What to say

Sometimes happiness is so overwhelming that you don't know what to say.
I never wanted to write a personal blog, I never wanted to just recite what is going on in my life, but sometimes, just sometimes one cannot avoid that. But then perhaps subtlety is a good thing, perhaps one does not need to scream things or to tell them explicitly. Perhaps it suffices to say that you are happy and you don't need to say why.

It's been a tough year, it's been a fucking tough year and now it is becoming this dream come true, it's becoming this out of this world experience that I cannot believe.

I've never believed in fate, I've never believed in this weird force that drives one's life. The Ancient Greeks did though and perhaps they were right. When I first moved to Belfast, on February 2007, I hated it. I hated my life, I hated everything. Part of the reason was because I always felt temporary here, I could never plan my life here, I had no long term plans. But now things are different. Now I can plan ahead and not start my sentences with 'if'. No more conditional sentences and hypothetical scenaria. I can now be a normal adult and plan ahead. My first plan is to go on holiday and the rest will just come naturally.

Bring it on!

The kindness of strangers II

I didn't remember I had used this title before, but I like it so much. The previous post with the same title was somewhat simplistic and naive. I remember the heat of that night, I remember my bed in Athens, the bed that I will never go to again because we moved from that house. So many houses I will never see again. But I digress...

The beautiful quote from Tennessee Williams has always been in my heart from the first moment I heard it, somewhat out of place in Almodovar's 'all about my mother'. For me it always represents this state of mind, the state of mind of trust that I strive to achieve. Trusting others, accepting that not everything is up to you in life. Accepting that you cannot all do it alone, You do what you have to do, you do it well, and then it is up to others to give you what you want.

I am fairly zen, I have to say. I try to accept that it is not up to me much anymore.
And when I stress too much, I watch a bit of Lost...

Fatalism

The summer is here and although it is hardly notable where I live, I have to say I feel it. I feel the dampness in the air, the humidity and the heat, the green leaves, the occasionally blue sea. Even the rain feels different in the summer, it is, how to put it, kinder. It falls politely on you, not like autumn rain that is heavy and relentless. More importantly though, the summer is different because it feels sluggish and slow. It takes me twice the time to do anything that I am usualy doing, I am slow and absent-minded. And I feel the anticipation. By the end of this summer things will have changed. Things are changing as we speak, my chopped nails tell me so. Change is scary, change is fucking scary, but you know what? What if it is? I say, bring it on. Things have to change, and they do, regardless whether we're afraid of that or not. And all these painfully true clishés, show their painfully true face: whatever happens, happens. This phrase is so simple and overused that it's also devoid of meaning. But when you feel it in your bones, that whatever happens, happens, and that there's nothing you can do with it, that no matter what YOU do, whatever happens, happens, then you feel ok. You almost feel zen. You feel like, fuck it man, whatever happens, happens.
Bring it on and konichiwa bitches.

What is style? (I defy...)

After reading a Lifo piece on 'the others', the alternative influential people of athens, which included DJs, bloggers, musicians, artists, I discovered Greek fashion blogs. I have to say, I am a bit slow with the Greek blogosphere, and I am always very happy to see something new that I like. The ones I follow are Fashion Architect and Streetgeist. They are very different from each other, visit in each of them will show you what I mean, but they both care about style, and recently I have been asking myself the old question, what is style?

We all have some ideas about what it is, what it means to have it and how it works. Hallow Kitty once told me that style rests on mix and match: one expensive piece with H&M trousers for example. In general, style seems to be something very personal, almost innate, intuitive, something that people either have or don't, it seems not be able to be easily acquired and definitely not purchased. The problem is that style means something different each decade and it is easily confused with fashion. So, these days, for men, style usually means nerd-chic: oversize black-rimmed glasses, checked shirts and cardigans. For girls, I am not sure: I think vintage (perhaps because I like vintage), oversize glasses (again) skinny jeans and ballet pumps. But this is not style, and it pisses me off, this is just a cheap imitation of Vogue.

All of this makes me think that style is to be able to go against fashion and superficial trendiness and still look fashionable and trendy. And that's why I think that streetgeist captures style perfectly: alkisti and aris photograph people who ooze individuality and seem to defy any good fashion rules. They sometimes seem to have tried too hard, and this, for me, is always off-putting: I think a necessary ingredient of style is being (or at least giving the impression of being) effortless, anything that looks thought to perfection looks very clinical to me. But in general the people photographed by the streetgeist guys look oblivious to fashion trends and magazines. They look like aliens, you cannot pinpoint them chronologically. And therefore they look stylish and cool.

If style then is defying superficial trendy rules then being stylish is a deeply revolutionary act and therefore it carries my seal of approval forever. (Viva la revolution siempre!)

Tired

I have nothing to write, I am just tired of seeing the previous (stupid) post.

To be more precise, I have a lot of things to write (I even have notes on them) but I haven't organized my thoughts yet. And orginizing thoughts, one must do, at least before writing.

Summer has come, uncertainty is still on, I need to wait more for my definite plans, but what to do?

I wait.
And when I adequately organize my summer thoughts, I will post them.