Greece of the Greek Christians (?)

On December 30th I am to receive guests from abroad. Two really good friends of mine are planning to visit me in Athens for New Year's eve and spend a week or so in the "cradle of civilisation" before heading back to Spain. While in Greece, they will have the chance to "live their myth" as the Greek Tourism Organisation's slogan will undoubtedly urge them to. This includes the Acropolis, museums and ruins, greek hospitality, great food and walks around the center of an -otherwise- ugly-ish city.

For us Greeks that live here however, the ones that have chosen to come back and make a living and the ones that will carry on living here after my friends are gone the "myth" is somehow more complicated. That is because we'll have to keep living in a country where 60% of the population describes himself as conservative and where people have a better opinion about "neoliberalism" than the "left".

The Greek "myth", in the form of the Greeks' ideological Atlas was published in yesterday's Kathimerini and can be found here for the Greek readers who care reading it. The non-Greeks should not feel bad about it, for various reasons. One one hand it's true that they are not in the position of reading Euripides or Plato from the prototype but on the other they don't have to live in a country where more than half of the people would like their religion to be declared on their official documentation. Where 65% still consider "marijuana is bad" but somehow manage to smoke in every single restaurant, bar AND hospital. Where every parent is trying to get his dear son out of the army but where an outstanding 66% is in favour of keeping the military service compulsory. Trully, my friends cannot appreciate Aeschylus or Thucidides but neither do the Greeks, who read on average 1.1 books per year, and who are so fond of "knowledge" that 7 out of every 10 demand that the teaching of religion (the ONE religion) in schools be kept mandatory.

Yes, my friends are more than welcome to live their myth in Greece. A country of warm, smiling people, who prosper under an eternal sun. What the Greek Tourism Organization forgot to mention in the ad is that 60% of these warm, smiling Greeks does not agree that the rights of the ones charged (which means NOT convicted yet) with terrorism are to be respected. I just thought I should warn them.

the greatest book ever written

"I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement".

There are still things to appreciate while in the army, in fact one thing only and this is -I 've said before- time. Time to undertake tasks that would otherwise result too demanding for one's usual 24-hour day. The army provides you with countless hours of idleness, which in turn offer the opportunity for some serious reading. A lot of reading.

Thus, I have grasped this opportunity to delve into a number of unread pieces of my bookshelf, especially the most fearsome ones, those that remained obstinate on the upper shelves resisting me, mocking me for my lack of time and/or daring to bring them down and wonder through their pages. Since there's not much that is really demanding while in the army, this is how I ended up finishing the "Magic Mountain", "Rayuela" and "Light in August" while serving my country at the same time.

The last in this series of great books though, requires a special mention. And this is because it is probably the greatest book ever written. The Waves, by Virginia Woolf.

I know such an aphorism may sound odd to many, especially coming from someone who's not an expert in literature. There is however something so haunting in this book, something unstructured, diffuse and yet profound that urges me to call it thus. Because there are books that give you pleasure, there are the ones that make you want to read more and the ones that make you want to become a writer. And then there comes a book that makes you realise, the one that conveys at the same time the sadness of everything that is worth having been written already and the enormous joy of allowing you to discover it anew.

"The Waves" is not a great story. But it is at the same the greatest of all stories, the story of everybody's life. It is more of a poem than a novel and less of a poem than a play. It transverses all norms and crosses literary barriers that weren't even existent at the time it was written. Most importantly, it resolves the eternal question between content and form with a sublime indifference. In the "Waves", form IS the content. The book's internal rhythm is what matters most. The marginal plot develops at the background forming the bed to the characters' stream of conscience. But it the characters conscience, their thoughts and pondering, their doubts and certainties that makes one feel he is doing something more than reading this book. He is living it.
Above all, the book's greatest achievement, what makes it so inexplicably important is the fact that each phrase belongs to that special powerful kind, the one I have discussed before here. Each phrase in this book gives the impression that it is exactly what needed to have been said.

And I cannot escape admitting that this book is what I needed to have written.

things you tend to miss in the army - staying cool

People who know me can assure you of one thing. I am known to be a relaxed, calm person. Or at least I used to. Because people who know me a little better may bother informing you that of late, I have not been as calm or as relaxed as I once tended to be proud of. I am losing my cool.

The biggest problem is that lately I am also noticing it myself. Which deprives me of the -lame- argument of denial. I cannot but agree with my peers that I tend to be more abrupt in reactions, more straightforward in quarrelling and less patient while judging. Under such circumstances I cannot but resolve to the last refuge of a mature man. Look for excuses. In my case the way out is clear. The army is to be blamed for everything.

In fact, this -blaming the military service and its inconveniences for my bad temper- is something that people tend to accept rather light heartedly. Which really strikes me if you consider that others are willing to justify my mutation on a series of minor changes in my everyday habits. Having to wake up early, not being able to listen to music while working, doing useless night-shifts while your friends are out in some party, all form part of my great excuse to having become a slight bit more unbearable than I used to.

The thing is that by having tried to base my initial defence on such an excuse -and having seen it succeed- I now refuse even more to take it for serious. Being in the army is not an excuse. Yes, I hate waking up early and yes I detest this feeling of utter idleness when one can only read books one after the other being unable to discuss about them with others. (During my time in the army I have only met three -number 3- people who knew who Virginia Woolf was). Yes, it is hard to deal with the absurdity of the most bureaucratic of all bureaucracies, yes it is tough coping up with the laziest and most unproductive representatives of the Greek public servants as superiors.

And yes I am counting every day until I am once again able to stream the suppressed creativity of my 32 years towards something more meaningful than standing attention. But this is nonetheless no excuse for losing oneself. To this test one has to stand with the firmness and will of an Edmond Dantes (they say army is like prison but I don't need to stress, that the circumstances are of a much lighter nature).
For the sake of my friends and for my own sake, I have to go back to being the calm and relaxed person I once was.

a hidden universe revealed - early day commuters

It strikes me just to look at them. All these people...Where do they go? All these people...What are they doing at the edge of the night? Because it is still night at 6.00 am in the "morning", the time I get on the subway on my way to the Athens general military hospital, on my way to my last 9 and a half weeks of compulsory military service.

I have to stress "compulsory". Because there is no other way someone would get me out of my bed and onto the streets at 6.00 am on a weekday. These hours were unknown to me before joining the army. Or perhaps they existed once in an obscure and distant past but only as "coming back home time". These are brutal, savage hours, during which the body is too stiff to work properly and the mind not meant to be working at all. These are useless, worthless hours, whose only eventuality is keeping people frustrated, tired and under-productive so that they can be perpetually blamed upon at the office at daylight and fall eternal victims to TV rubbish at twilight. These are hated hours because they only serve to keep people unhappy.

I am unhappy. Riding the subway at 6.00 am on the way to work must be the definition of unhappiness. Or something very close to it. But all these people? All these people, who are not obliged to show their devotion to their country by waking up at 05.30... whom are they obliged to? What have they devoted their lives to? What have they sacrificed their mornings to? Don't they care to see their children wake up, the sun rise, have breakfast with their beloved? Which kind of work is so important? Which kind of work requires them to be the drowsy card-punchers I pity every morning instead of the active workers they could have been. If they only woke up two hours later. If they had only spent the evening out at the cinema instead of falling asleep in front of the TV.

They are unhappy. Worse than that, some don't even know they are. I am unhappy. Mostly for them. Because after these 9 and a half weeks are past, I am going back to being myself. My happy, active, smiling self, having had coffee at 8.00, reading my newspaper on the subway at 09.00, listening to my happy music, ready for another glorious day at work.

ideas live for more than 101 years

...because there is no substantial difference between the zoologist or the botanist that classifies a recently discovered plant under the name of Elephantopus spicatus Aubl., (a name already provided to him by a system) and an Omaha priest that defines the objective conditions, which will assign the social status of a new member of the clan, by granting him the available name of "old-hoof-of-aged-bison".
In both cases, they know very well what they are doing.

Claude Levi Strauss
La pensee sauvage