Life in the barracks

Scientifically speaking there is an easy and straightforward way for one to grasp the relativity of space-time and that is through a rigorous decoupling of its two components. If one manages to keep space constant, he allows time to clearly manifest its complete set of properties. And this is the kind of experiment I have been running for the last two weeks.

I know that living in the barracks cannot really qualify as a scientific experiment but things are sometimes better seen as something else than what they actually are. It helps. My military service is much, much more easy-going than I might have expected so there is no real reason for me to whine about something that has been suffered by almost all of my male friends. Being in the amry is no big deal. True it can be frustrating in many ways but one should stick to the positive side of things and if the military service has one such, it can be no other than the spare time it provides to the soldiers. For a 31-year old who has already changed home, job and lifestyle three or four times the mere idea that he only has to care about when to eat or sleep is radically liberating. On the other hand, it can also be close to becoming shockingly, painfully boring and in this way I had to devise a way out. My space-time experiment is the best I could come up with (for the time being).

For my first two weeks in the recruit camp of Arta I chose Thomas Mann's "Magic Mountain" to be my literary companion. I could have hardly picked anything more relevant to my situation. A young man's semi-voluntary confinement in a sanatorium on the Alps, where "nobody asks about him, and he asks about nobody". It may be somehow depressing to parallel my 9-month military service with Hans Castorp's seven years residence in Berghoff but the one thing I find we have in common is the opportunity to explore the relativity of time in its fullness. So, like Hans I found myself repeating the same routine daily, I tended to think about the importance of time and change and I hesitated on whether I should count time passing by with days, weeks or months. Like him, I am looking for ways to exploit the passing time and like him I find it difficult. Like him I have vigorously reflected on the essence of time. And unlike him I have found that if one keeps space constant, time also appears to slow down.

It thus looks like my experiment has already concluded. Which leaves me some 262 more days to think about other things.

today

One might say that waiting would mean to perceive the duration and the present not like a gift but like an obstacle. To deny and destroy their value, to leap over it with one's own imagination. Waiting, they say, is always too long, but in the end it is not. It is exactly the opposite, it is short, too short and damaging since it consumes time that falls behind unused, un-lived and wasted.

Thomas Mann
The Magic Mountain

Depress Mode

Quite sometime ago, while I was still in Barcelona preparing my to-do-before-I-go list (following the wise advise of my friend Sy.) I remember having left one thing out. One thing I had really missed and would have liked to do, if not before leaving Barcelona, at least before joining the Greek Army. That was to go to a big concert, get lost in the anonymous crowd, smell the collective sweat of thousands of people, and enjoy music in a way that would remind me that deep inside we can still be kids every now and then.

Then I left Barcelona and I came back to Greece and a number of sad events reminded me that instead of being a kid I am painfully growing older. And then I was summoned to the Army where I have to present myself next Monday and the clock started ticking again, counting down to yet another series of goodbyes. Suddenly, last Saturday, my sister came to me holding a ticket for a Depeche Mode concert and it looked like the chance had appeared and that I would finally be able to check my to-do list thingy of going to a big concert. They are not so good right now and their last three albums are rather bad but they have once been one of my favourite bands, I saw them once some eight years ago and I remembered having had great fun back then. Plus I was going with my little sister with whom we have been getting closer and closer lately (having gone through some rough times together) and her friends are really funny and the weather was perfect so everything looked like it was going to be great fun.

Before we knew, it was Tuesday night and we were some thirty kilometers away from Athens, in the middle of a nowhere-to-be-found park, us and twenty five thousand more people and I was buying everybody beer, so happy that I was there and having almost forgotten that I am growing old, almost ready to be a kid again and start jumping all around. And then a blond lady came on the stage and a guy with a strong Essex-accent let us know the gig was being cancelled due to “a sudden illness of Dave” (DM’s singer and notorious ex drug addict). And whatever it was, I think I didn’t really care, I was just so let down, that our “mode” had gone from “Depeche” to “Depress”, I was so sad that my little sister was sad and I was so depressed to realize I was suddenly growing old again.

Then we took the long walk towards the car and to the one-hour drive back home, cursing our bad luck. At some point of the way I took a brief moment and tried to enjoy the silence. It sucked.

Absence

One would think of a very solid way to define absence. Someone is missing. There is now a void occupying the physical space that was sometime filled by that someone. There are however innumerable ways for this void to make its existence painfully explicit. Absence, is in this sense, radically different than loss.

No matter how prepared one may be, how incredibly, rationally acquainted with the loss of a beloved person, no matter how bravely he has confronted that loss, or how gracefully he has been avoiding that confrontation, he can never escape being startled by the painful absence that stems from it. And as it usually happens with things related to the beyond, this afflictive awe assumes the most unexpected shapes and sizes.

In my case absence was turning to face an empty chair last night. Ironically at a moment of joy, right after the end of a stressful but rewarding basketball final. It was the moment I would usually stand up from my usual spot on the couch to turn towards the dining table and my father's chair to cheerfully hi-five him and start a series of pointless -but vainly reassuring- congratulations on how good our team has once more proven to be. It was then, facing at an empty chair that the whole reassuring feeling was suddenly gone, the void rutlhessly stood in front of me and I realized how a basketball victory had reduced to so little.

It's times like these when you realize that life is a game you can only hope losing with style.