lessisapossibility

So is this thing still alive?!

2011-03-03T22:10:00.002+02:00

Let's see...

Travel & Wyclef Jean

2008-10-12T02:26:00.002+03:00

"Why do people go on polar expeditions? There's nothing to see there, but something attracts you. It's hard to describe why you travel, you don't realise it until you're back home again, where you can profit from the memories for a long time. You've got a kind of inner store. When things aren't going well, you just go inside and get a glass of travel preserves for your soul, open it and fill up on it."
Till Lindemann (Rammstein)

---

Pretty good cover/live performance, and amazing acoustic performance of a great great song.

a card unsent

2008-08-21T09:49:00.000+03:00

loved

2008-07-30T11:14:00.000+03:00

and overloved.

fail gloriously part ii

2007-11-23T18:56:00.001+02:00

I had the idea that writing a blog would compensate for my homelife. It brought about some great distractions, sure, but in retrospect, I realize that the only purpose it really served was to throw present circumstances into such contrast that everything is black where I know there must be some light. I have to open the windows, somehow, sometime. I’m done here.

I think most readers of this blog who would like to keep in touch have my email. If not, I’ll put it in the comments upon request. Sorry for all the coming and going and changing names. I tried.

Steph, I hope you’ll continue the blog. It started as yours, and it’s still yours.

It’s been real.

fail gloriously

2007-11-22T10:01:00.000+02:00

Two things. First, I’ve been stopped increasingly often lately, on my way here and there, to help drivers parallel park their cars. I love it, almost as much as being stopped by someone asking for directions. I take it to mean I look something like a local, like I have some idea where I’m going and what I’m doing. I tend to fail when it comes to giving directions; I know my way around, but on foot, not in a car, and I don’t know the names of streets so well. Helping someone park, however, I’m brilliant: it reminds me of the days when I was first hearing Greek, and I thought everyone in this country was named either Ela or Opa. Ha.

Second, I just called the mil. It's that bad.

tough

2007-11-21T12:26:00.000+02:00

not liking anything

No stink bombs yesterday, but again it was a difficult class. I came out with my face burning red and my hands covered in black ink from the stupid white-board marker. I asked Maria if I had any marker on my face as well, and she said, no, but your hair is sticking up everywhere. I must have been a sight.

Earlier in the day, the plumber had come again, so buka and I couldn’t leave the house. It was one of those days when she doesn’t like anything, not me or my projects, or any of her toys, or even food. I thought she’d pass right out at naptime, if she was half as worn out by it all as I was, but she didn’t like that idea either. She fought it hard for half an hour or more, making noise, banging walls, even folding up her crib mattress into the corner in boredom and protest -- before she finally fell asleep on the cold bare plastic. I covered her up and we both got some rest.

post hoc ergo propter hoc?

2007-11-19T10:20:00.000+02:00

"The author feels that there is justification for considering the strabismus syndrome a psycho-physiological distortion, part hereditary and part environmental in genesis. He suggests it may be one of a variety of responses to emotional stress in the parent-child relationship. Evidence for this is presented in seven brief histories in which strabismus appeared during emotional upheaval. Convergent strabismus is conceptualized as taking objects to the mouth, while divergent strabismus is a denial or thrusting away. Much of the data presented suffers from post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc logic, but some of the cases convey important support for the major thesis."

[Israel Annals of Psychiatry. IX, 1971: Stress and Strabismus. Morris L. Beckwitt. Pp. 11-29]

Radio silence

2007-11-15T21:19:00.000+02:00

I'm the "500 channels and nothing to watch" kind of guy. I rarely turn on the TV any more. And as for the radio... let's say I'm somewhere between Radio Gaga and Radio KAOS. I usually find myself flipping in vain between Red, Jack & Rock (96.3, 96.6 and 96.9, very conveniently), hoping to come across some new tune, until I give up and push in one of my Sparks compilation CDs.

And yet, the radio's had its moments for me (the TV? Uhm... no). I remember listening to LedZep's Kashmir and Radiohead's Creep for the first time. I remember exactly where I was driving, and how in both cases I had to pull over.

A few weeks back I had another such moment. I was listening to one of the very few shows I actually knew the schedule of (not on any of the above stations, but just a slip of the dial off). Listening to a strangely familiar, soothing voice, and surprisingly agreeable words. Words not of major wisdom or enlightenment, but pleasantly meaningful. It was good company.

And one day the voice started reciting the translation of a poem; Philip Glass in the background performing a melody on the piano. And then the voice of Patti Smith, to sing the original song. It was a poem by Allen Ginsberg, called "On The Cremation of Chogyan Trungpa, Vidyadhara".

The same evening I found myself sending emails with subject "I am looking, quite desperately, for...", the body containing as many details as I could assemble from the web about the poem, the music, the performance. Some googling later, I came across Mr Lynch, who was kind enough to send me the piece.

A couple of days ago I found out the show was aborted. Abruptly.

I'll miss the voice, the words, and the sounds.

[Discretely dedicated to CM. But I'd rather not link right now]

returns of the day

2007-11-14T09:30:00.000+02:00

As a day, it wasn’t a good one. I got a happy birthday in the morning, but just that. I opened the birthday box from my parents, to find a bunch of junk I had abandoned (for a reason) in their basement. Well, I was happy to see the wooden cat my brother brought me from Japan many years ago, and I liked one of the two sweaters my mother picked out. I thought it would go well with the pants I had just gotten back from the seamstress, and therefore, one of the few pairs of pants I have that actually fit me. Except that the pants have disappeared. I’ve been cleaning out closests lately and doing a lot of laundry. I would know if the pants were in either place or anywhere in between. I’ve looked all over. I vaguely remember washing the pants, but I don’t remember ironing them. Most likely scenario: they blew off the clothes line, and into oblivion.

To stop myself wasting more time obsessing about the pants, I took the buka out to the swings, where the other mothers were loud and annoying and throwing their cigarrette butts down on the ground all around the swings, some still smoldering. I was disgusted. I thought, should I say something, or leave? I left.

I went to buy birthday cookies to take to work. I got some extras for home -- for the babysitter, really, since she had brought sweets for us when she had her birthday last week. The husband started to eat one and noticed something dark on it. Whereas I would have just left it alone, especially on somebody’s birthday, he went off to get a magnifying glass -- to discover, sure enough, that the “something dark” was a leg, most likely a cockroach leg, baked right into the soft golden surface. He demanded that I take the cookies back. He made a big deal of it, refusing to throw the offending cookie away. I said we probably eat crap like that all the time, just forget it. I’m not taking them back and I’m not getting into a fight on my birthday. I was disgusted. By all of it. Again.

I left the cookies on the counter for the babysitter, and I took the other box to work, where I got lots of kisses and happy birthdays. The cookies were consumed without incident. The incident took place later, when I entered the worst class in the world. I dread facing this particular group of students every Tuesday, but this week, they must have decided to assign new meaning to their designation, since it was my birthday and all: they set off a stink bomb.

I got home, 10 o’clock at night. There was a present waiting for me, and a cake. I had had my doubts. I didn’t understand the suspense, why he would make me think all day that my birthday would remain unacknowledged and then “celebrate” it at a time when I would have the least time to enjoy it. (I go to bed by 10:30.) It’s okay. I made my wish, for something forgettable and vague.

I don’t care about birthdays. I have nothing else to wish for.

Except my pants.

easy

2007-11-12T10:11:00.000+02:00

adventure buka

Buka had another doctor’s appointment today. She usually takes one look at the doctor and bursts into tears. Today, not a peep, not a whimper, not a tear. There was a wrinkled brow when the needle went in, but seriously, she didn’t cry. For her part, the doctor has never been one to remark upon the buka’s robust development or beauty. She sees cute and smart and crazy-haired babies all the time. But today she couldn’t contain herself. She said she’s never seen a baby the buka’s age take a needle and not cry. It’s a sign of security, she said. Maturity. A strange word to use for a baby.

I have what they call “an easy baby.” My mom says I’m so lucky and so clueless, having had no experience with any other kind of baby. But I know what I’ve got. And after all I’ve been through, I know how lucky I am.

Composition

2007-11-05T21:01:00.000+02:00

Was visiting my parents the other day, and Artemis was intrigued by the little decorative ornaments on one of my mom's many coffee tables. She was particularly taken by this set of glass pomegranates.

After glancing at them for a while, she rushed into the kitchen and came back to add something on the table that she probably thought would make the composition stronger and more balanced.

Who am I to judge...

3

2007-11-02T20:12:00.000+02:00

1, 2...

3!

dog-matism, a rare breed of

2007-11-01T06:58:00.000+02:00

A very nice dog lives in the shortcut on the way to my house. A very nice woman, I recently found out, feeds the dog. I thought the dog belonged to the people living in the hovel alongside there. He’s obviously looked after, and quite the people dog. He’s super tail-wagging friendly, with passersby large and small. And cats.

The woman said the dog was not hers or theirs, but, to my surprise, a stray. She lives on the other side of the neighborhood, but she stops by to bring him food every morning. She’s made several attempts to take him home with her, but the dog is strangely unwilling… to stray.

Sometimes she cooks for him. The hovel-dwellers aren’t crazy about it.

But I am. I’m aware now of what a Greek mentality I’ve had to adopt just to walk through that shortcut on a regular basis. I no longer need a handwritten sign on a shoebox top or a cardboard box to tell me what it means to be civilized.

body object

2007-10-26T10:21:00.000+03:00

The buka got a test shot for tuberculosis. She was bothered less by the needle than by the silly green “teddy bear” that just won’t rub off. She’s as hardy as a Harley girl, but not ready for a tattoo. Speaking of rubbing things (sorry), here’s a bit of entertainment from the stack of papers I had to mark yesterday. A 16-year-old boy wrote: Usually I like in my free time to go to my bed and stroking my dog.

Don't we all? A+.

begotten, not made

2007-10-24T10:10:00.000+03:00

image by hfrost

My friend is holding as steadfast as ever to her clerical ambitions, but she’s no dummy. She doesn’t waste her time. Like you or me or anybody else, she inhabits the world of the flesh. I didn’t mention before that her son was adopted. It wasn’t relevant then, and it’s only relevant now because there was talk of a second child, a girl. An infant. A Godsend for her because her son was adopted at an advanced age, as adoptions go; there were lots of years of being screwed up in innumerable and immeasurable ways that she undertook to resolve. It remains a demanding enterprise, to say the least; rewards for her efforts, when they come, are modest. Who in her situation wouldn’t want to start from scratch and watch a child’s full potential unfold? A child of her own, with a name she picked out, raised in an environment within her control. Other parents take these things for granted.

The adoption fell through. And she fell apart. She really wanted that baby. The amazing part is this: she fully expected to nurse. So not only is she grieving the loss of the baby, but also, like so many mothers, the inability to nurse. As the due date neared and the stress mounted, she tried one doctor after another: they all put her off with excuses, delays. She made a list of things to pray for. The first -- before the resolution of legal matters (which ultimately gave rise to irreparable disagreements), even before the safe and healthy birth of the child itself -- was spontateous lactation, without the intervention of doctors or drugs. Call it a miracle, but it could have happened.

faith

2007-10-23T12:41:00.001+03:00

A technician came to install something. He did it all wrong. Another technician came the next day to fix it. He fixed it in some respects and made it worse in others. A lot of phone calls were made. The salesman came and offered to pay out of his own pocket for whatever else needed to be bought to make it operable. So many patches, each one uglier and more visible. The thing is, once your faith in a company is gone, it’s usually gone for good. The president agreed to take the whole thing back, repair the damage, and refund the money. I’m waiting again for the technicians to come. They didn’t come on time when we were paying customers. I know they won’t come on time now.

Everything is so hard here, I told my fellow expat friend. It’s not about being “here,” she said.

(Faith.)

The same rainbow appeared to me twice this morning, once in the sky and once in my email.

at least there's one

2007-10-22T10:03:00.000+03:00

neighbor that we like!

Micrograzing

2007-10-17T09:42:00.001+03:00

bukafruit

2007-10-15T09:22:00.000+03:00

resonate

2007-10-11T02:25:00.001+03:00

So I bought this doll. In Greece, there are all these “collections” you can buy one piece at a time, one week at a time, at the corner kiosks. In principle, I’m against this kind of collecting. In practice, I couldn’t resist Madame Bovary, the first in the series of Ladies of Literature, each porcelain beauty dressed in exquisitely detailed period attire. I won’t collect them all, but now that I have Emma Bovary, I need Jane Eyre, Constance Chatterley, and Anna Karenina, at the very least, to keep her company: each of them aloof and composed in their tiny tailored clothes, their pearls and purses, all delicacy and innocence, no hint of the regular passions, salacious affairs, and suicides within.

I know their stories well.

Bread pudding

2007-10-09T16:53:00.001+03:00

One of my favorite places to eat out in Baltimore, during my good old Hopkins days, was Donna's by the Museum of Modern Art.

Every single time, I would go through my lunch or dinner in anticipation of topping it with a bread pudding. I loved that pudding...

And now, almost 10 years after my last Donna's bread pudding, I found a recipe that looks right and doable, and I'm thinking of giving it a try.

home improvements

2007-10-08T10:35:00.000+03:00

The house seemed like a real find last year, but (I realize now) I would have said anything to put more than a rented roof over my soon to be born child’s head. Not that I regret buying this house. It cleaned up nicely. The guest room served its purpose.

There are still issues with the neighbors, front and back (separate lawsuits pending). Even the ones to the side, otherwise perfectly discreet and unassuming, wake up at 7:30 or 8 and start frying onions. And fish. The smell enters my office through the shaft. In the evenings, when I have my lessons, they fry steaks, causing my stomach to turn and my students’ stomachs to rumble. But this is life in the city. You get used to the sounds and smells of others, the constant traffic, and conversations through the wall. At least I hope you do.

It’s the house itself that worries me now. The plumbers came (or were supposed to come) every day for two weeks to repair the radiators, then the furnace guys followed. The pipes are old, but, with a little luck, still in working order. The windows and doors, also of a certain age, aren’t so charming anymore. They need to be replaced. A big chunk of the enamel came out of the bathtub, so the whole bathtub needs replacing too. We were already holding off on replacing the floors, and tearing out and replacing one whole wall, lined with closets, which apparently has some moisture issues, because everything in those closets is molded. (I can’t face it.) These are not small projects.

And there is one other thing.

It seems... the house... is haunted!

haiku

2007-10-04T10:05:00.000+03:00

The lovely Madcap initiated a haiku contest -- ongoing until tomorrow. She got some great responses. My submission was the following:

sunrise repeated
tummy tight with panic when
baby rustles, coos

I watched The Number 23 last night -- as much of it as I could. Thinking in numbers is no more esoteric (and no less) than thinking in words. Oof.

all a fiction

2007-10-02T07:58:00.000+03:00

Your Brain is Purple

Of all the brain types, yours is the most idealistic.
You tend to think wild, amazing thoughts. Your dreams and fantasies are intense.
Your thoughts are creative, inventive, and without boundaries.

You tend to spend a lot of time thinking of fictional people and places - or a very different life for yourself.

What Color Is Your Brain?

party poopers

2007-10-02T06:56:00.000+03:00

The buka was invited to her very first children’s party. It was Onion’s 4th birthday. But poor Onion. That naughty boy in the baseball cap blew out her candles before she ever had a chance. (There were more tears later when she spilled orange juice on her blouse, and this just after her mother had warned her father not to fill the cups all the way up.) A dog livened things up, as dogs will do.

The group consisted mostly of mothers from the European school, which Onion attends. All the mothers were English and/or English-speaking. But something very Greek happened: nobody introduced me. The buka is an excellent source of social cohesion, but the scene was chaotic: the mothers were too occupied with their own children to take note of mine. So we kept each other company. The buka ate cheese puffs and whatever she could find on the floor. I sipped vodka that I thought was Sprite. We found a crown, presumably abandoned by whichever bigger kid had made it. It was great entertainment for us both.

(woops)

Who?

2007-10-01T01:15:00.000+03:00

Who...

...woke...

...me...

...up?

Was it...

... YOU?!

Spot the differences

2007-09-28T14:32:00.001+03:00

(a) A public area for students to hang out in a University in Vienna.

(b) A public area for students to hang out in a University in Athens.

bonus

2007-09-21T07:15:00.000+03:00

The grandmother was in the kitchen, the smell of butter, something baking, wafting through the house. My student's mouth and mine, watering through the lesson. At the end, I made off with a handful. I held the warm tinfoil pack of little pies in my hand all the way home.

(This is not a baby blog.)

first word?

2007-09-19T14:17:00.000+03:00

We think the buka has said her first word. It’s not mama or dada or any of the usual stuff. Nope. The buka is so mixed up with languages, it would have to be the one word that her American mother, Greek father, and Bulgarian babysitter all have in common and use often, with equal enthusisam. She says a-oh. But you know what it is?

Bravo!

oh

2007-09-18T09:16:00.000+03:00

It was just a normal Monday afternoon... when I noticed an iguana on the balcony. Paschalis noticed it too, and engaged it in a hissing contest. I put an end to that -- with a pane of glass between them.

The babysitter said, don’t worry, you see those all the time, crawling the walls, one of them got in my window, and I was afraid to sleep, they’re harmless, though. (She talks like that.) That was a gecko, I said, indicating the size of a cute little mosquito-eating gecko with my forefinger and thumb. The iguana on the balcony is no native to Greece, I tried to explain, and anyway, the thing was longer than my arm. And κακάσχημος, I told her, which is a very strong word for ugly.

With the doors and windows closed and locked, I watched it. And it watched me. It went behind the ficus and watched me some more.

Then it went vertical.

It sat on the rail.

And then it started down the bougainvillea, presumably the same way it had come up. (But from where? It seemed less likely that it had escaped -- from a house in this neighborhood, inhabited mostly by the elderly? -- than that it had been abandoned.)

At which point, it was captured in a laundry basket and taken to the neighborhood pet store. The proprietor said an iguana like that would fetch 150 euros. I’ll give it to you for 50, said my intrepid co-captor. I’ve already got two, said the proprietor. I had visions of the thing spending the night in my house clawing at my laundry basket, and I quickly intervened. We’re not selling it, I made it clear to both of them, we just want to get rid of it. So the guy picked it up, declared it to have frozen (which explained its docility), and put it in a glowing orange tank with two other very fine members of its species. It seemed cozy in there. It was fine by me.

Clouds

2007-09-16T23:00:00.001+03:00

P and myself reflected on the shiny stern of a sailing boat we stopped to admire the other day. Clouds behind us.

village people

2007-09-10T10:33:00.001+03:00

Tagged

2007-09-09T18:44:00.000+03:00

I think Sissy meant to tag me, although she didn't really, so here goes:

1. I'm not reading anything. That's not extraordinary for me.

2. I'm watching Nip/tuck. I keep asking myself why.

3. I see my mom every weekend. We don't talk about TV. She makes the greatest pizza.

4. I enacted a hero of the 1821 Greek revolution against the Othoman Empire in 5th grade. I am blond and I have blue eyes. So much for casting...

5. I have some issues with spelling. Sissy explained it's all about schwas. (And I think baceball is super-cool)

6. As of next week I'll be the owner of a mosquito chopper! Can't wait!

7. I hate blogs, generally speaking.

8. I really wanted a girl too (this time).

I'm not tagging anyone either. Afta.

randomly ever after

2007-09-08T09:13:00.000+03:00

Mr. Bensah tagged me. There’s a first time for everything. I think it’s silly, it reminds me of those chain letters we used to send in school, but it’s nice to be included in something. I don’t know how random or interesting the following facts are, but I tried to think of a few things I wouldn’t ordinarily divulge. (I omit the “rules” of the tag, but they can be found on Bensah’s blog if desired.)

1. I’m reading The Seal Wife.

2. I’m watching Lost. I don’t understand a thing.

3. I call my mother every Sunday. She doesn’t understand it either.

4. I was student council president in the 5th grade. It was an elected office.

5. The same year, I was eliminated from the spelling bee in an early round. I spelled “baseball” with a c.

6. As of last week, I own half of a brand new car.

7. I’ve been following the lives of two online journal writers (Beth, who recently had a baby, and The Gus, from whom I stole the title of this post) for 10 years. That's a long time.

8. I really wanted a girl.

I’m not tagging anybody. I’m generally not a rule-breaker, but I don’t want to annoy the few e-friends I’ve got by giving them a silly assignment like this. Afta.

Long weekends

2007-09-05T22:42:00.000+03:00

That's what I've been doing this summer, in lieu of vacations.

I was invited to an American-style wedding reception thing. It was ok, but loaded with romantic, unbearably romantic, endlessly romantic speeches. I kind of hate speeches, romantic ones in particular. They make me feel embarrassed, like I am not supposed to be listening. I think these sorts of things should only concern one person, max two. Not an entire crowd going "awww..." at the mention of her adoring eyes, or his supportive shoulders, or whatever other part of their anatomy may do the trick. But hey, what can you do...

Anyway, as I said, it was ok. If they had done the "speak now or forever hold your silence" thing it would have been even better. Or maybe they did and I missed it while ordering another vodka tonic.

The highlight, though, was this guy:

This guy is actually the son of musician Jean-Michel Jarre, and grandson of also-musician Maurice Jarre! And he's a magician! I mean how much cooler can you get?! He was really nice...

I spent a big part of the next day observing Artemis' vampire teeth:

Then there was windsurfing, on Sunday. I applied everything I learnt from that DVD I borrowed:

"...a must-have DVD for anyone who dreams of carving smooth, consistent, planing jibes!", it says. Yes, I have dreamt of carving smooth, consistent, planing jibes. I still dream of it cause I'm not there yet, but I did great progress. Turns out step 11 was the one to watch out for.

And the weekend ended with the appearance of a strangely familiar face:

hypothetical

2007-09-05T10:29:00.000+03:00

A couple of years ago, something really great happened to me. It brought unfamiliar feelings into my life, for which I am and always will be grateful. I’m also grateful for the chance that came along consequent to that really great thing that happened to do something really really super great. Just because it foundered doesn’t mean it wasn’t great, or something to be grateful for. I still have the hope of that chance: that it’s is still out there somewhere with my name on it, the chance of something really really super great happening to me. The question is not what the odds are, we know what the odds are, but whether I’ll be in the right frame of mind by then, to take it.

girl

2007-09-02T09:06:00.000+03:00

I was walking downtown to meet a friend when I saw a girl wipe out on her bicycle, about 10 feet in front of me. She really bit the dust. She was riding on the sidewalk, attempting a tricky slalom between a tree and a metal bench. The front of her bike clipped the bench and she went flying -- straight over the handlebars and flat onto her face. Her face skidded on the pavement, her glasses went flying out into the street, and gloop -– I swallowed the gum I was chewing in one sicky fruit-flavored gulp. It was all very dramatic, but I’ll make a short story shorter here.

I asked if she was okay. No! she wailed, but she didn’t cry, not once. She had blood on her mouth. I thought maybe she’d chipped a tooth. She asked me to use my phone to take a picture of her mouth for her to see. I suggested instead that we use it to call her mother. “A nice lady gave me her phone,” she explained, calmly. She promised us both she’d go right home. She said she could make it.

I waited for her to get up and collect herself a little. She thanked me a lot. Finally, I walked on, shaking and shocked, like she was.

I’m not telling this story to play the hero. I just hope there’s some good karma in it, and if the buka ever crashes her bike, there will be some “nice lady” walking by, who will tell her to call her mother.

apple of my eye

2007-09-01T09:00:00.000+03:00

1 month....................6 months....................12 months

how to put it

2007-08-30T09:52:00.000+03:00

Some fires are still smoldering, but they’re far from here. It's hard to maintain a sense of proportion, when happiness is so directly a product of your environment.

wild fires

2007-08-26T11:59:00.000+03:00

AP photo

You’ve seen it on the news. Greece is ablaze. Fires are set in the countryside. The winds pick up. The flames find the villages, and people die. It happens every year. But this year, almost fifty people lost their lives in a day. There have been nearly three thousand fires since June. It’s sensational, for sure. A mother, her four children in arms, burned alive and buried in ash. The drama of wind. The intrigue of arson. Europe is rallying, sending reinforcements. Time is of the element. People are trapped, tourists among them. Others are being evacuated. Nuns.

It’s also sad.

It’s summer, and very hot. Imagine the air quality, and the cost to the environment generally --here in a dry country where “forests” are only so green to begin with. There are national elections in two weeks. There may be a political aspect to all this. I don’t vote here, but I love my adopted country. I hate to see it burn.

the easy rider

2007-08-21T09:09:00.000+03:00

Another cool thing about a holiday where everybody is on holiday is that the supermarkets are stocked with strange foods the tourists will like: German sausage-flavored potato chips, Cheddar cheese from Cheddar, product of America peanut butter!

(click for Nick)

holiday in august

2007-08-19T08:51:00.000+03:00

We went to a quiet village, on a bay, sheltered by mountains in the back, and a long, rocky ridge of peninsula in the front. It gets windy there -- sometimes, turning a corner, you get an unexpected faceful of sand -- but the sea is always calm. It’s a good place for swimming.

And for windmills.

We drove up the mountain past countless old abandoned windmills, one or more on every peak. We parked near one, and trudged around it, me with a buka on my hip, trying to keep my footing in my loopy sandals on all the loose rock. There were lovely stone walls all around us, chest high, striping the slopes; something had to be done with all that rock, to cultivate the land. Walls were a good enough idea, windmills even better. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an old woman appeared. She was working on a bag of something. I struck up a conversation, starting with the wind. Her hat had a helpful strap under her chin. The buka’s did not.

She offered us some eggs. It was so windy up there, I hadn’t smelled the henhouse, or heard the sounds of any animals. I could barely hear her. The eggs she produced were huge and fresh -- and filthy. I asked her for a plastic bag. I don’t have a bag, she said, but I can wash them. So she dunked them in a bucket of water and handed them back, still filthy, still huge, still fresh. I wonder if she lived there, if she had running water at all.

Is that your only child? she asked. Yes, I said, my one and only. It’s a point of pride for me. That’s okay, she said, apparently not as satisfied with the buka as I am, you’ll have another.

Barracuda(ki)

2007-08-14T17:11:00.000+03:00

Devoted apprentice, AND extremely talented swimmer!

[click]

The door

2007-08-11T15:03:00.000+03:00

At some point I decided I had enough of kids jumping over fences. So it was time to build a door.

I got the wood and constructed the door, but that was the easy part. My devoted apprentice P decided to help out by cutting a cardboard box into pieces with a saw, while I was deciding the best place for the door. He was about as much help as any other time.

Demolishing the fence took some skill and most importantly some power tools that a friend lent me. The result wasn't as bad as I had feared.

But by the end, my hands brought different memories to mind. Still, the worst was behind me.

The result was acceptable. "Snap!", and then on to...

... some local landscaping...

... some annoying effort to get the tiles right...

...and the final artistic touches. Voila'!

propagation

2007-08-10T07:36:00.000+03:00

The baby had two babies. Aftakia!

Masks

2007-08-09T01:02:00.001+03:00

P always had a thing about masks...

... but this is too much!

renaissance

2007-08-07T09:46:00.000+03:00

It was time for sissoula to clean up her act. Thus the new name -- ha ha. It’s been a long summer in some respects, a flash in the pan in others. I’ve worn my swimming suit only once, the buka twice. She cuts a stunning figure in her sexy Nemo one-piece. My parents came in May. They left. My friends came in June. Then they left. It was July, and I taught a little bit, even having lost my nerd. Now it’s August, and I stay up all night thinking about September: a real job, maybe tickets, a toddler.

Rats...

2007-06-10T09:49:00.000+03:00

Faster

2007-06-06T01:13:00.001+03:00

I hate purity
Hate goodness
I don't want virtue to exist anywhere
I want everyone corrupt

I am an architect, they call me a butcher
I am a pioneer, they call me primitive
I am purity, they call me perverted
Holding you but I only miss these things when they leave

I am idiot drug hive, the virgin, the tattered and the torn
Life is for the cold made warm and they are just lizards
Self-disgust is self-obsession honey and I do as I please
A morality obedient, only to the cleansed repented

I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer
I spat out Plath and Pinter
I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes that learnt how to spell

The first time you see yourself naked you cry
Soft skin now acne, foul breath, so broken
He loves me truly this mute solitude I'm draining
I know I believe in nothing but it is my nothing

Sleep can't hide the thoughts splitting through my mind
Shadows aren't clean, false mirrors too many people awake
If you stand up like a nail then you will be knocked down
I've been too honest with myself I should have lied like everybody else

I am stronger than Mensa, Miller and Mailer
I spat out Plath and Pinter
I am all the things that you regret
A truth that washes that learnt how to spell, learnt to spell

So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything
So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything

-- Manic Street Preachers, The Holy Bible, 1994.

Me, on the left

2007-06-04T15:36:00.001+03:00

La Tristesse Durera

2007-05-30T23:18:00.000+03:00

Life has been unfaithful
And it all promised so so much
I am a relic
I am just a petrified cry
Wheeled out once a year, a cenotaph souvenir
The applause nails down my silence

La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh, to a sigh
La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh, to a sigh

I see liberals
I am just a fashion accessory
People send postcards
And they all hope I'm feeling well
I retreat into self-pity, it's so easy
Where they patronise my misery

La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh, to a sigh
La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh, to a sigh

La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh, to a sigh
La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh, to a sigh

I sold my medal
It paid a bill
It sells at market stalls
Parades Milan catwalks
Oh, the sadness will never go
Will never go away
Baby it's here to stay
La tristesse durera
Scream to a sigh, to a sigh

-- Manic Street Preachers, Gold Against the Soul, 1993

Spacemuse

2007-05-22T16:42:00.001+03:00

frankie has a baby

2007-05-14T10:36:00.000+03:00

and sissoula takes a leave of absence.

Origanum vulgare

2007-05-11T07:59:00.001+03:00

If I were to single out the one basic, pure, natural food ingredient I am most fond of, I think I would go with oregano.

revised version

2007-05-08T10:58:00.001+03:00

That last post… wasn’t what I intended it to be. All I meant to say was that I prefer to let my neighbors do the gardening. Here’s the view from the back (two points if you can spot the cat):

And from the front:

This very impressive garden is what my father calls a “truck garden” -- so profuse the goods have to be trucked out, and the water to nourish it trucked in.

It’s all so lovely, but lately, I’ve been going through a recurrent and very familiar “I can’t live in this country” phase. My work situation is a big disappointment, one I can’t fix til September. The buka’s fine (three teeth and counting) but her food is a lot of work. And she’s older now, and wigglier, and can’t sit still very long -- which means I can’t sit still very long either. But the hardest thing about having a baby, for me anyway, isn’t the food or the constant activity or even the crying or the diapers or the interrupted sleep. It’s always having to be “on,” to be funny and happy, to be at your best, and in the mood.

It can be hard to sustain.

And for all the times I complained about being alone, now I wish I had time alone. The only time I have to “rest” from the baby is, ironically, when I work. Teaching is also performing. It’s such a cliché to say I don’t know who I am anymore, but I don't. I just perform, and I get by.

I’m as good as I can be with the buka, and all the rest, I take out on other people. I say “excuse me” louder than necessary to the tourists poking along. I lost it in the supermarket yesterday when the clerk told the man behind me to get in front of me and the woman in front of me in the line. He only had three items, whereas I and the woman had already unloaded our full baskets on the conveyor belt. When it was my turn, I asked the clerk how that helped the situation, to make two people wait, in order for one person to get through faster. I don’t understand what you’re saying, she said, pushing all my buttons that hadn’t already been pushed.

The fact that I’m foreign isn’t the problem. I’m sensitive. It’s spring. Love is in the air.

nothing in common

2007-05-07T11:26:00.000+03:00

(click)

Wildflower

2007-04-28T12:27:00.000+03:00

A new sort of flower made its appearance in my garden.

We used to own this old funky sailing boat called a "WildFlower" (hence the big "W" on the sail). We'd take it out for little rides with friends and family, and most of the time we'd end up capsizing it and swimming all around it.

It's been practically abandoned for years now, and I decided to use its main sail to make a tent for shade in the garden.

A few drills and knots later... voila'!

P liked it!

My baby's taking me home

2007-04-24T01:32:00.000+03:00

It's one of those all or nothing deals. Either click and listen to all 5':41'' of it, or don't bother, it won't be worth it.

Sound quality not great, but still a masterpiece.

sniff good luck

2007-04-20T12:30:00.000+03:00

A gift with a message, taken to heart.

chompers

2007-04-18T09:50:00.000+03:00

I’ve been going through a rough patch, it’s true. I’m not shy about it. I just don’t want to make it any rougher.

(click)

The buka, of course, is the bright spot. She’s been eating solids for a month and a half now. We started with rice cereal in the afternoons. Then we added fruits in the morning and vegetables at lunch. Now she eats meat along with her veggies, leaving me, once again, the only vegetarian in the household -- which is really too bad, because, as I read yesterday in Harper’s, “vegetarians, a new study found, are more intelligent than normal people.”

I actually aspire to normal.

But back to the buka. She eats like the quintessential baby bird, her patient little mouth agape between bites. She eats and eats and eats, and cries when the bowl is empty. I think we all know the feeling. A round or two of (ridiculous) song and she’s over it.

Two weeks ago, we met Maria downtown for coffee. We found a nice seat in the sun. Maria smiled at the buka, the buka smiled back, and I smiled bigger than I’d ever smiled before, because -- the buka had teeth! Just like that, I saw two little chompers just breaking the skin. I loved the buka’s toothless smile so much, I wasn’t in a hurry for her to get teeth, and in fact, I wasn’t expecting them any time soon, having noticed none of the typical signs of teething. Those teeth really took me by surprise (Maria was less impressed), and I still look for them, the way I look for the buka herself when she’s sleeping soundly on quiet mornings.

Sometimes I think “oh no” when I hear her stirring, because that means my work is about to begin. But when I don’t hear her, I imagine the alternatives, so much worse, all of them.

She’s 7.5 months old.

Kiva

2007-04-16T10:23:00.000+03:00

Change the world one loan at a time - visit Kiva.org to find out how

---
Update: This still looks like a great idea. But there are a few things I'd like to dig into a little deeper. Specifically:
- At a quick glance, I am not sure exactly what control there is over the "field partners", who profit through an interest rate received from the people receiving the loans. How high is that interest rate? Are the procedures followed in case the people default on their loans lenient enough? The field partners should be compensated for their efforts, but they don't risk any capital after all...
- Though I wouldn't participate in such a scheme in order to make money, I would prefer that there was a (small) compensation for the people lending money, in the form of a very small interest rate probably. I like more the idea of this being a way of making a difference from "within the rules of the market", rather than simply a different way of offering charity through an organisation, which is what this is, in essence, since the loaners undertake a risk with no compensation for it (other than the obvious moral compensation of having helped poor people improve their businesses and lives).
- There might be other such efforts that I am not aware of. I only accidentally bumped into this.

Last night the dj...

2007-04-15T10:45:00.001+03:00

No, he didn't save my life or anything like that. But he was REALLY good. Jumping from OMD to the Dire Straits, back to Depeche Mode, from there into a greater tour of the 80s electropop, 90s dance scene, and even the odd Greek pop song, peculiarly the kind that almost doesn't sound greek. In the end there was about 6 of us jumping around like silly, and he kept us all there for an hour or two switching from one tune to the next without even leaving them on enough for us to shout "wow!". And not a single casualty.

It was one of those "for old times sake" parties (for me anyway), where you wonder if so and so will be there and if they will have changed as much as you have, and what that other guy's wife will look like etc... Well in the end H hadn't changed a bit, almost none of the others were there, and that other guy's wife was nothing like I expected!

For a while my only companion, except some random conversations about work and kids, was a bottle of baccardi. But then the good music kicked in, and with it some memories surfaced, the good kind, and before I knew it I was completely wasted.

And yes, Sissy, I'm drinking lots of water.

S&M

2007-04-13T16:53:00.001+03:00

I remembered this morning that story about the sadist and the masochist. The masochist would beg "please hit me, hurt me...", and the sadist would reply with a naughty smile... "nope!".

Confused? I know, me too...

But it's impressive how many different situations the morale of this little absurd episode can be applied to.

PS. This is all a little abstract... and I don't really get it either.

Bermuda

2007-04-10T16:15:00.001+03:00

There's this bird in my garden, that sounds exactly like my phone.

Extremely annoying...

I'll retreat

2007-03-29T16:40:00.001+03:00

"I'll retreat to my corner
when you get back in yours,

I'll retract all my statements
when you retract your claws,

But darling,
I don't,
wanna lose you.
Not tonight.

No, not tonight."

- "I don't want to lose you tonight", The Devastations, 2007

Yuri et. al.

2007-03-27T18:04:00.001+03:00

Pocket Symphony

2007-03-26T23:49:00.001+03:00

AIR didn't go with my idea after all, but they definitely produced another masterpiece.

Still an enormous fan...

With card output!

2007-03-26T00:09:00.000+03:00

Just back from 10 days in Berlin.

There is this weighing scale in the subway station near where I was staying. It's probably been there since before the war...

A fine piece of German engineering!

You stand on it, and stick a 10 cent coin in. Suddenly everything starts spinning and moving and shaking and rattling, producing a whirling, buzzing, mechanical sound, for about 10 seconds.

Then everything stops, and it spits out at you a little white piece of paper with the date and your weight minimalistically printed on it.

I just couldn't get enough of it...

PS. Please subtract 6Kg for my boots and raincoat and all the rest of my clothing.

complications

2007-03-18T08:25:00.000+02:00

Last week, I met with a lawyer. Things were serious. I got some advice and I was satisfied. For a minute. Just long enough to realize the advice I was really in need of wasn’t of a legal nature. Then I met with a doctor. Turns out, it’s not advice I need at all, it’s surgery.

Emil

2007-03-15T14:01:00.000+02:00

I came across some old pictures the other day, while sorting through some folders full of university lecture notes (which I ended up throwing all away). Most of them were family pictures spanning around 35 years, the kind that mean so much to you, but when you show them to someone else their reaction is likely to be a fake-polite "ah, that's cute...". (Or sometimes nothing).

Anyway, among those, there were some pictures of Emil the Sterling. I found him and his sibling in a sailing club I used to frequent (and race some J's). I took them to my place (well, it was not really mine, I had a German flatmate, but he deserves at least one entire post of his own, if not more), but the other guy didn't make it through the first night, so I was left with Emil in my care.

I used an old cardboard box to make his new nest, two lamps to provide heat, and I would come back from my lab every 3 hours to give him water and feed him.

After 3 weeks I decided that he needed more professional care, so I took him to the Chesapeake Wildlife Sanctuary, where they told me that apart from some dehydration (ok, you try making a 3 week old bird drink enough water, and then tell me about it), he was just fine.

Parting with Emil was a lot harder than I expected. Embarrassingly so.

About a month later I received a "certificate" from the sanctuary, telling me the date and location where they released Emil back to the wild. I remember feeling a lot more proud than I really deserved to.

Sparks

2007-03-13T09:43:00.000+02:00

Perfume, Hello Young Lovers, 2006(?).

How cool is this... Disturbingly cool.

No ridicule here!

2007-03-11T21:55:00.001+02:00

I was watching that great TV show Top Gear the other day (first time I switched on the TV in months, I swear), and they had invited a certain Justin Hawkins, former lead-man of The Darkness to participate in their Celebrity Laps thing.

I had never heard of either Justin or The Darkness, but they played a little bit of one of his videos, which I thought was quite cool (in a post-glitter-glam-hard-rock sort of way...):

A couple of google searches later I found out this guy is most likely to participate in that ridiculous Eurovision song contest thing for England, and as I was about to completely loose respect, I read this statement of his:

"I don't anticipate gleaning any respect or anything. What on earth could I possibly hope to achieve by being the object of ridicule for millions of people? Everything I do is almost trying to hammer home the point that I don't care."

So he's on our blog, falsetto and all!

Mom's back

2007-03-09T12:50:00.001+02:00

(again)

if she was drugged

2007-03-07T11:55:00.000+02:00

If she was drugged
or relieved and the baby whisked away, still
she gave this child every intricate bone of her feet,
the hollow vertebrae, tiny liver,
lungs that fill with air for the first time
and begin, without a lesson,
bringing this world in and releasing it.

From “The Human Line,” by Ellen Bass

The buka is rolling, falling, almost crawling. And so is her mother.

From the garden

2007-03-04T10:05:00.000+02:00

Exactly one year ago, almost to the day, the relatives of this little guy showed their face in the garden.

Same dedication.

P in a box

2007-03-03T22:48:00.000+02:00

Falafel

2007-03-02T17:57:00.001+02:00

[Market in Lebanon - not my photo]

I wish I had one now...

letter to the editor

2007-03-01T09:17:00.000+02:00

Dear Steph,

Thanks for February. We did it, didn’t we? We updated every single day. It wasn’t an original idea (the blog convention is to update daily in November), but I had my reasons for proposing it. Whether it was my turn to post or yours, every day I had sth to look forward to, a communication between us and whoever else wanted to share it. February is the kind of month that can pass quickly, without much to notice or remember, just one rainy day after the other. This time, I felt an obligation to take notes, to pay attention to detail, to be conscious of what was happening, and to make sure I had sth to say, even if I didn’t end up saying it on the blog. I’m glad that happened.

We ended up with some fluff, but also some really great posts (your tennis post is one of my all-time favs) that might not have happened if we hadn’t been pushing ourselves. I’m not saying that all the cute stuff is fluff; it’s part of our lives like anything else. As my friend LJ used to say, nothing is wasted. A little joie de vivre to offset the rain is never a bad thing.

So here’s to March, and whatever comes next.

Yours,
Sissy

Pirate Talk

2007-02-28T12:33:00.000+02:00

[The ugly dirty pirates]

Last night I saw The Pirates of the Caribbean - Dead Man's Chest. It was good (I'm a Johnny Depp fan). But what I found particularly hilarious was some of the dialogue taking place between the ugly, dirty, yet somehow linguistically oriented pirates:

[The premiere...]

Pirate: Let's get away from this island and head out to open sea.
Captain: Yes to the first. Yes to the second, but only insofar as we keep to the shallows.
Pirate: That seems a bit contradictory, Captain.
Captain: I have faith in your reconciliatory navigational skills. Now, where is that monkey? I want to shoot something.

Captain: Mr. Gibbs.
Pirate: Captain.
Captain: We have a need to travel upriver.
Pirate: By need, do you mean a trifling need? Fleeting? As in, say, a passing fancy?
Captain: No, a resolute and unyielding need.

Pirate 1: And it is what lay inside the chest you seek, don't it?
Pirate 2: What is inside? Gold? Jewels? Unclaimed properties
of a valuable nature? Nothing bad, I hope?...

Pirate 1: A man of the sea. A great sailor, until he run afoul of that
which vex all men.
Pirate 2: What vexes all men?
Pirate 1: What indeed?
Pirate 2: The sea? Sums? The dichotomy of good and evil?... A woman?
Pirate 1: A woman.... He fell in love.

Pirate 1: What exactly did he put into the chest?
Pirate 2: Him heart.
Pirate 1: Literally or figuratively?

Pirate 1 (in boat): You're pulling too fast.
Pirate 2: You're pulling too slow.
Pirate 1: We don't want the kraken to catch us.
Pirate 2: I'm saving me strength for when it comes.
Pirate 2: And I don't think it's "Kracken" anyways. I always heard it said "Krayken".
Pirate 1: With a long "a"?
Pirate 2: Uh-huh.
Pirate 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, no. "Krocken" is how it's pronounced in Scandinavian, and "Kracken" is closer to that.
Pirate 2: We ain't Scandinavians, are we? "Krayken."
Pirate 1: It's a mythological creature. I can calls it what I wants.

Pirate 1: How'd this go all screwy?
Pirate 2: Well, each wants the chest for hisself. Mr. Norrington, I think, is trying to regain a bit of honor, old Jack's looking to trade it, save his own skin, then Turner, there, I think he's trying
to settle some unresolved business 'twixt him and his twice-cursed pirate father. (belches)
Pirate 1: Sad...

Captain: My intuitive sense of the female creature informs me that you are troubled.
Lady: I just thought I'd be married by now.
Captain: I'm so ready to be married.

Captain: We are very much alike, you and I. I and you. Us.
Lady: Oh. Except for a sense of honor and decency and a moral center. And personal hygiene.
Captain: Trifles...

agitprop

2007-02-27T09:53:00.001+02:00

The blue elephant on the buka's diapers play with wind-up cars and airplanes:

And even more traditional toys like blocks, dolls, trains, and...

cell phones!

Kindergarten

2007-02-26T13:29:00.001+02:00

[Some random Japanese kindergarten that P is unlikely to end up in]

P has hoovered all the floors, cleaned all the windows, wiped all the dishes, loaded and unloaded the washing machine more times than he cares to, raced through the living room on his motorbike all he can bother to, swinged in his swing and jumped on his trampoline until the swing and the trampoline said oof... and so I think it's time for him to move to bigger things in his life.

Enter kindergarten! (but not yet...)

Today I visited the last kindergarten on the list. I've heard the same speech six or seven times, about how children must be treated with respect like adults, how they must be encouraged to learn without pressuring them, making sure they enjoy the process, and of course how much this will cost me (a pretty penny, in a nutshell).

But what stroke me with every visit and tour I was given, is the size of everything. Little tables, little chairs, little toilets, little lunches, and of course... little people.

Little is important.

so far so good

2007-02-25T09:52:00.000+02:00

with the new woman. She’s got a spunk I admire. She told me she’d spent 30 years arguing with her husband and working for nothing in a factory. Her children were grown, and her grandchildren were growing. She decided to do something for herself for a change. She set off on her own from her home (in a neighboring Balkan country) and landed in Anogeia, where she spent a year working for some kind of syndicate that recruited foreign workers. She picked up enough Greek, with the strong Cretan accent they have in Anogeia, to leave the syndicate and find domestic work, for the mother of a government minister, as it turned out. She goes back to her home in the neighboring Balkan country every once in a while, to see her children and grandchildren and presumbaly the husband she can’t be bothered to divorce, but she’s got a boyfriend here, and an apartment with a girlfriend. She seems happy.

I try to judge her on her own merits and not in comparison with her predecessor, but either way, I think she’s great. She’s nothing but smiles and enthusiasm with the buka, who returns the smiles and enthusiasm in equal measure. And with me, she’s all compliments and comraderie. She tells me I look nice when I’m dressed for work; she says I have a nice, gentle way with the buka. She makes an effort to ask how I am, to get to know me. But she’s here for a job. I’m cautious about getting too friendly too fast.

Closing time

2007-02-24T00:01:00.000+02:00

[Painting by Elizabeth Laishley]

Ah, we're drinking and we're dancing
And the band is really happening
And the Johnny Walker wisdom running high

And my very sweet companion
She's the angel of compassion
She's rubbing half the world against her thigh

And every drinker every dancer
Lifts a happy face to thank her
The fiddler fiddles something so sublime

All the women tear their blouses off
And the men they dance on the polka-dots
And it's partner found and it's partner lost
And it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops
It's closing time

Ah, we're lonely, we're romantic
And the cider's laced with acid
And the holy spirit's crying, where's the beef?

And the moon is swimming naked
And the summer night is fragrant
With a mighty expectation of relief

So we struggle and we stagger
Down the snakes and up the ladder
To the tower where the blessed hours chime

And I swear it happened just like this
A sigh, a cry, a hungry kiss
The gates of love they budged an inch
I can't say much has happened since
But closing time

And I loved you for your beauty
But that doesn't make a fool of me
You were in it for your beauty too

And I loved you for your body
There's a voice that sounds like God to me
Declaring, declaring,
declaring that your body's really you

And I loved you when our love was blessed
And I love you now there's nothing left
But sorrow and a sense of overtime

And I missed you since the place got wrecked
And I just don't care what happens next,
Looks like freedom but it feels like death
It's something in between, I guess
Its closing time

Yeah, I missed you since our place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
And it looks like freedom but it feels like death
It's something in between, I guess
Its closing time

Yeah, we're drinking and we're dancing
But there's nothing really happening
And the place is dead as heaven on a Saturday night

And my very close companion
Gets me fumbling gets me laughing
She's a hundred but she's wearing something tight

And I lift my glass to the awful truth
Which you can't reveal to the ears of youth
Except to say it isn't worth a dime

And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
And it's once for the devil and it's once for Christ
But the boss don't like these dizzy heights
We're busted in the blinding lights
Of closing time

--- Leonard Cohen, The Future, 1997

grandma's letter

2007-02-23T09:30:00.000+02:00

That's Thelma in the middle, and Mildred on the right. 1983.

I wrote about my grandma’s dress. Coincidentally, less than a month ago, my grandma’s youngest sister, my great aunt Mildred, died. Her daughters have been going through her house, and turning up the usual collections of correspondence, photos, and keepsakes from the years, some of which they’ve “returned” to my parents. They found a great letter from Thelma to Mildred written from my grandparents’ weekend cabin in the mountains, where my granddad had a great time fishing and gardening, and my grandma went nuts with boredom and berry collecting.

click to read

I’d love to copy the whole thing out here -- it's so gossipy and spirited and fun -- but it’s also tedious. Very typical desperate housewife stuff, stuff I never thought I’d understand so well.

Undercover indeed

2007-02-22T01:20:00.000+02:00

P reading The Undercover Economist.

(one of my bathroom classics).

accidents happen

2007-02-21T09:12:00.000+02:00

The driver approached the T. He stopped at the stop sign and allowed a pedestrian to cross. He wanted to turn right, so he looked to his left. Visibility was blocked by two cars, both parked illegally on the corner, the second doubleparked alongside the first. The driver inched out, and the front corner of the car was clipped out of nowhere by an oncoming motorbike, traveling fast and very close to the righthand side of the road. The motorbike flipped, sending its rider to the ground, and at the same time, striking that pedestrian in the back, flattening him in the median.

An ambulance came within minutes. The police took their time. It looked bad. The motorbike guy had a broken ankle, possibly a concussion. The pedestrian said he was okay but was held in the hospital for six hours for tests. Neither the car nor its driver suffered a scratch, but charges were pending. He had the stop sign. Legally speaking, no matter the conditions, he was at fault.

He called his lawyer. If the injuries had been any worse, she told him, you would have been arrested. Things looked very bad.

Until.

It was discovered that the guy on the motorbike had been driving without a license. Not only that, but the bike was determined to be a full-size motorcycle, despite its deceptively small wheels that made it look like a scooter, which requires a special class of license. And not only that, but the driver happened to be a citizen of a neighboring Balkan country. Whether he has a residence permit or not, and whether he is in any way to blame or not, being involved in an accident without having a license constitutes automatic grounds for deportation. Considering his country of origin, this was a near certainty. His employer, the actual owner of the motorbike, asked the driver of the car to report to the police that he had been the one using it at the time of the accident, just so his insurance would cover the damage, he said. That’s preposterous, the driver of the car replied. He was already in trouble; he wasn’t about to lie to the police, especially about something that would open himself up to a world of new liability.

In the end, or so it seems, nothing happened or will: no report was made, no charges were filed. The ankle will heal, and the ordeal will be forgotten.

Catmomile

2007-02-20T10:27:00.000+02:00

clean monday

2007-02-19T09:09:00.000+02:00

Everybody loves lagana.

The almond trees are the first to bloom, wispy, white, and fragrant. The peach trees are next, I think, their blossoms faintly pink. It’s winter in Heraklion, here on the northern coast. In the village, in the south, spring is already on its way to summer. The sun is high and bright; the sky, cloudless, windless, and blue. Yesterday was the perfect day to visit, to take pictures, and to eat, since the fast is about to begin.

The buka was on her best behavior. She put all her sensitivities aside and let her grandmother, her great-grandmother, and all the little old ladies from the village fuss loudly over her, and do whatever old women do when they get around babies. It wasn’t so easy for me. “The first person who ever held you, the first person who ever fed you, that was me!” That was the mil, of course.

But the buka has her way. She showed them who comes first now.

The best moment was when one of the women hilariously confused the buka with her mother. “Look, she’s thinking about something,” observed the mil.

Her crony didn’t miss a beat: “Το γκόμενο.”

Extraordinary

2007-02-18T08:23:00.000+02:00

I just finished watching The Lives of Others , a quite amazing movie about the horrifying system of observation in the former East Germany, controlled by the "Stasi", a sophisticated, cunning, and thorough secret police.

And then I read some stuff about Extraordinary Rendition , something that is happening right now throughout Europe. In a nutshell, United States CIA agents roam through European countries, and when they see someone they would like to question, they kidnap them, fly them to some third world country, question and torture them for a few months, and then either release them around where they had found them, or dump them into Guantanamo.

According to Wikipedia:

Extraordinary rendition (which critics have dubbed torture by proxy) is an American extra-judicial procedure which involves the sending of untried criminal suspects, suspected terrorists or alleged supporters of groups which the US Government considers to be terrorist organizations, to countries other than the United States for imprisonment and interrogation. Critics have also called this practice "torture flights". Reportedly, in a number of cases (such as Khalid El-Masri and Maher Arar) the practice of "extraordinary rendition" has been applied to innocent civilians.

This is no joke. Have a look at:

The European Parliament resolution on the "alleged" use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners. (February 2007)

BBC News "Europe under 'rendition' cloud" story (February 2007)

Bush admitting to CIA secret prisons.

And many more sources therein.

I find it quite extraordinary that these things are still tolerated. I mean OK, the DDR was back then, and there was a big wall all around it. But the US? And now? So much for the land of freedom.

exercise, in futility

2007-02-17T07:44:00.000+02:00

It’s no fun (or so fun?) beating a dead horse. Painting by Nguyen Trung.

Toilet training

2007-02-16T12:29:00.000+02:00

I'm thrilled to present to you the Top 7 books that usually reside in my bathroom. Their purpose there is to accompany me in those private moments that I am sure we all appreciate and look forward to every day (usually). They have been selected wisely for the very specific purpose of massaging the brain waves into the shape required for the task at hand (oops!).

1. The mosaic book

This was given to me by my brother as a present. He's totally nuts, and so are all his presents. I have no interest in making a mosaic whatsoever, and never had. Still, flipping through these pages, filled with little colored bits and pieces, has proven very effectively hypnotising.

2. Traveler's guide to south Italy

No idea how that found its way in the bathroom. I was probably looking at something once, and it got trapped there. I take a look at it from time to time, mainly at the pictures of little harbours and fish markets and traditional Sicilian dresses. Very relaxing.

3. Oil painting guide

Now this is really interesting. All these different techniques for mixing colours and setting up your canvas and brush strokes and adding final touches are really stimulating.

4. The (new) lawn expert

This book turned out to be a bad choice. It filled me with stress about the lousy state of my small lawn. I would browse it forward and backward, looking at the descriptions of the damage each kind of worm or pest can do to a lawn and see which one most resembles mine. Then I'd read the recommended remedies and give up. After a while I refused to look at it any more.

5. The undercover economist

This is a gift from a friend. It's great! I don't know anything about economics, and I read a couple of paragraphs a time. It makes me feel happy that I can sort of understand it...

6. The Merck manual of medical information

This is a leftover from the pre-google era. Now I find any information I need online, but back then it was a really precious book to own. Of course I still don't have wireless coverage in the bathroom (or do I? gotta check...), and even if I did I wouldn't want to expose my laptop to all that humidity, so it's very appropriate. I read a couple of conditions and a time, and more often than not I end up thinking "hey, now wait a minute, I think I could have that too!" And I love all those little illustrations!

7. Small apartments

This appeals to the wanna-be architect inside me. I like to see all the clever little stylish solutions people have thought of. And I wonder how many people can really afford such hot-shot architects. And whether I could have thought of that first. The problem is that I could never live in any of those houses. It's not the size, it's just that... you feel like you don't wanna touch anything in there.

So that's my bathroom's contribution to my continuing, daily education.

the sleeping incident

2007-02-15T09:00:00.000+02:00

Obviously there’s been some tension between me and the woman. Everyone told me from the beginning to be patient with her, because nobody would do things exactly as I would do them, and the buka wouldn’t be the same with anyone else as she was with me. I understood all that. I was prepared for it.

When the buka cried, I told the woman, let her cry. She’ll calm herself down when she’s ready. Don’t overwhelm her with rattly toys or too much attention. She might need to close her eyes or doze off a little. Let her do that, but in general, I don’t want her sleeping in the afternoon. She has to get tired so she can sleep well at night.

The woman had her own ideas, one of which apparently included putting the buka in her stroller, wheeling her to the bedroom in the furthest corner of the house, and leaving her alone there in the dark, with the door closed, and the cat inside. This happened one day last week. She had parked the stroller directly beside the bed where Paschalis was sleeping. It wouldn’t have required much imagination or effort on his part to jump right in with the buka. She’s nice and warm and great for snuggling. The cat is no dummy. The woman, meanwhile, snuggled herself down into the couch, in the living room, on the opposite side of the house, lights off, blanket on, TV softly flickering with afternoon talk shows.

When I finished my lesson, this is how I found things: the woman was fast asleep on the couch (I tried talking to her, no reaction) and the buka was wide awake in the stroller, alone (thank you very much, cat). I took the buka with me and just let the woman wake up on her own, to see how she would handle things.

So you’ve got the baby? she asked, half an hour later. Well, somebody has to, I said. I told her it was really dangerous to leave the buka alone where nobody could hear her, especially with the cat there. Oh, now I have to watch the cat? she said. No, I said, your job is to watch the BABY and not sleep on the couch. It was the first time, she assured me. Maybe it was, and everybody makes mistakes. But what she did with the baby was a serious mistake in judgment, and what she did with herself -- snuggle down in the couch and then get surprised when she falls asleep -- was just plain stupid. And after talking about all this for ten minutes or so, I told her, what made the biggest impression on me was that she didn’t even apologize.

Oh, a thousand sorries, she said. It was… what’s it called… a pity.

I couldn’t agree more. And a new woman starts this week.

Valentine this!

2007-02-14T00:03:00.000+02:00

I thought I'd post something mildly relevant to the occasion. You know, hearts and flowers and all that...

This is the scene from the Indiana Jones movie where the really scary guy (a decent Bollywood actor that passed away a couple of years ago, actually) rips out the poor irrelevant guy's (a less known but probably still alive Bollywood actor) heart, by simply pushing his hand into his ribcage. He pulls the heart out, holds it up, and the heart is still beating, and the scary guy is looking at it thinking "yummy!", and the poor guy is looking at it thinking "what the...?!", and I am looking at the cinema screen thinking "this is SO cool!".

I would have spent more time wondering how it's possible to simply push your hand inside another person's chest and pull their heart out while it's still beating, but then we got to that other scene where they are all sitting around the table eating monkey's brains straight from the skulls, and I forgot all about the heart.

Anyway...

While we are on the subject, here's a bit of wisdom that unfortunately came to me too late. Or possibly almost too late, but that's not for me to say.

A broken heart is a broken heart. You can't attack it with arguments and equations and (sometimes valid, sometimes stupid) points. You just don't do that. You have to be silent, respectful, humble. You have to pause and try to feel what it feels. Because there's nothing worse than being the owner of a broken heart, and if you don't see that, then you are on your way to becoming one as well. Provided of course that you are not one already.

I've been a big fool. But it's Valentine's day, so perhaps I can be forgiven...

grandma's dress

2007-02-13T09:53:00.000+02:00

(Tuesday the 13th)

My aunt’s a little nuts. Her nuttiness is usually restricted to well-meaning but ridiculously impractical gifts: a cheapo disposable camera for a person who’s really into photography, a stack of heavy porcelain cat plates for a person who lives abroad and has to travel light. She bought a light, in fact, for the buka, without considering that, unless it’s plugged into a firetrap adapter, it can’t be used here in Greece.

She outdid herself this time. First of all, she sent me a box back in October, an “early birthday” box that was supposed to arrive in plenty of time for my birthday in November. The box arrived last week. She had sent it “economy post,” whatever that means, and had been holding a grudge against me for all these months, because, as she told my dad, our hapless go-between, I had never sent her a thank-you note. I didn’t even know about the package, til my dad asked if I had written the darn note. Of course not.

Well, like I said, I got the box. In it was a tacky “birthstone” picture frame, a tacky “birthstone” pin, a fluffy mama chicken + baby chicken for the buka, and a bag of old and mildewed clothes that belonged to my grandma Thelma. “I’ve kept them twelve years -- since she died -- and I thought it was time to pass them on,” wrote my aunt. “P.S. Mother sewed her dress herself on that machine in the back bedroom.”

That’s nice, but what am I supposed to do with it? A dress like that has never been in fashion. It’s as big as a house and coming apart at the seams, besides the fact that, well, you don’t have to be very superstitious at all to feel superstitious about wearing a dead person’s clothes. “Don’t let the mil find out you’ve got that,” I was warned. I think I’m with the mil on this one.

P-Nuts

2007-02-12T23:09:00.000+02:00

Olympic Corn Flakes
We were on the train with P, and the announcement went "Next stop, Olympic Complex". But P thought they said Corn Flakes, instead of Complex. So he looked at me and said "Corn Flakes?!". He loves Corn Flakes... I said, no, they didn't say Corn Flakes, they said Complex! Of course he didn't believe me, and started demanding Corn Flakes louder and louder, until the whole train was laughing at us.

The backwards beggar*
Earlier we had walked past some person begging for money at the side of the street. I gave that person some change, and then I took time to explain to P how some people are in more need than others, and we should always try to help when we can, and one never knows when one might be in need of help, while he seemed to completely ignore me.

Now he decided to put to practice what I had taught him. He sat on the side of the street, extended his arm, put on a sad expression and started chanting "Take money, take money...".

* Thanks for the title, Sissy.

unsolicited

2007-02-11T09:03:00.000+02:00

The buka gets lots of attention wherever we go. Everybody has to hold her little hand or touch her little cheek. That really bothers some mothers. It doesn’t bother me. What does bother me is that all the attention she gets has to come with an equal measure of commentary for me.

It usually has to do with the buka being cold. For the record, I sincerely believe the buka has never been cold a day in her life. Look how red she is, said one lady, maybe she’s cold. She’s red because she’s hot, I answered, snuggling her up against my wool sweater in the frontpack baby carrier thing. There was no chance she’d be cold in there, and most of the time, we both come home in it sweating.

Her eyes are so bright! said the supermarket lady, whose daughter is roughly the same age as the buka. They’ll turn darker when you stop nursing. What does that have to do with it? I asked. They all have bright blue eyes while they’re nursing, she said. Okay.

She can’t see anything, but I love babies, said a man last week.

Her hands are small and HARD! And STICKY! says my friend’s three-year-old.

Even the pediatrician has given me an earful. I may not be Greek, she’s told me twice now, but the buka is, and she’s going to have trouble adjusting to life in Greece if I keep the house too quiet.

The real winners come from the woman. She doesn’t like the buka’s clothes; they’re either too much or not enough or too tight or too loose. She can’t understand, she tells me repeatedly, why I feed the buka before her bath, and not after. That’s not what I remember, she says, every single time. Her latest theory is that the buka cries because she can’t pee. What does that mean? I shouted, finally losing my patience. Are you saying she has a UTI?! The woman backed down a little, but she had to get the last word. It’s not the first time I’ve noticed it, she said.

A game of small balls

2007-02-10T12:54:00.000+02:00

[Bjorn Borg, 1978]

Around the time Borg was asleep on that plane next to all his rackets, my journey into the game of tennis was just starting. He was my first idol. It was either all that long hair, or his FILA T-shirts and shorts, I can't be sure. But definitely not his game, cause at that time I knew nothing of it.

The first lessons we did side by side with my brother, an old and extremely boring (and bored) teacher across us on the other side of the court. He'd throw balls at us, and we'd take turns catapulting them into oblivion, while he was busy chatting away with the equally old, boring (and bored) teacher from the adjacent court.

Things were going nowhere fast, until one day something happened that brought all the excitement and determination that was missing from our game. The teacher showed up with a big ham and cheese sandwich, which he placed on one of the two poles the net was attached to. He'd stop every now and then to take a bite and put it back there.

All of a sudden, with just a silent look, my brother and I knew what the game was all about: Hitting that sandwich off the pole! We'd take turns aiming at it, sometimes we'd even push each other out of the way to try again. Now that was a real exciting game!

Of course the sandwich was never hit. It would slowly disappear into our teacher's belly, bite after bite, lesson after lesson. The reason was obvious to both of us: He was a bad teacher...

That all ended when my dad, who sponsored our lessons and also served on the tennis club board (maybe he still does, I don't know), at some point decided it was in the best interest of everyone if we followed alternative athletic endeavours (which led my brother into judo or karate or something of the sort, and myself to basketball and a series of embarrassing nicknames, but that's another post).

Around my Hopkins years I decided to take it up again. This time I was paying for my own lessons, and I also had a couple of people to really play with, and it was different. Within few years I reached a level I was relatively satisfied with. And then I gave it all up again.

Recently I decided to give it another go. This time the teacher is younger than me, and I'm slower than him. He said I have "strong bases", and we can make progress fast. He insists I should play lower and faster, while I run and pant out of breath up and down the court thinking "yeah, right...", and then bend over my racket, one hand between it and my chest, the other raised in a faint "sorry, man..." gesture while the balls zoom left and right of me and smash onto the chickenwire surrounding the court behind me.

But I managed to surprise him with a couple of slick, topspin shots, and even had a chance to see his look of surprise. He even applauded some between his left hand and his racket. One almost hit him on the... well, balls actually, causing me to shout "Ooops!!!", but he was cool about it.

I'm not the next Bjorn Borg, for sure. But you should see my FILA shirts!

a doll’s house

2007-02-09T09:19:00.000+02:00

I bought a toy for the buka. In the bag from the toyshop, I found an advertisement for other toys -- classic, well-made wooden barns, trainyards, and dollhouses. In all the sets, the “families” consist of a father and a mother, and a boy and a girl. White-haired, well-dressed grandparents sold separately.

My heart goes to my throat when I see little kids, just toddling along, holding their mom’s hand on one side, and their dad’s on the other.

There are whole imagined scenarios in my head about what it must be like to watch a child in wonder and delight, and to feel all those feelings wordlessly multiplied by sharing the experience with somebody else whose feelings are exactly the same.

I chose a lonely life when I moved to Greece, or sometime before. But it’s not what I wanted for the buka.

Basement

2007-02-08T02:04:00.000+02:00

She said she couldn't see his eyes, because he was asleep, in a big room in the basement. And she really just wanted to see his eyes.

Since then, the basement has become a little warmer. I almost don't need to wear my funny socks any more...