Where is home?

Bloc Party, wonder about it, maybe less than I do. Where it is? Where is home?

Late Friday night, the bus from the airport takes me through familiar avenues, sites of a seemingly distant everyday commute, towards the center of my favourite birthplace, which could be the most beautiful city in the world, -and perhaps at some point in history actually has already been. As we go down Vasilissis Sofias Avenue, I become aware of what never left this place. People eager to party 24 hour days without being separated from their cars are infesting every small street from here to Syntagma Square at 4 am!

In front of the Parliament I step off the bus and take a deep breath of the thin, dry air of my old capital. I am home.

But am I really? As I walk down towards Ermou Street to catch a taxi home I run across young people coming out of the nearby bars which are closing down. They all look so elegant and happy, dressed up with smart and expensive clothes. Most of them are maybe 10 years younger than me but make me look like a high-school student with my anorak and my hiking boots and the backpack I am carrying around. I get a feeling my compatibility with Barcelona is starting to become incompatible with my hometown. And as soon as the youngsters, all fun and laughter, rush by me to get a taxi before me, this feeling gets stronger. I stand there, suitcase in hand, as they pass me by with the most naturally innocent way and then I cannot but wonder. Am I a tourist in my own city?

Three days later, I have still not gone out that much. I am spending time with friends and family, mostly because it is them that mean home to me more than anything else. But I still wonder whether I am staying in because of a fear -or to put it milder, an anxiety- to face reality. Starting from tomorrow I 'll try to get as much more of AthensBios as I can, just to make sure, that even if I cannot undoubtedly state where home is, Athens is still part of it.

Submitted. What now?

This image is to celebrate closure.

Of course as in most things in life, closure is relatively hard to define and this becomes even more complicated in science. A paper submitted, after almost a year and a half of trying, does not signify closure at all, but it is at least a relief. And given the holiday spirit, just about to consume everything (literally) and everyone, hence the fireworks.

But as since noon yesterday, after having pressed this "approve submission" button I was longing for, I keep remembering a poem by my favourite Kavafis, entitled "Waiting for the Barbarians". It is because suddenly, I feel I have been so much consumed by work that I find it hard to come back to everyday life after finishing with too many pending issues. Sunday afternoon I almost enjoyed cleaning up my flat, since Saturday I have watched four films on TV already but still I find myself too tense to even go to bed before 3. It is what the poem is about -more or less-. Once a threat, (or a challenge, or a thing you had to do in any case) is not there anymore, what remains to keep you going? You suddenly find yourself feeling empty and useless and it's probably entirely your fault for having shut out every other activity just to get your stupid work done. And now, with your work simply done and you have no idea of what to do. You find yourself, a one-dimensional man, with all your interests suppressed under the weight of everyday obligations. And for this brief moment that these obligations seem to vanish you just stand there half-bored and half-overtensed, insomniac and dizzy.

And you simply wonder if two weeks of holidays are enough for you to regain perspective.

"Devil's week" for "tender feet"

As I am getting close to 30 I still have not served my -obligatory- military service. Only to be the next to last of all my friends to still have escaped and probably the last of all that will finally do it. Among those who have suffered it already, as well as for us outsiders, the concept of a "devil's week", a 7-day military ordeal set to distinguish real men from boys is nowadays a distant legend, a story older guys in high-school would constantly recite, enriched every time with some new kind of torture to scare us off.

We are grown-ups now and we know devil's week does not exist unless you are a US Marine corps "afficionado". Nevertheless devil's weeks keep occurring, with some increasing frequency, in our everyday work life. And the last one I had, would certainly qualify as such.

The 100 hours that separated Monday morning from Friday afternoon, included the culmination of more than a year's attempts in terms of my -otherwise boring- work, the final preparation of a manuscript, rewritten as many times as Kazantzakis' "Odysseia" and a public talk in front of my colleagues -which eventually I may have convinced that somewhere inbetween parties and "happy hours", I actually try to do some research. On the margin of all that, I had to attend seminars and a number of meetings with possible future collaborators, in all a number of activities that would probably make my over-active boss feel at home but for a poor post-doctoral fellow like myself proved simply too much.

By Friday afternoon, I felt dizzy, confused and totally unable to focus even on the simplest communicative activity. This had been my devil's week and there was no doubt about it.
By Friday night, I felt all this was past already. As I was dancing in the middle of a room infested with students and post-docs, eager to see the end of this last month of 2007 and the beginning of holidays, I realized the "tender foot" I have become. There was I, having just had a week that to some hard-working people would not even qualify as rough, having beer with my colleagues, not worrying about Monday or the house's mortgage payment at the end of the month, having worked a bit more in one of the best places, in one of the most beautiful cities of Europe and I had the nerve of talking about "devil's week".

I forgot about it all, as alcohol was finding its way through my circulation to meet with fatigue and loss of sleep somewhere at the back of my head. I had a few more beers and went straight to bed.

Then, the next morning while having breakfast, I read Dorris Lessing's Nobel acceptance speech only to remember once more the extent of the privileges we relish and how "tender feet" we are becoming.

today

L'art n'est pas à mes yeux une réjouissance solitaire. Il est un moyen d'émouvoir le plus grand nombre d'hommes en leur offrant une image privilégiée des souffrances et des joies communes. Il oblige donc l'artiste à ne pas se séparer ; il le soumet à la vérité la plus humble et la plus universelle.


Le rôle de l'écrivain, du même coup, ne se sépare pas de devoirs difficiles. Par définition, il ne peut se mettre aujourd'hui au service de ceux qui font l'histoire : il est au service de ceux qui la subissent.

Albert Camus
Nobel Lecture

life postponed

This is Eric Hobsbawm, one of the world's most important (caution! not "leading", I hate this term) living historians. He is also one of the few people that I classify as "idols", or -more moderately- role models. I started reading his books at that golden age, when at the end of your college years, you realize there are things that matter much more than daily repeating the same electrophoresis assay at the biochemistry lab. Over the last decade I have read most of his main works, including his autobiography, without stopping being surprised by the insight, with which he reflects on most of the modern issues. A guy who is 91.

And who was here in Barcelona, less than a month ago, when this photo was taken for the purposes of an interview in Vanguardia. By that time I was too busy running control tests on some microarray data and meeting with journal editors. By the time the interview was published last Sunday, I was reading about html code and web servers. And by the time I decided to write about this on the blog, yesterday, I was revising a manuscript to be submitted -hopefully- next week. It seems that lately life has been being postponed and everyday has slightly shifted out of phase.

As I rolled down the Port Vell, coming back from the lab once more after 9pm I listened to Nick Drake getting right to the point "When the light of the city falls, you climb on the city walls".

Only there is no wall to climb on and over this, past the place where trivial working issues keep distracting you from opportunities to meet your idols, or read the books that are piling up on your desk, or watch the films you have lined up only to never make it to the cinema on time...

At least there are mp3 players that keep working on the background of all that and headphones that allow you to bear it in the company of your favourite sounds. But you just wish a new invention would come up that would put work in the background just for once (or maybe twice).

Alo presidente! A message to my friend Hugo.

I spent most of the weekend (including last Friday) behind closed doors, in the solitude of reading about html code and CGI scripts, things that may become useful in the near future and come handy on numerous occasions, but do not provide but a minor comfort for spending Saturday at your desk. In the midst of all that, I only had some time to have dinner with friends on Saturday and watch a film on TV yesterday night. But most of all I had the chance to follow the news after a long time, since the newspapers lying on our big table next to my PC were the only distraction I allowed myself to indulge in.

So today a few words about Chavez's lost referendum and how in principal it can prove to be a victory instead of a defeat.

The narrow margin by which the opposition won yesterday's referendum for the constitutional reform is first of all a proof that democracy is -to the contrary to what a lot of people here in Europe are trying to convince us- still alive in Venezuela. No allegations for stolen votes, forced abstention or anything like that.
[At this point I cannot avoid being provocative by asking if such a narrow defeat (50.7% against 49.2%) would have been conceded by the opposition had the result been different. Just think about that!]
But let us move on. Chavez did concede and although he meant to stand firm, he could not hide his disappointment for the more than three million votes he lost between last summer's presidential election and yesterday's referendum. It is these three million who chose not to vote that gave victory to the opposition. But let's talk a bit about what this victory signifies. To me it's a good thing. First of all for the country itself. No country is in need of a permanent ruler be it a president or a King with absolute authority. Venezuela should not commit the mistakes of other countries and above all, should not give any right to the ruthless enemies to talk about a republic tumbling towards dictatorship. Secondly, it's good for Chavez too. The "Presidente" has been flirting with Castro's mistakes far too much after being re-elected. A lost referendum, the first electoral battle he loses in nine years can be seen as a starting point for constructive self-criticism. His work up to now has been incredible and he can be remembered for this alone, if only he chooses to leave out in style by trusting his own people instead of trying to indoctrinate them at all costs. His true followers send him a message by not voting and he ought to consider it as any true leader would.

The NO in this referendum means that Venezuelans do not agree with the extension of the presidential term from six to seven years, that they do not like the same guy being able to run for president more than twice and that they would hate him having unlimited power over the country's media. On the other hand, it also means that radical reforms for the benefit of the poor, such as reducing the hours of daily work and incorporating part-timers and informal "wage-slaves" to the social welfare system will have to be postponed. But the time will come for this, sooner or later. Foreign correspondents should be cautious before they qualify yesterday's result as a rejection to Chavez's socialist program, especially when this rejection is not as firm as they would like and most of all because it is not a rejection of the program as it is a message to the president and his ambitions having led him too far this time.

My dear friend Hugo must have understood his limits and -more importantly- that it is the reforms that matter and not the person who brings them forth. The opposition, on the other hand, should now reconcile with the idea that change CAN be achieved the legal way, meaning through the electoral process and not with prepaid media propaganda or attempting to overthrow the president with money and guns arriving in the diplomatic bag. Most of all the people of Venezuela can be assured that their voice still matters and the people of the rest of the world that when it comes to matters of Venezuela it is better that the Venezuelans themselves decide, without the President of the USA or King of Spain having a say on their decisions.

Given that all sides rise to the above tasks, yesterday's outcome will prove to be for the benefit of all.