Happy new year

Commonplace (and extremely belated) as it sounds, let us toast to the new year.

The year of the horse, my sign, the sign of success, prosperity and happiness.

Looking forward to another year of changes, (aren't they all?) a year of getting better, learning new things, and facing new challenges.

I'll be back soon with something interesting, but until then, Καλή Χρονιά σε όλους!

Things people say

People are funny. I mean, everyone says rhetorical things, commonplace expressions that carry no real meaning whatsoever, but some things are simply wrong. Take my longtime favourite (often uttered in despair by a Greek aunt or uncle, or even worse my mum):

"Have you put on weight recently?"

What do you respond to that? "No, this is just an illusion" or "Yes, I've been sort of eating like a pig lately"? Nothing just seems right…

There is no right answer, possibly because this question should not exist. Rude, intrusive, a truism, and just unacceptable, questions like this make my blood boil.

Other gems include:

"Don't you think this is not the way to do this?"

WTF? If I did, don't you think I would be doing it differently? I mean, seriously people, get a grip.

In general, I guess my point is that sometimes people really, really don't speak to offer any new information to the conversation, or the world. Sometimes people are just self indulgent idiots who speak only to make themselves sound clever or simply be a bit judgemental, for the fun of it.

One day, I will find a good way to respond to all of that, a way that summarises today's post in a way, but I guess until then a "fuck you" would just have to do.

Short

With Alice Munro winning the Nobel Prize for literature this year, I thought I should go back to her, and try to read more of her formidable short stories. I was first introduced to her work by my Canadian friend who recommended her wholeheartedly when I asked him for a compatriot of his to read, apart from my steady longtime favourite, Margaret Atwood.

I bought Munro's "Selected stories" and started reading it. I enjoyed it, some of the stories I even found to be really brilliant, but I never finished the book. Now that I came back to it, with determination and gusto, I read one more story and stopped again. (It didn't help that Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch" just came out at that particular time but that's another story). But the problem, of course does not lie with Munro, she is brilliant. The problem lies with me, or more accurately with my inability to connect to short stories. I never understood why, and of course Munro is not the only victim of my constraint: Tolstoy, Chechov (both of them so often compared to Munro herself), I have never managed to read and enjoy. In short, short is not sweet for me and today, I really forced to ask myself why, and I think I discovered where the problem lies.

Short stories (and poems to a certain extent, another guilty non-pleasure of mine) are extremely minimalist and apospasmatic: they offer really just a glimpse of their subject matter, like a beautiful photo of a fantastic small detail of a giant artefact. All works of art do require work on the part of the beholder: films and books often have open endings, details of the past of the characters are left out and are only implied for, but in short stories there is simply too many blanks to fill. In order to be gripped by a story, I need to get into it, deeply into it, stay there for a while and get properly involved. The fleeting character of the short story really doesn't allow me to do that, and that's why I simply can't get into them.

I guess this means that I am just too lazy for it all. 

An ex-pat's life

Never thought I'd be defining myself as such, but this is what I am, innit? A Greek living abroad, for 12 years no less. Sounds freaky, if you ask me. In my head I'm still 19 years-old for God's sake. I can't be living so many years away from Greece...

Anyway, it gets to you though, doesn't it? I often wonder, do I even still count as Greek? I mean, I'm Greek and all, but not really. For once I can't vote: I am not allowed to vote at an embassy, and I can't afford to travel back to Greece whenever there are elections. The nasty thing about this is: should I even have the right to? I vote for a Greek government from the comfort of my Belfast home and other people pay the taxes... Anyway, I digress and that's a separate issue.

Then, I often forget my language: I think in English, I write in English, I dream in English often. I read books in English, and I always litter my Greek with English words. I also don't feel too close to my Greek roots: I don't understand Greek people sometimes, they feel alien to me. I definitely don't like hanging out with them abroad: most of them seem to me to be moany, annoying brats that complain about the weather and the lack of frapé in coffee shops. Boring. Then there's the food: how can you cook proper Greek food without the fresh ingredients. I think I am making a good imam baildi but when I make it for my dad he complains it's too light, too this, too that, definitely not like how my grandmother made it.

So, the question of identity remains. I sure as hell am not English or Northern Irish, even if I've lived in England for 5 years and here for the rest. Even if I adore the Great British bake off (how very British, no?) and I think the Guardian is a national institution. But more and more I feel I'm this weird hybrid, this different person, this in-between character.

Now is this good or bad, I don't know... 

The same but different

I've always been partly scared of changes in life. I guess this is why I became an academic: I just prolonged my student experience as much as I could, until I was the ultimate student, living in the University and reading books and writing essays for a living. Genius.

Now, when important things happened to me, like for example my husband asking me to marry him, I did have a feeling of panic for a bit. Along with the feeling of immense love and being emotional, and relief (finally someone wants to marry me), I also felt a mild panic: and now what? Does this mean I'm an adult? Does this mean, we are different? Does this mean our relationship is different, or needs to feel different?

The nicest thing about getting engaged and married was not feeling different: I loved him the same and our relationship was a bit different after all that, but really the same.

So, as life goes on, and things change and panic occasionally ensues, I like to remember what Youkali always tells me: you're still yourself, in any new, scary, unchartered situation you find yourself in, you're still yourself. Life goes in cycles and things change, but the fact of the matter is that you're still yourself: young or old, married or single, alone or with friends, with children or without, you're still yourself.

The same but different. 

The man with the white shirt

When the man with the white shirt came onto the stage last night, my heart skipped. I was again 16, in my room, listening to his songs and learning his lyrics by heart. Yesterday, he was handsome but plain: a white shirt, black trousers, his hair not as long. But he was still Brett, he was still the one.

When I first moved to the UK, back in 2001, I thought I had missed the train of seeing Suede live. And then I sort of forgot them for a while, their angst and melancholy didn't seem to fit my newfound life. But they were always there, in the background, singing my dark star, she's not dead, still life and the asphalt world to my deaf ears.

And then last night I saw them live for the first time. It's exhilarating to see the band that you felt defined you for years, there, in front of you, some few meters aware from you. And when Brett came down to the crowd, I felt like running to him, like an infatuated groupie. I got embarrassed and stayed where I was.

When the played Trash last night, followed magnanimously by Animal Nitrate (my God that riff still sounds good), I was back. Back to my room, back to my 16 year old self, back to this feeling of discovering the world, of discovering myself. Discovering oneself through others, isn't this what adolescence is all about? And I felt this happy nostalgia, seeing my old self from afar, I nodded and she nodded back, we said hallow and parted ways again. What a feeling to see your youth, albeit briefly, and like what you see.

Love always, Brett, Suede. Let's chase the dragon from our home, indeed. 

Summer thoughts (take I)

Summer came and went, without a post, without a trace, really. Easily the fastest summer in a while. What happened? Why did it go so fast? Why am I back, my tan fading fast, trying to fight off the rain?But anyway...

This year it dawned on me that I live a double life: most of the year in Belfast, my second home, and in the summer and Christmas holidays, back in my first home, in Greece. This October it will be 12 years that I am away from Greece (a scary thought that I cannot really process most of the time), which means that the people I have back home are diminishing rapidly: my family, my cousins, my new nephews and nieces and old, trusty friends. When I go to Greece, I want to see them, but even more I want to have the illusion that I actually have a life there. A life where I can have someone to go out for a coffee with, or go for a drink with, or go to the beach with, or go shopping with, or go to an island with. I expect to have these people because I always did in the past: I am Greek, I have greek friends, right? Thing is, I am not there for these people, not in their everyday life. At best I am at the other end of a line, a fuzzy picture on Skype, and that when we manage to co-ordinate. But I'm not there there, am I? And still I expect to have these people on stand by when I decide to grace them with my presence for a month in the summer. And most of the time they indulge me, and they make me feel normal. As if they put their life on hold and just half-live when I'm not there and then when I come, we resume our life together. Sometimes though this doesn't really work. People are not available when I want to go on holiday. Or they have other things to do when I want to go shopping. Or they bring other people (OTHER friends) when we go to the beach. And then I get annoyed, or even worse sad. Because I know deep down that this double life is just a bunch of bullshit. I am a nomad, I always used to say, and I used to like this thought.

But this also means I don't have two homes.

It simply means I have none.