I follow rivers

Did I write about tragedy in my last post? Please excuse me. In Greece we’ve moved away from tragedy, comedy or even farce. It’s the theatre of the absurd outright.

I’m not at all sure that “we’re still bold and beautiful in Greece” as our communist MP Liana Kanelli put it in the British Channel 4; in fact, I strongly doubt it. After four consecutive years of recession and waves of austerity and more austerity coming constantly our way, I think we feel rather disheartened and raged.

But Kanelli was right in that: Just because our MP suffers from paranoia, just because he is in total confusion, refusing to quit even after he has lost Parliament majority, it doesn’t mean that we, the people, go along. We also don’t go along with Europe’s all-purpose costume that its leaders are trying to wear on any country that finds itself in distress. Don’t they know that best-fit costumes are always tailor-made? Apparently not, but honestly they’ll kill us in the process of making us look smart enough for Europe’s mirrors.

Jesus! I should be preoccupying myself with Adele, who is cancelling all her concerts for the rest of the year because of a problem in her vocal cords. Thank God, I can still feel mesmerized by the opening scene in Lykke Li’s official video of “I follow rivers”, despite everything. I’ve always had an obsession with Northern countries, but I never thought I’d have such a strong urge to move to Lapland or perhaps Alaska to in fact stay there. Of course, there is a strong possibility that not even snow and ice are white enough and not even the almost-constant winter night is dark enough to cleanse the Greek paranoia away from one’s skin.

Beware of Greeks bearing referendums

At least three of the five continents, Europe holding the predominant role, have finally come to understand first hand the tragedy that the Greek people are living the last couple of years. Headed by a PM who just can't keep his word, we were first bedazzled spectators and then protagonists in our very own, home-made modern drama. Revisiting the genre, our PM continues to write one after another various scenes of “The annihilation of modern Greeks”, a play which still hasn't reached its climax, let alone its catharsis. Will there be a Deus ex machina? Scarcely. After all, it was a German that said it: “God is dead”.

So we live in a swirl of uncertainty. Every three or four months our PM or another prominent government official make it to the telly to assure people that there will be no more measures, only to belie themselves in less than a week. Meanwhile the standard of living is deteriorating fast. We are witnessing unimagined phenomena. There are people in Greece nowadays who are searching in the garbage for food, there are children who faint at school because they are starved, pregnant women queuing up for church meals, old folks who can't afford their medicine and houses where heating won't turn on at all this winter. Hospitals are closing down, followed by schools and universities.

And you know what? We could endure the situation, if only there was hope that things will normalise eventually. But there isn't. Either way (default or haircut) we have more to lose. And on top of everything, after our PM's intelligent choices, we will forever be ashamed to say we are Greek. I sincerely wish that no other country will have to see first hand how all this feels.

Look who's back

First, it was the translation of a book. Then, another project: the issue of a literary magazine. Both took up way too much of my scarce spare time – it was a time well spent, however. If I had the chance to do it all over again, I would, no matter if it took too many sacrifices; if I spent too many sleepless nights; if I had to put a lot of money from my pocket in times of hardship.

What brought me all the way through was my commitment. If a commitment is strong, it’s fuel enough. Mine was strong: it was the obligation I felt to a friend of mine who died from cancer last October. He was the editor of this literary magazine. I had to see thelast issue, featuring him, through. Now it’s done and I’m (hopefully) back to normal.

I thought I might migrate this blog to Opera, since most of my international friends are already there. But I’m fond of Blogger too. So, in the next couple of days I’ll run an evaluation and we’ll see what comes out. In the meantime, hello, friends, I’m back!

Farewell

Dear friends,

As time passes it is getting harder and harder for me to keep the English part of my blog. I will therefore have to stop it here. Thank you very much for reading it and commenting. Special thanks to Meow, ersi and James for their insightful inputs. It was my honour to receive them.

I wish everyone all the best,
C.

Not our fault

I had to write an article on Lacan for a Greek magazine recently. In the past couple of months that I’ve been reading all related literature, I was impressed by the way Lacan tried to solve the riddle of human psychology. At the root of every want/desire that we feel, he said, there is a primary want which can never be met: the want to re-connect with our mother, like when we were in her womb. Now, this primary want cannot be met, so it changes faces all the time (like with metonymy in language). But, alas: even if some individual wants are eventually met, we can never feel satisfied and fulfilled, as our primary want will never be satisfied…

Besides wants, there are fears too. Our utmost fears are those of pain and death. What has threatened our security, our individuality, our attempts to meet our wants in early childhood is destined to be our companion forever, changing faces all the time, just like our wants do.

Now, both scientists and esotericists agree that the personality of a human being, which is the sum-up of our reaction to what is happening in the present moment, in our endeavour to satisfy our desires and/or avert potential threats, is completed around the 7th year of age. This means that our childhood wants and fears are its key determinants: we shape our personality in just these few years. After that, we are like a CD player, playing the same CD over and over again. Overwriting is possible, but it takes huge amounts of conscious effort.

The catch in this whole mess is that there is really nothing we can do. It’s not our fault. Even under optimum conditions, a child will always find something to be dissatisfied with, to be let down, will undergo a traumatic experience or will feel threatened – if not by anything else, by the comparison of sizes alone (his/her little body compared to the adults’). And all these determine the quality and depth of the fixation: how fearful, how weak, how incapable of loving we will become. It’s just how it is. And it’s not our fault.

Happiness super market

I’ve been into the triptych “love-beauty-enlightenment” since I was 18. I’ve tried many methods, among which: the Emin Way, Reiki, SRT, channeling and divinations of sorts. I’ve read tons of New Age books about spirituality, enlightenment, immortality and so on and so on. I boasted that I knew things that others did not, thought of myself as something extraordinary and waited to be adored by all creation in return. Every day I uttered deliberations to bring prosperity, love and happiness my way. I believed in my co-creator powers. Thus, I engaged heavily in meditation and visualizations – and was very sharp, if not downright rude, if someone had the nerve to interrupt my important engagements. I thought I had become enlightened, you see, that in some sense I was in this world but not of it.

There is no safest way to the rosy clouds. When putting yourself in such a situation, you essentially put it at the center of the world. Everything and everybody else just orbits around you as if of secondary importance. In a way, you become your own sun and get blinded, as a consequence. It’s a little bit like holding a lantern. You allow yourself only a very limited view: your body and just a few inches around it. And then you become so absorbed in what you see that you are convinced there is nothing else. In reality, you are holding a lantern in broad daylight, somehow like the Hermit card in the Tarot pack.

I would have stayed in this trance forever, if it weren’t for a series of hard jolts that brought me back to my senses. They actually forced me to lift my head and look around. And what I saw just made me gasp. Life had eluded me all these years. I thought I was living it to the maximum, but what I was really living was a self-delusion. I had even come to the point of lifting my shoulders in apathy when learning about other people’s hardships: they brought it to themselves, I thought. They are paying for old or new sins; they have no idea how things work.

Well, it turned out that neither did I. I thought of life as a big happiness super market and of world as a place of infinite joy and pleasure. I clang to it like babies cling to their feeding bottle, shut reality out and felt free to criticize everyone and everything. Such a fool that I was! Life was passing me by all these years that I spent in meditation, in contemplation of “beauty and love”, in certitude that I was enlightened.

Well, the world holds many things that are plainly ugly. We humans are so imperfect as a species and so predictable that it is almost alarming. But it’s OK. Even if the world is both ugly and beautiful and me imperfect and transparent, it’s OK. I’m still alive. And, at least now, I have the chance to begin to understand humility…

Test your EQ!

I am going on vacation for a week, but I’ll leave you with a little test which is supposed to measure the EQ:

There is a woman and a man, who love each other but live on two different islands. The man shares his island with a savage. The woman seeks a way to get to the man’s island, because she loves him, and the only way she finds is to go by boat. There is only one boat available and the boatman tells her that he will take her to the other island, if she takes off all her clothes and goes on board naked. The woman is puzzled with the boatman’s request and goes to the wiseman of her island to ask him. The wiseman’s advice to her is: “Follow your heart”. After that, the woman decides to take off her clothes and go on board the boat naked, as the boatman requested. The boatman keeps his end of the agreement and takes her to her beloved’s island. When she arrives at the island, however, the first person she meets is the savage, who immediately rapes her. At that particular time, her beloved arrives and, seeing her with the savage, breaks up with her calling her a whore.

Who do you think is most responsible for this outcome?

You’ll have to wait for the answers until Monday 26 July. Stay well and have a good time till then!