Roots...

I guess the post titles ending in "..." are supposed to add a sort of nostalgic, hanging-in-the-air feeling to it, but you may be right if you think it is becoming tiring.

...however...

(here we go again!)

A long, sighing "anyway" before moving on, and that is in all possible ways. Over the last week, I have been talking with people on the phone, reading their blogs (or their comments in mine), or discussing with them directly and I got the same feeling from practically everybody. They all need holidays. Either from having worked too hard these last months, having been bored to death or simply because it's summer, in any case people are starting to think of the sea much more often around this period, at least on this side of the planet.

Moreover, and without any loss of generality, we can certainly argue that the geometric locus of the exiled Greeks' dreams is, and will always be, the Aegean Sea (and who ever dares can try to prove me wrong). Nonetheless, I don't think it's so much being tired (the case for most) or lazy (my case) for longing Sifnos, Crete or Schinousa. I 'd rather say it has to do more with our roots than with our mood or stamina. And our roots, whether we want to admit it or not, are inextricably weaved with the pines at the seashores of our childhood, buried in the sand of our teenager holiday beaches, or floating at the edge of the deep green sea of our youth. More prosaically, we need to go back in time, more than in space. And since (as an elderly wise man like Eric Hobsbawm puts it) the past is a different place, we still consider going back as a journey.

I felt his clearly only ten days ago, standing at the shore of this lagoon in Vivari, close to Nayplio, the place where I have spent a number of my childhood summers and which I have been visiting unstoppably ever since. Yes, the past is a different place, but let's admit it, it is a nice place to visit every now and then. On the other hand, no one can convince me that we are living lives so miserable or unworthy, for "nostalgia" to be the only way out.

In the end, for all you Greeks out there, the meaning of "nostalgia" itself (αλγος του νοστου) is actually the "pain of returning home" and this is exactly how Homer meant it. The fact that coming back almost always means also going back in time and this is -most of the times- painful. But what the hell! If after an unknown number of massive cataclysms, the rise and fall of a hundred empires and numerous scientific revolutions we still remain as much of a "masochist" as Ulysses, then -Zeus damn it!- it must mean something. And paraphrasing Kavafis, it may be worth even longing for the journey...

(and there you have them again, these three dots in the end)