Before the end

Just before the end of the year, I'm trying to lay my thoughts in order.

A lot has been said and written after the murder of a 15-year old in Greece from the police 10 days ago.
This sparkled a unique row of events that involved extensive rioting in Athens and other major Greek cities.

These riots have probably been the worst that Greece has seen in the last 30 years - perhaps since 1974, when the junda was overturned by protests in the Polytechneion in Athens, a night that led to numerous dead people and years of persecution of the students. Because of these current riots there has been an impressive shift in the discussion among Greeks, from the topic of police brutality, unlawful killing and impressive lack of punishment to the riots themselves and the over the top destruction of numerous properties by 'anarchist' groups. Essentially what people are saying is that yes, police did bad for killing this boy but why did all of these awful young people have to go round destroying people's properties?

What people are not discussing is why these people went out, put on balaclavas and started burning down things.
What people are not discussing is where do all of these young people came from.
What people are not discussing is where did all this repressed anger and frustration came from.

Dismissing the riots as acts of 50 'anarchists' misses the point entirely.
Something that is unfortunately not a new practice of the Greek society.
The foreign press can put things into perspective, Greece cannot.

In my country

... cops kill 15 year old students.

This is a warning to whoever wants to come and visit Greece: don't! A cop might kill you too. Especially if you are a 15 year old child, with longish hair and defies authority. You don't need to hold a gun yourself so that the cop might feel threatened: you just need to not adequately respect his authority.

Bitter jokes aside, this is a disgrace. I feel extremely angered and ashamed. I cannot write a coherent post at the moment. For more information read here., here and here (for Greek speakers).

New/Old life

I often wonder whether I am truly the same person I was 10 years ago. My life then was different, the music I liked was different, my feelings were different. I was more pretentious, I thought people should listen to a specific kind of music and they would be cool just because of that. Then I grew up and to my horror I realized that there exist people with excellent music taste who are crap. So I had to reconsider.

One of the few things that have remained constant in my life is some of the music I like. Although I don't listen to some things with the determination that I used to, memorizing lyrics and thinking of them for hours on end, there are still some bands and albums that I listen to with exactly the same adoration. Radiohead's OK Computer is one them, Portishead's live in NYC, Suede's Dog man star and Sci-fi lullabies are some others.

There is also a Greek band that made its mark on me, Stereo Nova. I remember seeing them live in a small club in my hometown, and being entirely mesmerized. Then I bought their CD, Ασύρματος Κόσμος, and learned all their lyrics by heart. They have split for many years now and there was talk about them having split bitterly. But in two days they will play again, for one special time. I am extremely gutted that I won't manage to go, not least because my amazing cousin will be opening the show. Aparently, people are hiring buses from Germany for this show... It would have been amazing for me to go. It would have been a trip to the past, a trip to my past. I could wear my clothes from 1998 and pretend that not a day has passed from then. But I can't do that. I have to stay here and remind myself that I am not the same person I was 10 years ago. And that hurts most of time. Apart from the times that it doesn't.

Grow up

It's really very sad to realise that my ingenuity keeps me believing in things that really don't exist so that I feel like the worst fool when I'm confronted with reality.

For me, East Timor, the newest country in the world, was an example of bravery and courage. They fought Indonesia invasion for 25 years and then they became a country in their own right. Of course I only know this because East Timor was a former Portuguese colony and it was on the news all the time. I remember one day, 15 years ago or so, a Portuguese TV channel did a story on East Timor freedom fighters. Many of them lived with their families and children hidden in the mountains. The reporters followed them at night, they were going some place and for some reason they could not make any noise, maybe because Indonesian troops were patrolling the area, I don't know. What I do remember is that at some point a little boy trips and falls into a hole on the floor. Her mother runs to him, helps him to get out of the hole and you see her talking to the boy, taking her finger to her lips and urging him to be quiet, not to cry, so that nobody hears them. The little boy holds his tears and doesn't cry. An old men sees that and turns to the camera, smiles and gives the thumbs up, as if he's saying "we're going to make it". And they did make it.

Or so I thought. The latest reports I've read by journalists that have recently been to the country talk about a country devastated by corruption, inefficiency, lack of money or money obscenely spent in unimportant things. It turns out that the people of East Timor are not as united as was thought, they have different ethnicities and fight each other or don't get along and politicians don't give a shit and buy expensive cars and use money from abroad to invest in mobile phone companies. It is expected that a new country faces the deepest problems but these are problems cause by sheer disrespect and corruption.

I am the most stupid person in the world. Also the saddest.

There are consequences of breaking the heart of a murderous bastard

The two best movies of female vengeance of recent times are undoubtedly Kill Bill Vol II and Lady V. They are two very different films, if it wasn't for the fact that they are dealing with the same theme: female vengeance.

Incidentally, or perhaps crucially, both women are mothers and this plays a central role in the plot, their characters and ultimately to the deeper "message" of both movies.

Both Geum-ja and the Bride, gain a long-lost daughter in their quest for revenge. Both of them get reborn from this act, and reinvent themselves as something different. In the extremely poignant end credits of Kill Bill, Uma Thurman is credited for playing the Bride AKA Beatrix Kiddo AKA Black Mumba AKA Mommy. This last role is the one that the Bride chooses to hold on to the most, and is the one that defines her. In the end of Lady V, Geum-ja wants to give her daughter back to her adopted parents not because she doesn't love her, but because she feels she is not worthy of this relationship that has so much to give her. On the contrary her daughter disagrees and 'forgives' her, in way helping her being reborn.



Motherhood therefore, is not the end of the road for the two female protagonists. Instead it is what defines them and ultimately redeems them from the horrible acts that they both did. I think that the message of these two movies, perhaps more clearly demonstrated in Lady V, is that revenge is a self-indulgent pointless act and the only redemption that can be achieved is if you are loved. Pure unconditional love is only a result of a mother-daughter relationship, that's why women (who can also be murderous bastards) can be saved by their daughters' love.

Men, in short, do not stand a chance.
Neither does Medea who killed her only chance of redemption.
Oh, well...

The Python strike again

True to themselves, the Monty Python have set up their own youtube channel with plenty of their videos, which can now be watched properly in high quality. Instead of engaging in stupid anti-piracy wars in the hopes of getting more money, which would ultimately harm viewers and people who genuinely like a certain artist or artists, the Python have decided to share their own work for free. One has got to admire them even more for this.

Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MontyPython

Go, Python.

Stick it to the man

"Give up, just quit, because in this life, you can't win. Yeah, you can try, but in the end you're just gonna lose, big time, because the world is run by the Man. The Man, oh, you don't know the Man. He's everywhere. In the White House... down the hall... Ms. Mullins, she's the Man. And the Man ruined the ozone, he's burning down the Amazon, and he kidnapped Shamu and put her in a chlorine tank! And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock 'n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV! So don't waste your time trying to make anything cool or pure or awesome 'cause the Man is just gonna call you a fat washed up loser and crush your soul. So do yourselves a favor and just GIVE UP!"

Dewey Finn, School of Rock

With this amazing quote, Dewey Finn aka Mr. S aka Jack-Fuck her gently-Black summarizes the fundamental human need to defy authority. School of rock, which theoretically sounds such a naff-seen it before kind of movie (inspirational teacher with unconventional methods helps stuck up/shy rich kids to find themselves through - dah - music) is actually amazing. And not least because of Jack Black who is perfect in the role of wannabe-stuck in the past-loser rocker who creates a school band to compete in the battle of the bands, delivers lines like the above with amazing poise.

I guess what really makes SoR so much better than all other movies of a similar kind, is that it is so honest and because it manages to find space for optimism (through art and creativity) within the most pessimist of situations-loserism.
Viva la loser, then!

Ghost in the machine

“If our gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well”
Villiers de L'Isle Adam, L'Eve future

There are so many movies, books that deal with the quintessential philosophical questions, that of the relationship between the body and the mind/soul.
Some do it greatly (ghost in the shell, blade runner/do androids dream of electric sheep, the first matrix, never let me go, brave new world etc) some others not so well (I, Robot). It's not that they fail tragically, but they just don't have the subtlety and the depth of the ones I just mentioned.

The idea that life, soul can spark from an empty shell, that consciousness in people stems from material cell connections in our brain is old. I guess what makes it timeless in a sense that it will always create interest and debates is at the source of our existential questions as human beings: what am I? Where do my feelings come from? Does it necessarily mean that if my feelings are not real, then I can suppress them better? Do I have a role in life?

Even more interestingly, this questions are, I think, ultimately unanswerable. The 'evidence' provided, feelings, is part of the debate itself and in the end the only thing one can rely on, in order to make a decision about all this, is one's intuitions.

Intuitions that are a kind of feelings in any case.

Where is the love?

In our normal day to day lives people close to us do not constantly show us their appreciation. Much as we love each other we usually just get along, each of us minding our own business.

But there are some days that change that, and birthdays as such days.

Birthdays are great not because we get many gifts (although that helps!)

Birthdays are great not only because we get to indulge and go out and not work for the day.

Birthdays are great because this is the one day that people in your life make a point in telling you that they love you, that they are thinking of you, that they are there for you. It is the day that people call you from afar, send you gifts or throw a party for you.

And that feels nice.

Yes we can!

I am very emotional today and in a sense I didn't expect that.
The elections are not in my country and I am not black, but Barack Obama's win was, I think, overwhelming.

In times like ours, when Chomsky quotes Thycidides, saying: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must", it is amazing to have someone make you believe that you don't have to suffer just because you must. In a country whose first 16 presidents (as a journalist on TV put it yesterday) 'could have owned Obama' (as a slave), for this country to elect him, it's amazing.

People and especially young people do not believe in politics, this is no news. Cynicism is our weapon of choice. Before the war against Iraq started, I had another optimism crisis, mainly because of the demonstrations in London. I was reading about it, I was getting interested, in short I believed that this time, arbitrary power would not stand. But I was wrong.

This time, I feel optimistic again because I believe in this man who smiles so sincerely and says he wants to close Guantanamo. I really hope he does what he promises.

Can we?

After the longest, tightest and most interesting campaigns in recent history, this time tomorrow we will definately know.

We will know whether the world is ready for a black American president.
We will know whether people are willing to take a chance.
We will know whether inspirational rhetoric matters.
We will know whether it is an unforgivable sin to be educated, eloquent and polite.
We will also know whether pitbulls with an appetite for hunting are appreciated.
We will know whether patriotism can be measured.
We will know whether Nam veterans stand a chance (and therefore Oliver stone should make some more movies for them).

But most of all we will know, whether people can accept and respect the other man's right to be different.

Warning: soppy post. On language, on José Saramago, who makes me cry

There are three days I can safely say were the happiest days of my life. The day Saramago won the Nobel Prize of Literature was one of them. I remember I woke up and turned the TV on and there was news in every channel about Saramago. It wasn't clear to me he had actually won. I thought, 'leave the man alone, for Christ sake. He's been nominated for years, we already know he never wins, no need to rub it in!'. When I finallly realised that the reason why everybody couldn't stop talking about him was because he had actually won the Nobel, I felt immense gratitude and admiration. For me, Saramago receiving the Nobel was a victory for the Portuguese language itself and for all the other great Portuguese writers who turn their language into art with every book they write. I will always be thankful and happy for that.

I generally feel very detached from my country. I hate this feeling and I struggle every day to make myself feel connected to this land. However, I've always felt extremely close to the Portuguese language and I think I can safely say that the only Portuguese thing I truly love and would be sorry to live without is the language. It's a funny, sad, sweet, strange, strong language full of consonants and hardly any open vowels which sounds harsh, ugly, wrong (I'm told it sounds slavonic or russian or polish, so on and so forth) and it has just got this amazing strong personality that I simply love. I'm always amazed at how one can feel so detached from the country, but so close to the language. When Saramago won, I felt my language was winning as well, a language not many people speak, not many people know, not many people care about (not even Portuguese people themselves). But for those who do love Portuguese literature and language, the Nobel felt like a great victory.

This video shows Saramago crying after having seen a special screening of Blindness, the film based on his book, which was directed by Fernando Meirelles (the one from Cidade de Deus) and which is supposed to be quite bad, although I don't really care whether the film is good or bad, I'm still going to see it when it opens. Saramago tells Fernando he is as happy after having seen the movie as he was after he wrote the book, and that's when Fernando kisses him in the forehead, saying he is very happy Saramago feels that way.
José Saramago is old and soon he will become a memory. A strong memory - he won the Nobel, his books are already studied at school, he has already received his accolades - but a memory nevertheless. It is nice to know that, while he is still alive, people read his books and comment on his books and make movies out of his books. Ultimately, it is also a celebration of language, and that is really nice to know.

A man with a plan

This is a man with a plan, rest assured.
We all know Jamie Oliver as the celebrity chef with the cute lisp. But Jamie has a vision: some years ago he went against the system of unhealthy school dinners in Britain and has tried to turn it around. In a country that fed its children with bangers and mash and fried fish, Jamie decided to try to change that and make salad appealing to kids.

These days his crusade is to teach poor Northern English townies that survive on doner kebabs to cook. His experiment has been immortalized in this four episode documentary called ministry of food whose premise is simple: if Jamie teaches 8 people to cook, and each of them teaches two friends and each of them another two, then some time in the very foreseeable future the entire town will know how to cook. After a series of unfortunate events the documentary ends on a high note: Jamie organizes a food festival where the entire town joins in and councilors from other neighboring towns promise that they will support the ministry of food in their own towns.

The nicest part of this is that it reminds me that one person can make a difference. I've always believed that it shouldn't be the society that changes the individual, it is the individual that will change the society. Jamie O is an inspiring man: he believes in the power of the individual but he also has a very strong sense of community. He thinks that communities should be together, having common goals, people inside them helping each other out. And this is what his ministry of food is all about. Lonely people with no clear purpose in life, single mothers that had never cooked a meal before in their lives, coming together and finding a purpose, sharing a common goal and succeeding in it. Seeing these people on TV who say that they never thought they could do this, now teaching their friends to cook, is just amazing. People saying how this common cause has given a new meaning and changed their lives, is so touching. People should indeed never stop believing that something inspiring can come along and change things.

So, for Jamie people, pass it on!

Istanbul

Every morning I took the tram and the bus and was thinking what I will write here for this trip. Unfortunately it seems that I only have nice thoughts when I am not in front of a computer.

The story, therefore, will be told in pictures.



First day in the bazaar. I laugh and wish I could take everything I see with me.



The vue from the conference. The early morning with the beautiful light. The sea, ah the sea.



The 'blasphemy'. I loved seeing the arabic inscriptions from the Koran in Hagia Sophia. It looks as if this is a place where anyone could feel close to God.



The night is the same everywhere in Mediterranean: light and loud.



The old and new Istanbul.

I want to come back here soon.

Seeing double

I'm is Istanbul, blogging from me hotel room. When I took the taxi to come here, I thought I was seeing double: I thought I was in Athens! I know it is a tremendous cliché but it's true! We look the same, the greeks and the turks and our cities look the same. And they're in love with my name! It is Turkish so they always ask me if I am from here.

I'll write more about this beautiful city.
For the time being: long live the enemies of the state!

Why I love this country

After a day of pouring rain, it is almost ironic that I'm writing a post with this title, but this is Friday after all and this is the day that I get constantly reminded why I like where I live. It is the day of Jonathan Ross and Jools Holland and tonight the latter kicked ass. If you're not living in the UK, then perhaps you don't know the eccentric Jools with the über eclectic music taste. Tonight started slow, with Coldplay in the studio, who after a slow start played the song of the night: 42, singing...

Those who are dead are not dead
They’re just living in my head
And since I fell for that spell
I am living there as well
Oh..

Time is so short and I’m sure
There must be something more

Amazing lyrics, I think, ones that I haven't listened for so long.
And then the true hidden jems of the show step in, Sia and Amy LaVere. Listening to them reminds me why it's important to let yourself be impressed by stuff you've never listened to before. Comfort of the known is nice, but newness, well newness is what it's all about.





Very different performances, but oh so sincere...
So, well done UK, God save the Queen.

Impoliteness

I would like to propose a game to everyone who is interested (I hope that at least Lady V is): what are the funniest/nicest and rudest quotes from movies (or perhaps real life) we have ever heard? I thought of this game because I've always wondered how rude language can sometimes be so strangely interesting and cool (I do realise I'm sounding like an adolescent here. Alas, it's the truth).

Here are some pieces of impoliteness that I've always loved:

- You pathetic rebound fuck, now get your patchouli stink out of my store! Move it, lard ass, now! Dumb motherfucker.. - High Fidelity

- You mean, let me understand this cause, ya know maybe it's me, I'm a little fucked up maybe, but I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you? I make you laugh, I'm here to fuckin' amuse you? What do you mean funny, funny how? How am I funny? - Good Fellas, what a classic!

- I'm a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker, motherfucker! Every time my fingers touch brain, I'm Superfly T.N.T., I'm the Guns of the Navarone! - Pulp Fiction

-Dios mio, man. You pull any of your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I'll take it away from you, stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger 'til it goes "click." - Big Lebowski (and while we're at it, nobody fucks with the Jesus)

And, if you allow me an ultimate piece of impoliteness, let me share with you a piece of advice that I've heard a Northern English girl say to another Northern English girl in a Northern English pub many years ago: 'I wouldn't shag him if I had your fanny'. Precious. This has made me laugh for at least ten years. Gotta love the English language.

Enough impoliteness for now, I have to go celebrate the day when my country became a Republic. If you want to share your impoliteness with me, though, my linguist soul thanks you in advance.

Labels

It is a universally admitted truth that labels are bad. And I don't just mean clothes that cost thousands and look silly. I mean labels we put on people. It is funny to think that language constraints the way we think: people are labeled as 'nice' or 'nasty', 'clever' or stupid' and more annoyingly the destructively 'sensitive' or 'strong', 'opinionated', 'feisty' and so on. There are two problems with these labels however.

The first one is that they are useless. Nobody is simply 'feisty' or 'shy'. People are multi-faceted beings with a bit of everything. Not to mention the fact that nobody knows one's true character unless put in a certain situation and been requested to adapt. Nobody knows what he or she is capable of, until they face a situation that makes them exceed their own limits. Also there are so many subtle characterizations that cannot fit one label. Being feisty is one thing but how do you call a person who is feisty most of the times but a true wimp in front of their parents? I have a trait that I don't know how to describe: when I am waiting for the bus to go to work, I get quite nervous if I don't know where I am going to sit. I then try to look inside the bus when I'm queueing next to it and find a seat in advance, so that when I get in I can march decisively towards that seat, without looking insecure or something. How do you call that? I guess one could argue that this is a instance of some other clearer trait of my character, but I don't think so.

The second problem has to do with the actual accuracy of these labels. It seems to me that most of them are superimposed on us by others and are almost always wrong. Once, when you're three, someone thinks you're shy and that label chases you around till you die. Actually, sometimes people actually behave according to these superimposed fake labels, they start believing them and consider them the best way to view themselves. They make decisions according to them, that are usually wrong and torment them for life and can perhaps never be reversed. And all of that because some idiot once made a comment about one's character...

I think people have to actively oppose this. People should be forced to reinvent and reinterpret themselves in a daily basis. Otherwise you run the risk of being a label freak, and nobody wants that!

Nobody can eat fifty eggs or: jump off the roof, Maggie, jump off it.

Good man, it seems. Great actor.

Confidence (and lack thereof)

Where do people find confidence these days? If you are in academia, or even worse in academia and looking for a job, it is all about rejection. Papers gets rejected, job applications go to waste, conference presentations fail to impress. It often seems that this whole hoop-la is only about balancing with oneself. One would think that we would know how to do that since we've gone through a PhD process, a process that (according to my wise friend D) puts you opposite your own mediocrity. We're all mediocre yet when we apply for something we need to persuade people that we are the best. And that exactly is the drama of academics: we know we are mediocre but we have to persuade ourselves and others that we are the next best thing since sliced bread (is this an awesome expression or what?)

The question is where do we find the confidence to do that? From the mirror? - News on that front are not always uplifting.
From the job itself? - As I said failure is an everyday thing.
From teaching? - Well, yes, because sometimes, my students are all I have to get some strength. With their funny little fake-tanned faces looking up at me, nodding along to what I say. Making them understand the crazy things I work on is sometimes what I have to make myself feel better. Is that a bad thing? Am I putting this whole thing down?

The Baader Meinhof complex

Is it my idea of is it only the Germans that have no fear of their history? The make movies about second world war (the fall) about stasi (lives of others) and now about their most well-known terrorist group. Really looking forward to it. And to put you in the mood even more, here is a great extract of Ulrike Meinhof's interview before she became part of the organization.

Please sir, can I have some more, sir?

© Steve Bell 2008 (Guardian)

Like the credit crisis, the Wall Street Crash was caused by irresponsible lending, as hundreds of thousands of Americans, reassured that they could only make money by investing in shares, borrowed heavily to invest in the stock market. (Telegraph, today)

I think 'irresponsible lending' is the key phrase here. Our lives are at the hands of so called 'financial geniuses' (and I mean all our lives, not just the lives of people that are paying credit to their banks, although these people are hit more, I'm sure, how lovely...) and these self-designated genius are now leaving us in deep shit.

I'm not going to discuss this much, I'm not an economist and I will refrain from propagandising my political beliefs, which may be very distant from the idea of capitalism but do not change the fact that I live in a capitalist system and behave accordingly. I'm as capitalistic as they come, I guess, so my political convictions have obviously not taken me very far.

The question is now figuring out what to do. Perhaps trying to keep our cool and not believing everything that the media tries to feed us. Quite frankly, either I'm extremely dumb and cannot understand what they're on about or these media people/economists, whatever they are, are in more turmoil than banks and tax-payers. Just try reading the business section of the Guardian today, for example, and you'll see what I'm talking about (and I do like and respect the Guardian). Better yet: read the Guardian, then read another equivalent broadsheet and compare their analysis. One week we're not going into recession, the other week we're facing the worst recession since 1929; one week petrol will reach $200 a barrel, next week is going down after all; one week the Central European Bank will finally lower interest rates, the other week is increasing them after all, so on and so forth. All the predictions that journalists, economists and commentators who have aired their opinions on the media have made turned out to be utterly and completely wrong, so I for one am trying not to be allarmed by the madness that has taken over the media.

It seems, however, that the people who are running our lives don't really know what they're doing. How do they justify the money that they make at our expense? I don't know, but like I heard someone say, they still sleep at night. Is it shame on them or shame on us? We all borrow from the bank after all, from mortgages to credit cards to overdrafts. And we're not children, so we should all be smart enough to know we're dealing with complex financial institutions and a very sophisticated financial system that will only help us out if it gets something in return, ie, our money. But did we ever really have a choice? Was there ever a point at which we could have opted out of this system? I guess not, and that is our saving grace. Of course there are people who try more than others to be out of the system (ah, those lovely hippies). All the better for them, but do not tell me they don't need money to live, so they probably have a bank account as well and that's all it takes to be in the system. So, we're all on the same boat. Just hanging on. Hopefully we'll get to Ittaca some day, I really just hope that happens while we're young.

Instant

The best thing with blogging is that it is instantaneous: you think of something and immediately you can post it (this is not my thought, I am quoting a blogger I like, who said that on the radio). This is both good and bad, it is good because communication with the world is immediate but it is also bad because what you post is not something you've thought through too much. It is not polished like a journal article or a research proposal for example (!) But perhaps, that's the charm: you think of something, admittedly a minor thought, it doesn't deserve to be a thesis or something, and the next moment it can be posted to the world. Like this picture of my coffee that I took two minutes ago. It's ephemeral yes, but it's still nice. Like a beautiful picture that captures a fleeting moment in time, like a short story that doesn't have the depth of a novel, but it still manages to give a glimpse of reality. It seems to me that we need these things, in addition to the heavier ones. We like both, we need both, life comprises of both: the posts and the theses. Brahms and Britney. Tolstoy and Mickey Mouse.

Pulp is not lucky

After the silence, comes the storm, or so they say, don’t they?
After the long, lingering summer, I am back in the rain. I came back hastily, with high hopes but the Pulp song brought me no luck. It doesn’t matter, n’est-pas? It never does.

Throughout the summer, I was trying to think of something to post upon my return. Most of my thoughts though were petty, I was thinking of bad things to say about the people next to me in the beach or stupid lyrical thoughts about the beauty of the summer. I guess I won’t be writing any of this any time soon. Elitism and lyricism are not supposed to happen in autumn. Autumn is for new beginnings, like Mondays. Long live the new beginnings then, even if they mean that I will stay were I am and I won’t be moving anywhere East.

Family

Separated at birth. Please check here to confirm.

Creeps

Maybe there are other things going on in the world that deserve my attention more. But reading this, I cannot help but being appalled. Apparently, some people in India have got nothing better to do than to think it's cool to have the average Indian Joe Schmuck (who is poor beyond belief) wearing designer clothes and fashion items costing hundreds of years' salary.
There's something deeply sad about those pictures of poor people smiling and displaying some glorified item of wealth. I mean, poverty is sad anyway but it really seems heightened and even more objectionable when portrayed in this way, turning poor people into picturesque objects for wealth display (reading the article, we learn that Vogue India didn't even bother to mention the names of the peope they used in the photo shoots. They mention brands all right, but no names). The whole debacle becomes even worse when you read what the Indian Vogue editor had to say in her defense - "we're not trying to save the world or anything. "
Since when is this an excuse for regretabble behaviour instead of a reason to be profoundly embarassed? Shouldn't we all be trying to save the world, no matter how efficient we are in the process? People use this argument all the time - I'm not trying to save the world, I don't want to make a difference, I don't want to change anyone's life, bla bla bla.
My problem is that I do not understand the validity of this argument. These people give me the creeps. And they are creeps.

António Variações:

"I can't control this state of anxiety. The hurry of getting there so as not to get there late. I don't know what I'm running from. Perhaps from this loneliness. Why is it that I refuse all who want to hold my hand? I shall continue to look for the one to whom I want to give myself, because so far I want the one I've never seen, I want the one I've never met. This dissatisfaction, I cannot comprehend. I always have this feeling that I'm losing out. I'm in a hurry to leave, and when I get there I want to leave. I shall continue to look for my world, for my place, because so far I can only be where I am not, I can only go where I do not go. "

Brave man. Wonderful performer. Lived in an ultra-conservative country and dared to be controversial and wear whatever he wanted and say whatever he wanted and go out with whomever he wanted. Died of AIDS in the early eighties and the whole thing was hushed up, maybe because people didn't know what AIDS was at the time (as a kid, I remember hearing he had died because he'd drunk cold water when he was hot and sweaty -!For a while, I didn't dare to drink water in hot, sunny days).

It's hard to be liberated where you live. People know you, or you yourself know the place too well, you have a job to keep, you have a social persona to maintain. In a place where you're completely unknown and don't care about holding on to a job, you can do other things, dress in a different way and reinvent yourself, maybe even pierce your eyebrow, which I would do if it wasn't for the fact that I might get, if not fired, then let's say warned.

Therein lies the attraction of travelling, of living abroad, of having the opportunity to be someone else all the time - in the fact that you can discard everything you don't like about yourself and keep only what you like. When you're bored, you reinvent yourself and become someone new. That's impossible to do when you live somewhere for a long time, though, and ultimately living with yourself all the time, with all your flaws, becomes just too tiring.

This man in the picture, however, didn't have to go anywhere to be exactly what he wanted to be and to look exactly how he wanted to look. He managed to be himself, to accept his flaws and to reinvent himself in his own country. He sang about permanent dissastifaction and the constant need for change and he set an example, I think. Good man.

Scattered

I cannot think in the summer, it's official. Every day I say I want to write something, every day I force myself to think of something good to write about, an idea, a thought but then it scatters away. I think it is perhaps the heat that makes it dissolve into nothingness. Or my tiredness. I read interesting things (Alias Grace, The Village of widows-I will write something about them one day), I meet nice people, I see plays (tomorrow Medea) but nothing stays. Blogging is not a summer sport, for sure. Winter is excellent for staying in, on a comfy sofa and writing away. In the summer my mind works only partially and my willingness to write evaporates just like the sweat on my skin. The most intellectual thing I can write about is my tan, it seems... Thank you to Youkali who keeps the blog alive on August then...

He was a complicated man...

...no one understood him but his woman.

So cool (on a par with the two others from previous post). RIP.

Life and I, we don't get along

I don't know about other people, but when I bend over to put on my shoes in the morning, I think, Christ-oh-mighty, now what? I'm screwed by life, we don't get along. I have to take little bites out of it, not the whole thing. It's like swallowing bvckets of shit. I am never surprised that the madhouses and jails are full and that the streets are full.

Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship, illustrated by Robert Crumb

These two men were the coolest.

Nothing else to add. I'm never surprised either.

Ugly is the new beautiful

What a strange, yet beautiful, similarity... I didn't come up with this myself, I read it on Wikipedia. Ledger as Joker does have something of Francis Bacon.

It is already a cliché to say that the new Joker is perhaps the best thing of the Dark Night. I agree. I also agree that Bale is great as Batman (and as everything else; as far as I'm concerned, he's a great actor). But perhaps what the new Joker brings, which the brilliant performance of Ledger shows so well, is some kind of locus horrendus which was absent in previous movies, even from Batman Begins. And the aesthetics that follow it have to necessarily agree, hence the greasy, evil, Bacon-like Joker, a great dirty counter-part to the clean, straight black of Batman.

I loved Tim Burton's Batman because of the impressive visuals, which is something that the Dark Night also has mainly because of the Joker, I think.

Sometimes, and excuse the massive platitude, ugly is indeed so beautiful.

Tough call

Sometimes I like to wander the streets of the small town where I live with no specific purpose (and it can be fascinating to watch how people live the same life every day), same way as I like to write with no guiding idea.

I wanted to write about Batman and cakes because I like both of these entities, although the latter stimulate me more than the former (I think... given the choice between the perfect cake and the perfect Bale, I'm not so sure, but anyway). I like Batman because (surprise,surprise) he has no particular superpower. He's a man who perfected himself. The latest Batman, which I saw a couple of days ago, is great because of Heath Ledger, because of Christian Bale taking his shirt off and ... aaah.... I guess that's it. However, if we think of books such as 'Becoming Batman', by a guy called E. Paul Zehr, who apparently is an American professor, and which explore the extent to which an ordinary man could actually develop the skills of the Batman, then you kind of wonder if the character is not a little bit more interesting than it seems. For some people, it definitely seems to be, like this Zehr professor. According to Zehr (or to an article I read about his book), the only thing that is not very realistic is that Batman can fight 10 or more men in the movies. In real life, we could only take on about 2 or 3. But if a man with the resources of Bruce Wayne actually existed and if he had the predisposition of training for seven years and if he were to fight only 2 or 3 men at a time, then there you go, the world would be blessed with a Batman.

Ah, and cakes, of course. Buying a perfectly rounded, creamy Berlim Ball when you're lying in the sun listening to the sea where you've just swam is a great memory from childhood that I try to reenact as much as I can.

Now I'm left wondering. Same way as Kundera, that wonderful philosophical writer who indeed is the guardian of the ultimate truth (or so his books would have us believe, since they are so appropriate for that kind of coffee-shop philosophy that not even Paulo Coelho would dare), wondered whether we have to choose between the lighteness and the weight, I need to choose between the Berlim Ball and the Bale. Which will it be, which will it be...

No poser

There is always a fear in me when I go see a live I’ve invested a lot in: I want to feel this magical moment, there’s always one in a live, or at least one, the moment where you feel that your money was worth it. It’s not about the money, surely, it’s just everybody’s fear that maybe –maybe– the artist you’ve gone to see is not really into this, that maybe he or she is bored and not good at lives. That maybe this is not going to be an experience as you want it, but a fake.

With Björk there was no such fear. I saw her last night, in the Greek summer heat (nb last post) in a closed stadium, half-empty due to impending holiday plans of my compatriots. I’ve been wanting to see her for a long time, I think she is the definitive artist of the last 15 years. She is a classic, deeply idiosyncratic songwriter that I think is a symbol for female artists of our era. She is modern, current, but miraculously she is not part of any trend. Even when she works with the most contemporary of artists (like Antony and Timbaland in her last album) she is still herself, her alien, waif-like self.

But the most important thing about her is that she is no poser. She wears ridiculous clothes, dances around the stage like a little goat, moves her hands around like a witch, looks at her crowd with funny faces, but nobody laughs. Everybody looks at her in awe as if she is Dionysus himself.

Long live the Goddess, then (necessary voodoo).

The heat

I really want to write something more interesting but it seems that my brain is not really working. It is the heat, the heat is all I can think of. How did I use to function in these temperatures, how do people actually function in these temperatures? This city is one giant burning block of flats. Women put on make up and get out in the streets and I am wondering: how does the slap stay on their faces? I feel if I put anything on there, it is going to dissolve the moment I set my foot on the burning pavement. And with it, I feel that my face will also dissolve, like the guy in 'death in venice'. He, at least, let himself dissolve because he wanted to impress someone, he wanted to impress a boy. Why are all these women doing it for?

Waiting for the sea.

The kindness of strangers

The nights in Athens are very hot. Heat in general, is different in Greece. It comes with a greasiness and a drowsiness that you don’t find anywhere else. It comes with a sluggishness and a νωχελικότητα that can only be found here.

I just came here 2 hours ago or something and I am already feeling relaxed. I need to feel that kind of relaxation, I need to feel that I can be drowsy and not do much all day.

I always get this open network here, and I think that the person who has it is my friend and lets me use it implicitly. My network in Belfast is also open and I do it for him, this random guy in Greece that lets me surf in the middle of the night. Tonight, though, there’s no network. I wanted to post this now, at 4 in morning, from my hot apartment in Athens, but I can’t.

Tomorrow maybe.

Even robots get their happily-ever-afters

Carina Lau married Tony Leung in a true Wong Kan-Wai style.
This must be life imitating art, surely.



Doesn't this look like a scene from 'Hero'? Apparently they got married on Bhutan, the holy mountain that features so beautifully in the end of 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon'. If there is any reason for star system to exist, is for people to marry in movie sets and produce pictures straight from Kar-Wai movies.

Then again, maybe I am just an idiot and wanted to post these pictures (and am now trying to give them some meaning, beyond the gossip).

Class

Sometimes, I think they left out the best scene and the best song. This is a deleted scene from the movie Chicago, that appears in the DVD that has Mamma Morton and Velma Kelly sing the immortal lines:

Oh, there ain't no gentelmen to open up the doors,
There ain't no ladies now there's only pigs and whores
And even kids'll knock you down so's they can pass
Nobody's got no class!!!

The irony here obviously is that the women who sing about class have no class of their own, since they are swearing all the time. It makes me think about this old taboo about women and swearing. I swear a lot and a lot of people are not pleased with me for that. I hear a lot of stupid things about swearing and how it does not agree with me, with my social standing and my education.

I profoundly disagree. Petit bourgeoisie must die, I say. What does it mean, social standing and the rest? Anybody can sometimes feel pressed and then curses and feels better. Whoever doesn't do that will die repressed. My education has nothing to do with my need to say a bad word if I feel to. And in any case, I think that class is severely overrated, and so often confused with 'good manners' from another century. Class has nothing to do with how you speak and whether you say 'fuck' every so often. It has to do with so many other things. Like Velma and Mamma Morton, who overcome the irony and manage to still have some class in jail, swearing like sailors.

The summer

It is amazing how much rejuvenation summer brings, so much more than spring, so much more than anything else.
Last week I felt down, but now the prospect of holidays has lifted my spirits to the max.

The sales suddenly seem better.
The books seem more interesting.
The songs sound new.
The sun seems aplenty (even here).

Summer in the city (is sweet only before going to the sea...)

Soon this blog is going to fall into hibernation, only to come back stronger and more interesting in the fall.

Oh man, I'm so wasted...

This is awesome!
For more videos, check out the guy's site: www.joecartoon.com

-Oh man, I'm so wasted
-I think I can fly man
-But you are a fly man...

-Man I can't see my hands
-But you don't have hands

Priceless...

This is my hero

This is my hero. Look at her for she is a hell of a ten-year old girl.



I read her story in CNN and I was amazed. Initially, I was amazed because there are people that sell off their ten year old children as brides. Then I thought they must be incredibly poor to do that. Then I was amazed because for a man was beating and raping a ten-year old girl. But then I thought that this is not so amazing; it happens everywhere. Then I was amazed because the girl had to 'compensate' her husband (according to the Sharia law) and give him 200 dollars (I presume for letting her divorce him). But then I thought that by analogy, similar things happen here.

And then I read the story again and I realized that the only amazing thing is this girl. This girl who was sold as a bride in the age of 10, with the promise of the groom to her parents that he would not touch her until she became 20. Essentially she was sold off not as a bride, but to loosen the economic burden of her parents. But then her husband was beating her and raping her. Initially she went to her mother, who told her to stay there because that's her home now. But the girl did not do that. During a visit to her parents she escaped and went to a courthouse and demanded to speak to a judge. She demanded for a divorce and got it. She now has returned to her family home, and is happy to play with her siblings again, only she cannot go out to play a lot because the 'attention bothers her'.

Where did this 10 year old girl find the courage to do what she did?
That's why she is my hero, because it takes so much courage to do what you believe is right. And so many people never ever have the guts to do that.

On repeat

I saw the edge of heaven again a couple of days ago, and although I loved it again, I have to admit that it wasn't as much as when I watched on the first time, in the sense that I did see a couple of flaws. This reminds me of my past habit of reading and re-reading books. I used to do it compulsively, especially with one book (hmmm the secret history) which I must have read over ten times. The books I love take second reading well and they become better, grander books. The first time you read something, it's all about the plot: you read thirstily, fast and you lose so many details. The entire beginnings of books are usually read in a haste, me I never remember beginnings. I think they have to be good enough to keep your attention but not give any important information about the plot because I will never remember that. Very often I don't even know what they're talking about, and only after a hundred pages or so do I see the point and go back and read things again. Anyway, regarding second readings, it's rare that a book can survive them and be enjoyed as much the second time round. The same with movies, especially the ones whose hype relies so much on a surprise endings or a twist of some sort (fight club, seven, sixth sense etc) very rarely make good second sightings. Instead other surprising movies, like the silence of the lambs, that do have a twist but they don't rely too much on it, can be seen again and again and never lose their charm. Perhaps this is what makes a movie or a book a classic, it's when they can be seen more than once and be enjoyed as much (but perhaps differently) than the first time.

The point is that first impressions do not seem to matter.
A good generalization one can stick to for more than one things, don't you agree?

The past

Now I know how people start living in the past. It only takes a song and you’re there. You’re there, revisiting painfully your older, more glorious self. You start remembering when you life was not full of the things you ‘have to’ do. I know I sound clishé, it seems impossible to avoid this being clishé thing, especially here in the blog. It seems to me though, that these stupid social constraints are to blame for so many things: I cannot go out and drink and be funny and be loud anymore (at least not in the company of my ‘serious’ friends). I cannot afford to fuck around and do a radio show, like I used to when I was 18. Now I have to publish or perish. Stupid academia, stupid boring academia. I hate this stupid life that cannot afford us with a spare moment of boredom.

Vive la différance!

Modesty (and lack thereof)

I think modesty is a virtue I hold too dearly near my heart. I always thought that people should have, I thought that I should have it.

A PhD is an exercise in modesty, a friend has told me. She has said that its main function is that it places you opposite your own mediocrity and this is something that one should learn to face. She also told me that at the end of the PhD you end up knowing more about yourself than your topic. My PhD taught me some things about myself, incidentally the same things that my quitting smoking has taught me. (One could therefore say, that I should only have done wither of the two, either a PhD or quitting smoking!) It has taught me that I cannot perform if people are judging me all the time: if people know the exact week I'm submitting, and they ask me all the time, I get nervous and I am afraid. It feels as if I am on a diet and people ask me all the time how much weight I'd lost. When I quit smoking, I didn't tell anybody and I was walking around with my cigarettes in my bag, telling myself that it's ok if I want to smoke, no big deal, they're right here. The same thing happened with my PhD, I had to deflate it in my mind in order to submit it, I had to think that no one was judging me for it.

But I digress, for the issue today is modesty. So, when I started my PhD, me like so many other people before me, I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be the best and change my field. I wanted my PhD to be cited all the time, I wanted to go to conferences and people applaud me as if I were giving an Oscar speech. Alas, it was not meant to be. I did have to accept that I am kind of mediocre, honest yet mediocre.

There are people around me, people that have gone through the same "humbling" experience that are not modest. People that seem untouched from the whole thing. People that still think they will change the world. I am usually very annoyed with these people, perhaps from jealousy, I think. I wish I were like them, I wish I, too were as sure about myself as they are. Perhaps, my love for modesty is love for mediocrity. I want all people to be mediocre and feel modest, just like me. Or perhaps, I should stop feeling mediocre and start being proud of myself, having the all-American attitude of the 'champion'! Maybe like that I can become great too, just like my non-modest friends!

Like a little child

Yesterday I lost something and I started reacting like a little spoilt brat. I cried, I moaned, I kicked stones in the street etc. I went everywhere to find it and I made a big fuss about it. The only consolation (in the sense that I am not totally nuts for reacting that way) is that what I lost was something nice: a little brooch with the little prince that my mum had bought me. I loved it and I was proud wearing it. Everyone was giving me compliments for it. In some strange way, I also thought it brought me good luck. Written down, this thought looks kind of absurd.

Whenever I lose something I obsess with two thoughts: firstly I wish that the thing I lose would have a beeper that I could press and I could hear the noise that would lead me to it. Or maybe it could have a glowing light that I could see, if I narrowed my eyes. A glowing light to lead me to it. The other thought that upsets me, is to think of the little thing I lost, in this case my precious little prince, in a corner somewhere, by the road, in the mud, somewhere dirty and abandoned. Again, this thought written down seems quite absurd, but that is what I feel.

I wish someone might have found my little prince and is wearing him now. If I don't have him, at least I hope someone else is being happy with having him.

The character and the nation

I just finished reading that brick of a book, the Cairo trilogy, by Naguib Mahfouz. It is not right to call it one book, since it is a trilogy published together for the first time. One thousand three hundred and thirty one pages, it took me months to read it. It was difficult at times, boring maybe, too tedious, the writing was sometimes too old-fashioned. When it finished though, I was sad. I wanted to read more, I wanted it not to end. I managed to like some of the characters, even at the beginning I didn’t think I would.

The story evolves around the three generations of a family in Egypt, starting while the English are occupying the country and ending around the second world war. The characters are plenty and very different from each other: initially we are introduced to the tyrannical patriarch Abd-Al Jawaad and his extremely submissive wife Amina. Their five children: the shallow and hedonistic Yasin, the romantic idealist Fahmy and the young Kamal, who will be the main character in the other two books and their sisters: the blonde and naive Aisha and the ugly and feisty Kadja. The most interesting thing in this book is the duality of the life of Abd Al-Jawaad who is extremely serious and scary in his house but also has a secret life full of alcohol and women, the nights that he goes out. Years go by and his children grow up, and Kamal takes central stage. He is a true intellectual, who is looking for the bast way to lead a good life. He initially experiments with religion that doesn't satisfy him too much, mostly because it leaves no room for lust and love. In search of some balance between the intellectual and the physical, Kamal focuses on philosophy, and becomes a teacher and a regular contributor to a popular journal. But his shyness and his reluctance to live cripple him and regardless of his intellectual capacities, he remains a hermit, a man without a life, alone forever. In the last book, the central theme of the entire trilogy, that of the balance between the intellectual and the physical, is transferred to the two nephews of Kamal, one being a religious fundamentalist and the other one being a communist, both of which end up in jail.

These books that span so many years and encompass of so many characters can often be great. They almost always are seen as covert histories if the countries they are set in. In the case of the Cairo trilogy, the struggle within the central character Kamal, might be seen as personifying the struggle of Egypt, from English occupation to independence and from independence to political instability again during the years of the second world war. Perhaps this is the only way to write history these days, though literature, where nations could be seen as complex characters inside a magical book.

Happy Anniversary!

This is the 100th post in this blog!

I was really looking forward to writing this entry, only to say how important is has been for me.
As, I've written before blogging makes me think, and I love it for this. I makes me communicate with my friends and it lets them see another side of me. It occasionally makes me communicate with people I don't know at all, and this makes me feel that I'm not alone. There is a great feeling when one communicates with strangers.

Anyway, all I wanted to say is happy anniversary to this blog and a big thank you to all my co-authors who were willing to share their thoughts with me in this blog.

The little dieing girl

I know a girl who is dieing. She has cancer. She is very young and she’s had cancer for four years now. Initially they found out she was dieing and they thought they got it early. You really need to get cancer early, from what I hear, if you are to have any luck. So, they found out that she had cancer and they started their treatment and they thought that they were done. The little girl came back to her old life and tried to start over.

She had a lot of all clears before her cancer came back. I don’t know much about such things, but it seems to me that I would be deeply optimistic if I ever had cancer and then was given the all clear. I would think that lightning doesn’t strike in the same place twice. But I would be wrong and so was the little dieing girl, for lightning did strike the same place twice and the little dieing girl had cancer again. They tried again and again they thought they had got it. Apparently, they did a great new treatment that was proven to be very successful. Or so they thought. They did the treatment, they took off the little girl’s liver (or most of it), but I am not sure if they knew what they were doing. In short, the little girl was some sort of a guinea pig.

Lightnings have a soft spot for girls, it seems and her illness came back yet again. But the little girl is tired. She doesn’t want to fight anymore. She wants to live a normal life, she goes to work and doesn’t take time off. She gets angry with her mother because ‘she keeps staring’ at her.

I wonder what the little dieing girl feels. Does she know she’s dieing? If yes, how does she live with this? Does she want to pretend that everything is normal and death can find her in her chair and her desk, working? Should she go for a holiday, so death can find her by a beach? Is there ANY good way of dieing? Are you supposed to settle your accounts and then go somewhere and die silently? I have no clue.

Some people have problems in their lives and some others just pretend to. Nobody can say, ah other people are dieing here, so I should be happy all the time and not regard my problems as real problems. But stories like this, do put your life into perspective.

Reserve

Yesterday, I was in an Italian café and I saw a poster on the wall; it was a poster with various movies from the golden age of the Italian cinema: Otto e mezzo by Felini, Blow up by Antonioni, Riso amarro, Dolce vita, la Ciocarra etc. I looked at it closely and realized that I had not seen any of these movies. Not one. Initially, I thought I could lie if anyone asked me, I could say yes, I’ve seen one or two, but it was a long time ago and I don’t remember them very well. Or I could also say that I fell asleep while watching them, that is always a good excuse when pretending to have seen a movie.

Then, I got very ashamed of myself: I like cinema and I take pride in thinking that I know a lot about. How is it possible, then, for me not to have seen any of these movies? My next impulse was to go and buy them all immediately and watch them as quickly as possible, so I would not be ashamed and not have to lie in an imaginary conversation, if anyone asked me if I had seen these movies.

Then, however, I thought that maybe it was good that I hadn’t seen any of these movies: I felt a warm feeling inside me, that there is an intellectual stimulation that I have never used. Like when I was younger, when I bought a book and wouldn't read it, I would keep it on the shelf to read at a later stage, when I felt like it. It was reassuring to know that, if I wanted to read a good book, I had one sitting on my shelf. It was the same reassuring feeling that tells you that you have a friend, if you need one.

Italian cinema for me then, is a reserve friend. If one time I feel the need for some intellectual stimulation, I'll get all these movies and watch them.

The British summer

Summer in Britain, the seventh in a row for me. Rain again but what can one do? Euro helps, but it will be over soon (good luck Spain!). Other than that, laziness is all around, the streets are flooded with tourists that never seize to annoy me. They seem to be following me anywhere I go and they are many, loud and aesthetically unpleasing. I wonder sometimes, is this the way other people perceive me when I travel somewhere? I guess not since I am not a French or Italian teenager with a loud voice that moves as part of a procession of 300 of other loud French or Italian teenagers. People will surely have something to say about my loudness but I don't care.

Summer for me is sea and heat. It is tanned skin, sweat and water-melons. It is sand and books full of it, in the beach amidst sleepiness and laziness. It is beautiful afternoons, with a bit of a breeze and the promise of a cool evening. I love the Greek summers so much, it is the only time of year that I am truly homesick. So what am I doing here then, what am I doing here, in the rain and grayness?

Can we? or: read Lady V post below

According to this interesting site (a bit outdated, but less disregard that for a bit), while most Europeans tend to trust the police, the army and the media, their confidence in national Parliaments, national Governments and political parties is frighteningly low (as low as 16% in the case of the latter). I say frighteningly because, after all, we can’t vote for the police nor the media, but we can vote for our Parliament and our Government, and apparently we cannot find anyone amongst our panoply of politicians in whom we trust. Why? 'They're all shit' seems to be the most realistic answer, but it is also the easiest one to provide and it is clearly not enough.
Until recently, I was a very firm believer in political institutions. They are the symbols of our sovereignty. Without them we’re lost. Even if we made a mistake when voting, or if the party we wanted to win didn’t, our duty as citizens was to make sure the law and the Constitution were respected, and if that was the case, nothing could go wrong. I took particular pride in the Constitution of my country - written after the Revolution of 1974, it was a monument of civil rights and liberties. Reading it was a joy, studying it for any exam I took when I did Law was a renewal of my trust in democracy and in politics (and as you can see, because it is painfully obvious, I was only 18).
But alas, politicians have the power to change the Constitution and for that they don’t need your vote (strictly speaking, they do via a referendum, but they find clever ways around it). And alas, you grow up; you realize that people in political parties are just as bad (rarely just as good) as everybody else, very often so mediocre and brainwashed it makes you want to slap them; you realize that what is written on paper is abysmally different from what reality allows; and you’re left alone. Your ideals crash. You don’t believe in most things anymore, and certainly not in some more or less cheesy, more or less polished ‘yes we can’.
So, I read what Lady V wrote below and I’m also left wondering – what can we do? Can anything be done, even? My opinion is that not much can be done. I’ve written a comment preaching about the right/duty to vote, but sometimes I am convinced that voting is just an illusion that Coca-Cola allows us to have to keep us quietly collecting the dole without going any further in our protests. But then I think about the suffragettes, about the civil right movements in Europe and in the United States, and I compare all this with what the statistics tell me today, of people not voting, of people not trusting, and all I have left is sadness. So, and to conclude (my students would love this), I don’t have any answer to give Lady V, I don’t believe in any kind of activism, I don’t think anything can make a difference. But somehow, I still think that voting can help. And somehow, I still think that being polite to people and trying to be less mean can help. It’s all I have left, and I guess it’s better than nothing, so I’ll keep this till I find something better.

Freedom fighters

The partisan (Leonard Cohen)

When they poured across the boarder
I was cautioned to surrender
This, I could not do
I took my gun and vanished

I have changed my name so often
I have lost my wife and children
But I have many friends
And some of them are with me

And one woman gave us shelter
Kept us hidden in the garret
Then the soldiers came
She died without a whisper

There were three of us this morning
I am the only one this evening
But I must go on
The frontiers are my prison

Oh the wind, the wind is blowing
Through the graves the wind is blowing
Freedom soon will come
Then will come from the shadows

What does it mean to be revolutionary in our time and age? I know, this is another cliché question, but it torments me as I listen to this old Leonard Cohen song, redone by Noir Désir. What does it mean for someone of my age (roughly) to say ‘freedom soon will come’? What kind of freedom do we strive for? We are all so wise and disillusioned, nothing will ever change, everything is predetermined (by the powerful of this world, alas not by God). Rappers might believe in Barack Obama, and turn his ‘yes, we can’ speech into a song, but can we afford to believe? Can we afford to believe in him, when the first thing he did when he became the presumptive nominee is to address the Jewish-American association claiming that Jerusalem will be the eternal capital of Israel and claiming that Iran indeed is a threat? I mean, who are you, man, to vouch for the eternal anything?

Again, the Germans give an interesting take to all these questions, in the film ‘the edukators’. In that film, the young gang of modern communists, broke into houses of the rich and rearranged furniture in obscene manner, writing on the walls ‘your days of plenty are numbered’. A nice oxymoron, you must agree. It makes me think that activism is not dead. Perhaps, new ways of expressing our disagreement with the way things are at the moment should be attempted. Perhaps, we should stop thinking that our short-lived stint in a communist party when we were young can suffice. As Churchill noted ‘if you are 20 and you’re not a communist, you don’t have a heart, if you’re 40 and still a communist, you don’t have a brain’, it tells me nothing that we were all leftists, when we were young. What happens now though? Can voting for an obscure left party be enough to keep our conscience clear? Is it enough to make me sleep well at night? I don’t think so…

I haven’t decided what I need to do, in order to be happy with myself, but there must be something out there, some form of activism that will make me sing ‘the partisan’ in a loud and proud voice and not like now, feeling like a phoney: ‘I was cautioned to surrender, this, I couldn’t do. I took my gun and vanished’…
Oh my god, the horror, it makes me cringe…

One against all

Alcibiades is my favourite Greek of all times. He was an extraordinarily arrogant and ambitious man. He was born in Athens, adopted by Pericles and adored by Socrates. He was young, handsome and drank too much. Athens was in the middle of the Peloponnesian war against Sparta and the two sides were about to take their conflict to another level, in Greek colonies in Italy, supposedly protecting an Athenian colony against a Spartan one. People in Athens were not very convinced this was the right thing to do, but Alcibiades was sure of it. He was put in charge of the campaign and they all went off. Half way through their journey, the Athenians started having serious doubts, and they sent a fast boat to catch up with them and bring Alcibiades back, accusing him of some disrespectful conduct against the gods. It was at that particular moment that Alcibiades knew that he was too good for these people. He had no loyalty to a place that could disgrace him so and believe so little in him. He pretended to be going back with them, but instead he fled to Sparta. There, he fought against the Athenians until Spartans became too skeptical towards his as well. Then he went to Samos, then back to Athens (where he was welcomed back like a God only to be forced to leave shortly after). Then it was Persia's turn, he went from one satrap to the other, selling his 'loyalty' along with secrets against the Greeks. In the end, he ended up alone, hiding in a shed with his companion, an aging hooker from Athens. People were sent to kill him, I think historians can't agree by whom, perhaps the Spartan king, perhaps the Athenians, perhaps a satrap he crossed. They were many but the myth of this man was so much bigger than them. Although they knew he was there by himself, they didn't dare get in. Instead they fired arrows on fire at the shed, in order to force him to come out. The shed is on fire and the cowards are awaiting outside. Alcibiades at some point exits, with a sword in his hands. And at this sight, the sight of a lone man with sword, all the cowards in the world trembled. The myth says that they were too scared to approach him, despite outnumbering him. Instead they stayed afar and fired the arrows at him. Alcibiades died at the centre of a circle, alone against so many. This image has always haunted my thoughts, as I've always wondered how it must feel to die alone, being feared so much.

Last night, I saw the movie 'a bittersweet life'. Always trust the Koreans on a rainy day... The story is simplistic (as it always should be in tragedies) and evolved around a hitman who disobeys his boss and is forced to go after him, alone against all of his old gang. I didn't like the movie so much but it struck me because it was again this story of a man, alone against many, and it made me think of the story of Alcibiades again. Is it the fate of extraordinary people to be alone against the world? Is this the most natural feeling in the world? Brett Anderson once said in an interview that his definition of love is to find someone to team up against the world with. In a book that I love, it said on the breaking of a relationship: they looked at each other and realized that the world had beaten them.

Perhaps all the clichés are indeed true: we're born alone and we die alone and our biggest hope should be to find someone to share this loneliness with.

Birthday

In the days when my birthday was celebrated
I was happy and nobody was dead.
In the old house, even my birthday was a tradition of centuries
And everybody’s joy, and mine, was as certain as any religion.

In the days when my birthday was celebrated
I had the great health of not understanding anything
Of being intelligent amongst the family
And of not having the hopes that others had for me
When I came to have hope, I did not know how to have hope any longer
When I came to face life, I had lost the meaning of life.

Yes, what I supposedly was to myself
What I was of heart and relatives
What I was of evenings in the province
What I was of being loved and being a small boy
What I was – my God!, what I only know today that I was
So long ago!...
(I cannot even find it)
In the days when my birthday was celebrated.

What I am today is like humidity in the corridor at the end of the house
Causing mould on the walls…
What I am today (and the house of those who loved me trembles through my tears),
What I am today is selling the house,
Is everybody dead,
Is me surviving myself, like a cold match…

I see everything again with a clarity that blinds me to what is in front of me
The table set with extra seats, with better porcelain, with more glasses,
The sideboard with many things – sweets, fruit, all the rest in the shade, under the porch
The old aunts, the different cousins, and everything because of me,
In the days when my birthday was celebrated.

My heart, stop.
Do not think. Let the head think.
Oh my God, my God, my God
Today is not my birthday any more.
I last.
Days are added to my life.
I will become old when I become old.
Nothing else.
The anger of not having brought the past stolen in my pocket!
In the days when my birthday was celebrated.

Fernando Pessoa, 1888 - 1935

I'm so sorry I cannot provide an extraordinary English rendition of this poem. This is the best I could do. I felt I had to have this poem here. The only thing I can say when I read it is "sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in. " I wonder if Pessoa felt the same every time he finished writing one of his poems. Did he know that what he wrote would one day mean so much to so many? Does any poet know that? I hope they do, at some level.
Happy 120th birthday, Pessoa.