye that sorrowful day. She lost him, but they had not lost touch, just as he promised. He's still there, right next to her, in a way. He's caressing her with his letters, full of memories as they are of their common past, and rich in descriptions of his new life in Chania, the city he'd always in an inexplicable way loved. She meets him in those letters but also in the pathways of her own reminiscences that once they come to life they tend to haunt her for days at a time. And then she encounters the shadows of his being in the streets of the graceless city she lives in, which she walks for long every night while listening to music and trying to avoid the voices of people, the sounds of vehicles and bars and night birds that mingle in a devastating cacophony of sorts. She meets him in a river of tears, and her hateful and miserable self. She meets and she hates him. She hates the fact that in his letters he doesn't sound miserable, and because he never proposes that they should bring their solitudes together, to become one again. She hates him because after all they've been through he seems to be completely calm, even serene,  while she's still struggling in the waves of the stormy sea that ended their time together. Why doesn't he just sit down and try to analyze things the way I do? she wonders. Why doesn't he apologize or offer an excuse? anyone will do. Right now she even hates these letters that arrive in infrequent intervals and which have turned her life into a waiting room, full of anger and pain. She hates him and she loves him. She now loves him more than she ever did when they were together. She loves the idea he's out there, somewhere. She loves him for all that she's given her and taken from her. She loves him and hates herself for that, as she feels like she's losing her mind. She's delirious.
Life itself seems delirious to her these days. She no longer likes anything. Nothing touches her. She lives in her memories, she feeds from them, and hopes for a tomorrow that she skillfully and full of rage has stopped from ever coming. She wants him to come back. That's the only thing she's certain that she needs. If he does they'll catch once again that shredded thread and glue it together, and it will work like magic; that thread on which they weaved nights of love and love-making and days of silence. Come to think of it, that thread was never cut, it just went into hibernation, but it still has a pulse, it comes to life every so and then through their story, which he's started narrating, piece by piece, moment by moment, in his letters. Perhaps that's his way of exorcising the demons.
With those letters she sweetly lets herself drift into sleep every night, and with them she bitterly awakes each morning, missing his warmth and his scent, but about that she tells no one. Who could she tell, anyway? She no longer has friends or even someone she can talk to. Truth is she never had friends, she only always had acquaintances and admirers, sweet-word whisperers and not listeners. It took her a long time to realize that. She was stupid that way. She believed in what people said. She never was able to see what was left unsaid. And now she's all alone. Betrayed by those she once thought of as friends; those that followed her with bright fake smiles on the way up, but left her with crooked grins when she started to fall. They fell in love with her image for a few fleeting moments. The image that made them look good, that made them feel valued. They loved her celebrity status, the wrapping that she never really craved, but which they convinced her that that was what she actually wanted. People, and their good intensions, what a travesty!
Nicolas, only he loved her deeply and truly, for what she was hiding behind her carefully selected words and her silences, in the big trunk of her soul. Yes, she was beautiful, she still is, but that never mattered to him. He saw the chocolate, he couldn't care less about the wrapping.
She'll never forgive herself for her many mistakes, the ones that have pushed her to go and lose what she considered most of all her own, she knows that well.
Now the only thing that she's left with is a chance at redemption. She must settle the score with her past if only to receive a glimmer of hope that she'll be able to walk the pathways of the future, invade the sacred space of tomorrow. And there seems to be only one way to do that; his. She will sit down, day in day out, and write down this story, their story. She feels that she lacks the means, the talent to do so, but she will anyway. She may not know much about how to tell a story, but she does know better than most how to feel. And their story is full of emotions. Joy and sadness. Ups and downs. Triumphs and… Never mind. She'll steal excerpts from his letters and wander aimlessly down memory lane to try and bring back to life an epoch, which seems as distant as eternity, that feels as close as her own breath.
Will she make it? She doesn't know. Besides that doesn't really matter, not to her. What matters most is to empty the well of yesterday and pour it onto the pages, to get rid of the bitter feelings that weigh on her and lighten her soul in order to rest, wishing to be reborn. What matters is him. And her.
I love you desperately, he once said to her, and he laughed. And she laughed. Then. Today she loves him desperately too and hopelessly on top of that. The wheels of fortune did their trick on her.
But, it's time for someone else to come in and introduce himself to the reader. The one that loved her more than anyone ever did. In his company we'll enter the time machine and travel back to their sweet yesterday, and its fairytale inception.
An excerpt from one of my own books which I'm now translating to English.
The image was taken from here.
 

Autumn Prayer by Maria Polydouri

When the silence over my garden will widely spread at night, rainya cloud in the sky it will paveon a black dome over it divine.
In the secret darkness the trees, the shrubbery, slowly the head will bowand they'll chant together reverentlytheir last prayer of sorrow.
Come and we for one last time our prayer will say. It will be heardour voice in the silence passionate,the dome will resound and break,
the cloud will weep, we along will cry,the chant of the trees will pursuein sadness our silent cryand the darkness will thicken like doom.
Not a star's a glimmer will shine,destiny's face we will not see,and while our hands it will bindour lips the prayer will speak.
Translated from Greek by yours truly.
Image taken from here.