Εν Αθηναις βιος

87 Euro for a concert!

2011-11-25T18:16:00.001+02:00

In continuation to the previous post (see below), I am posting the letter I directed to TED KURLAND ASSOCIATES, official representatives of Pat Metheny. Up to now there has been no reply from either them or the Greek organizers. I 'll just wait a bit, but in case I am not given any serious -or at least consequential- reasoning for the ticket prices, I am seriously considering printing the Greek letter and distributing it outside the theater on the day of the concert.

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Dear Sir,

On December 4th, the company "Elliniki Theamaton" organizes a concert by the famous trio of guitarist Pat Metheny (along with Larry Grenadier and Bill Stewart), for whom I believe you act as representative. The "Concert of the year!" by which the organizers have chosen to refer to the aforementioned gig, is to take place at Pallas Theater, Athens and has already broken a European record. The one concerning the price of the tickets!
Tickets, now on sale, have prices that start from 50 and go all the way to 87 Euro! Let me reassure you that this price list, in a country where the average wage is one of the lowest in the EU, having dropped to a mere 730 Euro over the course of this year, is not to be considered excessive but outrageous!
Even more so when one compares directly with the prices of other concerts Pat Metheny Trio have given or are scheduled to give throughout Europe this fall.

More specifically:
By visiting the website of the artist (http://www.patmetheny.com/tours.cfm) and by following the links for each show I realize that there have been concerts in:
Bologna (Teatro EuropAuditorium), with ticket prices of 32-50 euros
in Grenoble, France (theater MC2), with ticket prices of 29-42 euros
while there are scheduled gigs for:
Barcelona (in Auditori Concert Hall), with ticket prices of 22-55 euros
and Istanbul (CRR Concert Hall), with ticket prices of 56-89 Turkish Lira (22-35 euros).

Let me point out once more that ticket prices for the Athens concert are: 50, 67, 77 and 87 Euro!
It makes one wonder over the reasons for which the cheapest ticket for "the concert of the year" corresponds to 20% of the minimum wage in our country.

I need not go into details about the economic situation in Greece but, nevertheless feel obliged to bring this incredible discrepancy to your attention. What drives Greek organizers to set such high prices, at the moment that their counterparts in other European cities provide audiences with prices that are 50%, 60% or 70% lower? I fail to see how such a pricing is justified in any way.
In the past- organizers have claimed overpriced tickets to be due to excessive demands on behalf of the artists. Their argument has been that many artists demand greater fees for appearing in countries of the Balkans or Eastern Europe on the basis of limited commercial interest of the audiences thereof. I have always been very reluctant to accept this sort of argumentation. This time, I am convinced it is not case. Pat Metheny Trio gave a concert in Belgrade with tickets in the range of 1200-2000 dinars (~ 11 to 19 euros) and similar prices were set for the gigs in Bucarest, Skopje and Sofia. Why should Greek fans be asked to pay at least 5 times as much to see the same the concert?

Please do not consider this as a letter of complaint. One such - a much bitter one- has already been addressed to the organizers, who have not up to now bothered to provide me with an explanation. My letter to you is only aiming at bringing this matter to your attention, as representative of the group. I understand there is some connection between the artists and their audiences and I simply felt I had to let them now why they should be expecting a less than full house in Athens, next month.

yours sincerely,

Christoforos Nikolaou
a fan
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Μουσικά Χαράτσια

2011-11-22T15:50:00.001+02:00

Παρακάτω παραθέτω αυτούσιο το γράμμα που έστειλα σήμερα (22/11) στην Ελληνική Θεαμάτων που έχει το θράσος να ζητάει για τη συναυλία του Pat Metheny στο Παλλάς αντίτιμο από 50 έως 87 Ευρώ! Για να μην νομίζουν ότι τρώμε κουτόχορτο. Διαβάστε και διαδώστε:

===================

Αξιότιμη/ε Κύρια/ε,

Στις 4 Δεκεμβριου η εταιρεία σας "Ελληνική Θεαμάτων" διοργανώνει στο θέατρο Παλλάς μια συναυλία του τρίο του γνωστού κιθαρίστα Pat Metheny (μαζί με τους Larry Grenadier και Bill Stewart). Η "...συναυλία της χρονιάς!" όπως την χαρακτηρίζετε αποτελεί σταθμό στην Ευρωπαϊκή περιοδεία του εν λόγω τρίο και έχει ήδη σπάσει ενα ρεκόρ. Αυτό της τιμής των εισιτηρίων!!!
Προκαλεί εντύπωση το γεγονός πως η "μεγαλύτερη εταιρία θεατρικών παραγωγών στην Ελλάδα", έχοντας στο δυναμικό της "μερικά από τα ωραιότερα και μεγαλύτερα θέατρα στην Αθήνα" (στοιχεία απο την ιστοσελίδα σας), κατάφερε να "πετύχει" για το ελληνικό κοινό τα ακριβότερα εισιτήρια μιας περιοδείας που συμπεριλαμβάνει συναυλίες στη Ρώμη, το Αμβούργο, την Μπολόνια και τη Βαρκελώνη. Είναι αξιοπρόσεκτο πώς "το έμπειρο διοικητικό και τεχνικό προσωπικό της που καλύπτει όλα τα επίπεδα : Διοίκηση, Οικονομικές Υπηρεσίες, Marketing, Επικοινωνία, Τμήμα Παραγωγής, Τμήμα Περιοδειών και εξειδικευμένη τεχνική υποστήριξη" (στοιχεία απο την ιστοσελίδα σας) κοστολογεί τα εισιτήρια για την "συναυλία της χρονιάς" με 50, 67, 77 και 87 Ευρώ!!! Την ίδια στιγμή οι αντίστοιχοι διοργανωτές σε άλλες ευρωπαϊκές πόλεις και σε πολύ καλύτερα θέατρα εξασφαλίζουν για το εκεί κοινό τιμές που είναι κατά 50%, 60% ή και 70% χαμηλότερες.

Συγκεκριμένα, κανείς μπορεί με μια απλή επίσκεψη στην ιστοσελίδα των καλλιτεχνών http://www.patmetheny.com/tours.cfm και ακολουθόντας τα links για την κάθε συναυλία να δει πως το ίδιο τρίο στα πλαίσια της ίδιας περιοδείας του έδωσε συναυλίες:
στην Μπολόνια (Teatro EuropAuditorium), με τιμές εισιτηρίων 32-50 Ευρώ
στην Γκρενόμπλ της Γαλλίας (θέατρο MC2), με τιμές εισιτηρίων 29-42 Ευρώ
ενώ πρόκειται να εμφανιστεί:
στην Βαρκελώνη (στο Μέγαρο Μουσικής Auditori), με τιμές εισιτηρίων 22-55 Ευρώ
και στην Κωνσταντινούπολη (CRR Concert Hall), με τιμές εισιτηρίων 56-89 Τουρκικές Λίρες (22-35 Eυρώ).

Θα δει επίσης πως οι ανωτερες τιμές των εισιτηρίων της Αθηναϊκής συναυλίας είναι συγκρίσιμες μόνο με αυτές της Λουκέρνης της Ελβετίας. Ακόμα και οι Ελβετοί μουσικόφιλοι όμως μπορούν να επιλέξουν από χαμηλότερες τιμές μιας και τα εισιτήρια εκεί ξεκινούν από τα 45 Ελβετικά Φράγκα (~36 Ευρώ).

Πριν αρχίσει κανείς να απορεί γιατί το φθηνότερο εισιτήριο για "τη συναυλία της χρονιάς" αντιστοιχεί στο 10% του κατώτατου μισθού στη χώρα μας μπορεί να αναλογιστεί τις εξής πιθανότητες:

1. Το φιλοθεάμον κοινό των πιο πάνω πόλεων να είναι καταφανώς πιο ακαλλιέργητο από αυτό της χώρας μας και να χρειάζονται χαμηλότερες τιμές εισιτηρίων προκειμένου να γεμίσει τα θέατρα.
2. Οι φιλόμουσοι της Βαρκελώνης ή της Μπολόνια να είναι στην πλειοψηφία τους άνεργοι μουσικοί, καθηγητές λυκείου, καλλιτέχνες με περιστασιακή απασχόληση ή φοιτητές με πενιχρές υποτροφίες και συνεπώς να δικαιούνται ενός φθηνότερου εισιτηρίου από τους αντίστοιχους Έλληνες λάτρεις της jazz οι οποίοι κατά κανόνα κατοικούν στα βόρεια προάστεια, θα "κατέβουν" στο Παλλάς με τα SUV τους και θα αγοράσουν ένα CD της συναυλίας για κάθε οικιακή τους βοηθό.
3. Μια προσαύξηση κατά 50% έως 80% στης μέση τιμή των εισιτηρίων της "συναυλίας της χρονιάς" να αποτελεί ένα μυστικό μέτρο που έχει επιβληθεί από την τρόικα στην Ελληνική Θεαμάτων σαν ελάχιστη συνεισφορά στην αποπληρωμή του δημόσιου χρέους.

Αξιότιμη/ε Κυρια/ε,
Καιρός να σοβαρευτούμε!
Σε περίπτωση που δεν το γνωρίζετε, οι πρωτοδιοριζόμενοι καθηγητές στο Λύκειο αμείβονται με 670 Ευρω, οι δε πρωτοδιοριζόμενοι Λέκτορες στο Πανεπιστήμιο με 930 Ευρώ. Το να κοστολογείτε μια συναυλία (όσο υψηλού επιπέδου κι αν είναι) με ποσά που αντιστοιχούν στο 1/10 του μηνιαίου μισθού τους δεν είναι προώθηση της τέχνης. Δεν είναι καν εμπορική εκμετάλλευση της. Είναι μαστροπεία!

Η διαμόρφωση αυτών των τιμών δεν δικαιολογείται με κανέναν τρόπο, τη στιγμή που οι ίδιοι καλλιτεχνες εμφανίζονται σε μεγάλες ευρωπαϊκές πόλεις και σε καλύτερα θέατρα με σημαντικά φθηνότερο εισιτήριο. Ούτε θα πείσει το επιχείρημα που κατά καιρούς έχει χρησιμοποιηθεί, πως δήθεν οι τιμές διαμορφώνονται ανάλογα με τις απαιτήσεις των καλλιτεχνών. Ο Pat Metheny έπαιξε στο αντι-τουριστικό Βελιγράδι με εισιτήρια 1200-2000 δηναρίων (~11 έως 19 Ευρώ) ενώ αντίστοιχες ήταν οι τιμές στο Βουκουρέστι, στα Σκόπια και τη Σόφια!

Πώς αλήθεια θα εξηγούσατε στους φιλόμουσους της Αθήνας αυτήν την προκλητική προσπάθεια κερδοσκοπίας;
Αν πραγματικά πιστεύετε πως ανάμεσα στο κοινό της "συναυλίας της χρονιάς" δικαιούνται να βρίσκονται μόνο όσοι μπορούν να διαθέσουν 87 Ευρώ για δύο ώρες μουσικής απόλαυσης με λύπη μου θα σας πληροφορήσω πως μάλλον ανήκετε σε μια συγκεκριμένη ομάδα παραγωγών θεαμάτων, των οποίων τα "θέατρα" στοιχίζονται κατα μήκος της παραλιακής και οι οποίοι τουλάχιστον δεν προσποιούνται στο ελάχιστο τους μαικήνες της τέχνης.

Σας παρακαλώ πολύ μην πείτε στον κόπο να απαντήσετε σε αυτήν μου την επιστολή. Ενδεχομένως όμως να χρειαστεί να το κάνετε στους ίδιους τους καλλιτέχνες στους οποίους έχω κοινοποιήσει μια αγγλική μετάφραση της.

Σας ευχαριστώ πολύ για τό χρόνο σας,

με μια κάποια εκτίμηση

Χριστόφορος Νικολάου
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The "political consensus" as an appeasment

2011-11-10T13:12:00.001+02:00

The following post was originally published in Greek, some three weeks ago. It has been -badly- translated and reposted here in English for the sake of some stubborn readers who keep asking for news from Greece. Given that the problematic developed in this note -whether or not a coalition government is beneficial for Greece- was finalized only a few minutes ago, I thought it timely to go on and post it again.

Only yesterday (20/10/2011) , with the events already in place to overtake us, the Prime Minister met with the leader of the opposition and asked him to join him to Brussels for the EU Summit. The call resulted in a fiasco. Shortly afterwards, the known communication jackals rushed to portray it as a failure on behalf Mr. Samaras. Both were expected and do not deserve special mention.
What is a little more important is the whole conversation is about this vaunted "consensus" and especially the commitment to it by both members of the government and a large part of the media. The arguments are pretty much as follows:
1. These are difficult moments and political forces need to show unity. The unity will find its reflection in society, which in great relief will experience the historic reconciliation.
2. Our lenders and the accompanying voracious "markets" will judge this consistency between government and opposition as a sign of political maturity. Their satisfaction will be expressed in addressing our country's lending deals with milder economic conditions.
3. Our democracy will finally pass from the "cavemen stage" of the traditional, monolithic debate of ideologies, to that of modern European parliamentary cooperations.

The strongest evidence of the importance and urgency of consensus is the urgent desire of our European partners, a desire that ultimately did not even bother to disguise itself as an "appeal", instead it was manifested as a "demand". This "demand" alone would suffice to make the above executives and their supporters to think twice before advocating the consensus and a coalition government. For one simple reason: That it is extremely doubtful how a consensus between government and opposition would serve the interests of the country under negotiations with exactly those who are urgently asking for it! Under continuing cruel and relentless-as we are being told-consultation with our lenders, the "much-desired" consensus would not work beneficially but only appeasingly. With all the negative implications. Therefore it should be clear that the above arguments in favor of a consensus are perforated. For the following reasons:

1. This so-called "consensus" will not find its reflection in society, for the simple reason that society as a whole is opposed to the imposed policy regardless of wherefrom it originates. Consensus between the two big -at least until recently- parties will simply increase the public feeling that "they're all the same" and will further undermine the faith of the people in the parliamentary system.
2. Our lenders will find an unprecedented opportunity to harden their attitude in terms of their requirements from the current government, which among others will lose yet another bargaining chip. The moment there will be no alternative policy to counter the terms being debated, these should be already considered as accepted. It's surprising how something so obvious has escaped our government officials who to the contrary keep reminding us of the pressure conditions under which the negotiations with our lenders are being conducted.
3. Whether such a development will be for our parliamentary democracy a sign of maturation or regression is evident. Democracy is based on difference of opinion. To openly say that 80% of our MPs being COERCED to agree on a major issue constitutes a progress of democracy is not only amusing. It is dangerous. It suffices to see which political elements within and outside the parliament (far-right, ultra-neoliberals, major mass media groups) are fearlessly backing the latest idea for a national unity government to understand the stakes we are facing.

To wrap it all up, the "consensus" is neither a solution nor a sign of maturity or a springboard to reconcile the divided nation. Instead it is the tombstone for any confidence in the parliamentary republican system for a large portion of society. It will be a dangerous diversion from our democracy and the easiest way forward for those who negotiate the conditions of lending our heavily indebted country.

The rush and fervor with which some advertise it makes one wonder. Or maybe not?

Originally published in Greek here

Let's take it outside

2011-10-26T13:54:00.000+03:00

October 1995.
Robbie Fowler (aka God). Fined 2000 Swiss Francs for wearing a T-shirt that read "Support the Dockers sacked since September 1995"

January 2009. Frederic Kanute. Fined 4000 Euro for wearing a T-shirt that read "Palestine" in 4 different languages.

October 2011. Fans of Panathinaikos are arrested after lifting up a message reading: "Politicians, crooks, parliament of the nonchalant. You will be drown by the wrath of the uprising"

Time to take it outside!

all things come to an end

2011-09-30T11:54:00.000+03:00

This blog could be no exception.

It has been dead for months so it's passing away will pass unnoticed to most, in the way an old relative has been forgotten before the obituary is finally read on paper.

Living in Athens, the purpose of this blog, is becoming increasingly hard these times. But we must endure, redefine ourselves and our lives. Other forms of expression are to be sought. For the moment I fail to solidify them. Time will tell.

till we meet again...

Middle Ages

2011-06-06T11:37:00.005+03:00

They say one way to judge a society is by the way its people treat animals. I say this is probably too much to expect from modern, western "civilized" states. It would suffice to take a look at how the establishment dictates the treatment of human beings.

Decades of prosperity, "progress" and "development" seem to go down the drain when it comes to question terms like solidarity against the all-consuming human drive for profit. We have formed our societies thinking -or assuming- that it was going to be for the benefit of all. That the unlucky could count on the help of the luckier. That those who are deprived of the most valuable could expect some relief from the ones that have everything. I grew up -or at least I thought I did- in one such society. Contrary to what some people think, I have always been proud to be paying taxes as I considered myself to be contributing to a common fund that would end up giving my parents a hard-earned pension, provide my grandparents with decent health care or come to the aim of a friend who has been seriously injured. This is our greatest achievement. It is the greatest sign of "progress" or "development".

It was, because it turns out it no longer is.
According to our "current needs" and in face of the "fear" of financial failure, the Greek State has decided to cut in half the amount of welfare aid towards handicapped people. Moreover, a "rationalized contribution" strategy demands that they handicapped over the age of 55 pay the full amount for prosthetic limbs. The official excuse is that people were taking advantage of the health care system with excessive demand and overcharged products . At the same time, the same Greek State is trying to appease the "markets" who are demanding a 15% interest rate in order to lend us money (probably not quite as excessive as the demands of the handicapped) and is grateful to the efficient -but not elected- European Union bureaucrats for providing the "know-how" to incompetent -but elected- Greek ministers in order to achieve cuts in expenses.

I am falling short of being grateful to these men for pretending to reduce my country's debt by sending its "crippled" to crawl on the streets. I have the right to decide where my taxes go and I demand my money go to the aid of my fellow citizens before they end up paying the interest of a bank loan. In any other case I should, I must refuse to pay them.
Unlike animals or life-or-death in the middle ages, we have structured our societies on the basis of solidarity, so that we all have a chance to feel useful and complete, so that we are all given the right of creativity and hence we can prosper as a whole. They should not and cannot take this away from us for it will be our greatest defeat.

it's always May

2011-05-21T10:09:00.007+03:00

(Young protesters changing the name of the City Hall Square into 15th May Square in Valencia. Photo by: jacobictus)

It's only been three days since I was contemplating on the need to act, indignant for my passive reaction to what is happening in Greece, discouraged by the way the state has decided to use the police against protesters and disgusted with the way the mainstream media seem to back them up. Thanks to the same media, who have the suspicious tendency to discover a new "terrorist" every time our government is about to announce another set of austerity measures, I -and the majority of Greeks- was still ignorant of the massive protests all over Spain until a few days ago. It looked as if the sensitive journalists of the establishment have failed to realize what was, what IS happening in Spain, where people, young people still maintain the courage to take to the streets, march, shout, even camp in Puerta del Sol, Plaza Catalunya and elsewhere without having to face tear-gas cannisters and globs.

Even more, it looks as if in Spain, the media still see the people -especially the young- for what they really are. Unemployed, in search for a low salary and an even lower rent, disappointed with how their education has turned them into by-products of a system of labour that cares more about interest rates than people and infuriated with their leaders that are too stubborn to realize what is obvious to almost everybody except perhaps to some short-sighted bureaucrats in Brussels. That things, as they are, are simply not working.

The movement of May 15th, is a movement of the young, which sparked of in May, in a European capital. The similarities to that other May, the Parisian one of 1968 end here. The French of the 60s were suffocating in a world of post-war prosperity. They were asking for "imagination to assume power", they were clashing against the police and went back to school once their revolution was smashed. The Spaniards (and the Greeks, the Irish, the Portuguese, tomorrow even the French and Italians) of the 2010s are the casualties of economic warfare. They demand a decent job with a decent pay, a decent place to live. They are pacific and non-violent (for now) but once, when, if their revolution is crashed they will have no other place to go than the exact same streets they now occupy.

Just think about that.

the crisis and why one should care

2011-05-18T11:54:00.005+03:00

It's as simple as that. The more you care about the current economical crisis, the more you get entangled in something that is beyond the grasp of the great majority of the people, even well educated ones. Over the last year, I have been trying to understand the basics of the global financial system through reading of newspapers, analyses, economists' blogs, by watching (good and bad) documentaries and talks on TV. But there was just too many SWAPs, too many derivatives and too many interests (literally speaking) for a poor bioinformatician to handle. I ended up wasting a great amount of my time without really getting a more elaborate idea than the one I had in the beginning: "There is something systematically wrong in this system".

I soon reached the conclusion that one should not really care about it. Let's face it. Life is short and one cannot expect but to pursue only a small part of his dreams over its course, the amount of which will be greatly reduced if he were to spend his time trying to understand how others pursue their own. My dreams have to do with understanding the way nature works, the particularities of the human soul expressed through literature and music, the extent of human ingenuity through football tactics. Other people's dreams have to do with how to become rich at the expense of others. It is a minor dream chosen by petty people. I said, let them have it their way.

The problem is that THEY are not letting me have it MY way.
Over the last week, these petty people, the little men (and women) in Brussels, Strasbourg and whichever place it is that their insignificances choose to hold their meetings, have been trying to "convince" the greek political parties (and hence the Greek citizens) to reach a consensus otherwise they will not carry on with the financial "aid" towards our country. The consensus here being simply the opinion the two greatest parties have on the memorandum that the greek government has signed with the IMF/EU/ECB "troika". It is, in fact, a common extortion of the worst kind. They are not urging the political forces of the country to reach an agreement. They simply demand that they all accept the -already signed- terms of the treaty as being the only way to go. Yes, we are back at the times of "total solutions". "Arbeit machts frei" is soon to follow.

Under these circumstances, carrying on with one's own business simply is not an option anymore. Even if for the majority this looks like no great a change, we are facing a challenge on which we cannot turn our backs. Democracy is at stake, the whole tradition of the Enlightenment, on which our culture has based its foundations is in danger. Lending money in a way that would have made Shylock blush is one thing. Making sure that a pay back will be done in a way that would ask for ever greater loans, thus holding a whole generation as financial hostages is another thing. But to demand that everybody says "Yes, we love the way you are screwing us up" is a whole different one.

Going beyond just the end of democracy, it is the end of reason.

the man who ran a lot

2011-05-06T15:07:00.003+03:00

When I was a little boy, two things were very common on Saturday nights. One, my parents, still quite young and too tired of staying in the whole week, wanted to go out. Two, the Greek TV, still in its innocent youth was overwhelmed with old Greek comedy films, most of them shot during the 50s and 60s. The two combined meant that I had to spent a great number of my childhood's Saturday evenings watching Greek comedies at my grandparents place in the -then- quiet and picturesque neighborhood of Gazi.

There was one more thing. Back then, I could not stand Greek films. Oddly enough for a child at my age (these evenings were more frequent at the age of 5 to 10), I had the greatest distaste for these naive -I then thought- productions that could simply not compare to the historical Hollywood feature films like "Spartacus" or "Lawrence of Arabia" that were my father's favourites. Even more strangely, I could not stand colour. I vividly remember having a strong preference for black and white films, which to my eyes appeared more original, as I found it hard to accept that technicolored, cinecitta-like, musical extravaganzas had anything to do with Greece in the 60s. To my childish eyes -and as it now seems to the eyes of most people-, Greece in the 50s and the 60s was a black and white place, poor but romantic, grey and nostalgic.

Among those black and white films, there was only one kind I really LIKED to watch (to the relief of my grandparents). Those starring Thanassis Veggos. Aka our "good man". Aka "the man who used to run a lot". Truly the most talented Greek comedian of all time, undoubtedly the most innovative, simply the most beloved actor in the (short and moderate) history of Greek cinema. There was that time, I still remember, when Veggos was on, that everything stopped. At the age of 7, I could not get all his lines and I was puzzled by some of his references to anti-military themes, but there was something in this man's voice, his constant running up and down, his overall struggling that to me was -subconsciously- identified with the Greek soul.

To my childish eyes, THAT was Greece in the 60s. A guy in black and white, always in a working-class neighborhood, obviously uneducated but curiously wise, working three or four jobs to get by. A guy who never gets rich, never gets the pretty girl, never gets to be famous. Yet a guy with a smile that cannot be beaten, a laugh that cannot be silenced, a face impossible to be forgotten.

The "man who ran a lot" reached the finish line last Tuesday. Given that our Greece today is starting to resemble that black and white country his films took place in, there is a growing demand that we live up to his effort.
After all, life is a relay race.

becoming Bin Ladin

2011-05-03T07:55:00.006+03:00

Bin Ladin's henchmen and followers have repeatedly kidnapped, killed, decapitated westerners, often innocent reporters, whose bodies were never recovered. Through the eyes of fellow westerners, those have been considered, barbaric, intolerable acts of cruelty not abiding by the moral standards of our advanced societies.

After the killing of Usāmah bin Lādin, alongside three other men and a woman, the same westerners were pleased to announce that justice has been done. Unfortunately, this was justice the Bin Ladin-way. Breaking and entering, shooting indiscriminately -as none of the 25 extremely capable U.S. Navy Seals were harmed during the shooting-, kidnapping the body and bearing it in the sea as "finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult."

Now that ʾUsāmah bin Lādin "sleeps with the fishes", there is perhaps a timely question to answer. Is this the kind of example we "westerners" will pass on to "those rogue, backward muslims"? What has become of the western democracies in times when even a not-so-common terrorist suffers the exact same end would advocate for his victims? President Obama who thought that "yes we could", Frau Merkel who found Ladin being dead (correction: killed) to be good news and President Sarkozy who greated a preposterous act of violence as "a major event in the fight against terrorism", should think again.

Perhaps, they are becoming just like Bin Ladin

please do not like this post

2011-04-27T10:04:00.008+03:00

When I started this blog I (must have) had a number of reasons. Nowadays, I can't quite recall any of them. Surely, if I try hard I may come up with a couple of new ones but something tells me it would be quite pointless. Over these last five years, there has been so much blogging, tweeting and status updating, that it would be hard for anyone not only to keep blogging but even to find valid reasons for doing so.

It has therefore become striking to realize that there are perhaps more bloggers and tweeterers out there than those who actually find the time -or simply bother- to read all the blog posts, interesting articles and "memes" circulating the "blogosphere". At least, I find it extremely difficult and have thus gradually shifted from being a blogger to panting out of breath to catch up with the bulk of interesting stuff piling up in my Google-Reader page. Not that I manage. Most of the times, I find myself utterly distracted, slightly dazed and disorientated in front of a dozen of open tabs, each pointing to a great album review, a nice piece published on TLS, an interesting scientific paper and a couple of reporting stories, all these in various languages (my moderate ability to read in 4 languages only worsens my distraction), none of which I manage to read in its entirety. What do I do then? I simply click on the "share" button of my browser and there it is. My somewhat interesting discovery is posted as a facebook update or a tweet, for other people to finish up what I couldn't. Read the damn thing!

It's not just me I assume. More and more we are turning into a universe of "sharers" of things that very rarely live up to their real meaning. There is simply so much of information out there that it is impossible for one to parse even the slightest portion of it. We end up reading abstracts in an abstract way, browsing through titles infested with "buzz-words", we share, we post, we forward, we like but very rarely read. Instead we create a universe of links, a web upon the web, where texts and hypertexts are connected like mass-less, volume-less dots without content.

And yes, all and all it's just another dot on the web. So please do not "like" this post!

demotivation

2011-03-12T12:13:00.007+02:00

One can think of a number of reasons for not blogging for the last 2 or more months (is it that much already). Being busy is one, although in my case this is not it, despite the fact that over the last two months, I underwent marriage, mild surgery and yet another employment crisis.

Depression, boredom and a general feeling of "n' importe quoi" are probably more valid. In all, there is a significant lack of motivation in talking about something in here, when there is a lot to be done out there. There are issues at stake that demand something more than blogging, but as it turns out in these times of shock and awe one ends up in doing nothing, not even blogging.

I have no idea of what will happen in the next few weeks. In times when a dictator's downfall brings about an increase in oil prices instead of freedom and massive earthquakes fuel more discussions on the economy rather than on the victims, one has to admit that there is little margin for fight against the tsunami of stupidity that is threatening to drown us all.

Still, one has to find the motivation to do something about it. Until then he can at least blog about it.

Strike Three - (you 're out...)

2010-12-14T10:31:00.004+02:00

This has been the third great general strike since last May. Back then, it all seemed dismal already. Today, a mere 7 months and two more strikes later it looks as if there is no going back.

The most recent (but not the last) of a series of austerity bills hit the ministry desks last night with one more deputy of the ruling "socialists" exlcuding himself from the vote. It was the least he could do not to go down in history as one of those who once gave in to the demands of a foreign, not elected authority that asks for the lowest average income in the EU to be cut down by 10% to 40% and in some cases 60%. Which roughly translates to 10%-40% less spending, 10%-40% less holiday, 10%-40% less education, 10%-40% less health. And 10%-40% more profit for those who used to pay those "surpluss" wages of 700 Euros, the bankers, the CEOs and the company owners who will pay ~15% less taxes this year as a reward for having put up with such overwhelming earnings on behalf of the "lazy" workers of this country.

These workers, will now have to pay the price for having lived on the benefit of "development" for so long. Only this "development" meant a shift of the balance to the bottom. After all this "development" and "expansion" one out of five Greeks lives at the edge of poverty. After all this "growth" you have half a million Greeks unable to visit a doctor. And you see people fighting on the streets for who gets to be the first to look for food in the trash can.

But it was growth for some all right. It was growth for the shareholders who saw their taxes being cut down from 40% to 22% on average over the course of the last 20 years. It was development for the banks who could privatize profits and nationalize debts. It was expansion for those who will now buy this country's forests, coal mines, buses and trains for scrap.
In Europe like in the US the model prevails over the facts. As long as there is "growth" and "development" it's business as usual for those who have their appointed prime ministers cutting the deals. The rest can enjoy poverty.

Update: All of the above, better said -in Greek- here

the last stand

2010-12-08T15:14:00.005+02:00

Of late I have re-newed my devotion to Thanassis Papakonstantinoy mostly due to the interest epxressed by my good friend J. upon listening to a track of Thanassis, which I had casually posted on my facebook page. After giving J. a brief introduction and urging him to listen to "Vrahnos Profitis" (one of my most favourite Greek albums ever) I also found myself unconsciously pressing "repeat" over some of the tracks of the album.

This is how I got to remember "A. Manthos" (the album's fourth track and one with very particular lyrics) and how I came up with the story behind it. The song's lyrics have been adopted from a poem by Christos Bravos, referring to a real incident between Athanasios Manthos, a photographer of the town of Trikala and Thomas Gandaras, an infamous bandit of the region of Thessaly which took place in the 1920s. Gandaras had an extremely bad reputation among the great land-owners of the region for having an extensive record of kidnappings and killings, but as these were limited against the rich and the powerfull, the poor people were largely sympathizing with him. The legend had it that Gandaras became an outlaw in order to avenge the rape of his wife by a squire, thus he and his gang were more often thought of as "Robin-Hood"-like bandits instead of as fierce killers.

But authorities thought (as usually) otherwise and soon the head of Gandaras was put a price on. As the manhunt was closing down on him and his men, he realized that it was not meant for him to last long. Before his last stand, he wanted to strike a last pose. He decided to have his photo taken. One night, he
forgot all precautions and sneaked into the house of Manthos, by then a well-known photographer in the town of Trikala and the nearby villages. Manthos woke up in awe as the ruthless bandit stood before him but was relieved to find out that all the the outlaw wanted was his portraid done. Thus in the middle of the night, Manthos, who was used to photograph weddings and funerals, took a photo of the famous Thomas Gandaras in the living room of his house and in outmost secrecy. The story of this secret meeting is told in the aforementioned poem "A. Manthos" by Christos Bravos, has been made a song by Thanassis Papakonstantinoy and was recently the subject of a beautiful short film by Vassilis Kosmopoulos entitled "The Trikala photographer ".

In the days that followed, Manthos met Gandaras in his secret hide-out where he took one more portrait of his (the one you may see here, taken from the blog of Konstantinos Davanelos) as well as a photo of the entire gang. Gandaras finally met his destiny as he was hunted down and killed by militia-men close to Deskati, Grevena on August 5th, 1923. He was decapitated and his head was exposed in the main square of Kalambaka the following day.

Wish you were here (E.T.)

2010-12-03T13:35:00.005+02:00

That I am a devoted fan of Pink Floyd is no mystery to the readership of this blog (all three of you). I have repeatedly mentioned names and places related to the greatest band of them all in various past posts, including a (personal) obituary for the late Rick Wright. Having a particular strange tendency for both visual and audial connections it was then very easy for me to spot the missing link behind NASA's Astrobiology lab latest discovery.

According to this, the first living organism to be able to incorporate arsenic instead of phosphorus in its genetic material, was recently isolated in lake Mono in Southern California. The bacterion, whose name (GFAJ-1) comes as yet another proof that people in NASA may provide a whole new level to the definition of dullness, was the object of a greatly anticipated press conference which circulated media feeds and e-mail boxes all over the globe yesterday. People who were let down by the fact that the press release (initially making explicite mention to "the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life") turned out to be about an insignificant bug with an utterly boring name should think twice.

A long time before NASA turned to Lake Mono in desperate search for extra-terrestrial life, Pink Floyd had used its surroundings in a famous photo by Storm Thorgerson which appeared at the back cover of their "Wish you were here" album. This is the snapshot of a diver immersing in the alkaline, toxic but calm and ripless waters of Lake Mono. (And judging from the concentration of arsenic in these waters, I can only hope that the photo is the outcome of some artistic superposition of images.)

Whether the existence of extra terrestrial life was something that concerned Pink Floyd at the time, or whether it was the unwordly atmosphere of the environment that matched their nostalgic title of the album, I dare not speculate. However, the inconcistency with which the scientists announce a talk about alien life only to provide us with an example of what can only be terrestrial (even though underwater) can only make me think that in their quest for E.T, the guys in NASA maybe constantly thinking how they "wish he was here".

getting there (or quite)

2010-11-30T12:15:00.005+02:00

Hard as I try to downgrade it trough scorn and ridicule, the truth is this: I like my job. For the simple reason that I am too lazy to be doing anything I would not really like. When I think about it, there are more than one reasons for liking what I do the most important of which being that it is the closest it gets to providing me with a sense of being inspired and productive.
Research is a sort of an art for the untalented. You are not really good in something, other than solving problems, yet you experience a certain feeling of fulfillment once you do solve them, no matter how trivial.

Fellow researchers (or for that matter, "researchers" like myself) may assure you that such a feeling arises far too seldom. Still the reward lies exactly on this rarity. In this way it better resembles an "epiphany" that makes it look like a true inspiration. The best part though is that it gives one the impression of having solved a difficult problem in the twinkling of an eye. Because apart from all sorts of metaphysical satisfaction, it provides you with the obvious advantage of having very little to do. Once you 've single-handedly solved the problem over lunchbreak, your work is done. You can spend the rest of your post-doc term in happy hours, holiday and general slacking-off, simply by attending the occasional conference.

But is it really like this? Until recently I thought (hoped?) it was. I still remember an early Saturday afternoon back in my old flat in Barcelona, sometime in April 2006. It now feels like a long time ago and it probably is. I haven't talked to my -at the time- flatmate Maria for over four months and that old flat is now being rented to tourists on a weekly basis. But it was on that distant afternoon, while Maria was testing her patience waiting for me to accompany her to the supermarket, that I had that idea, that brief glimpse through the peephole of truth (or at least something that seemed like it back then). It was that moment when, between getting my coat and checking my e-mails that I got a crystal-clear idea of how to solve the main problem of my qualified as "impossible" post-doc project. As I triumphantly switched off my laptop, I turned and gave Maria my "I 've done it again" smile. I walked out the door, certain that my job was almost done.

Well, it's been four and a half years since then and it looks like the job is still almost done. My initial brilliant idea had since developed into a computer program, whose performance had to be bench marked, compared with similar programs based on similarly brilliant ideas, its results had to undergo thorough experimental verification, the whole thing was put to paper sometime in the summer of 2007, reached the desk of my supervisor the next fall, had to wait there until spring 2008, undergo an unfathomable number of revisions, suffer the usual cycle of submission-revision-rejection-resubmission only to be published in its final form last Tuesday. In all, it looks like it took a bit more than the twinkling of an eye.

In the meantime, I have come, seen, not conquered and left Barcelona, having realized that it takes much, much more than a brilliant idea (let alone one that proves to be not so brilliant after all) to get the job done. In this sense research, profession-wise, becomes much more like any other job. Tedious, time-consuming, a stressful endeavour during which the truly inspiring, productive part is consumed within a moment only to leave the rest of the time to be filled by the boring, the tiring and the "what-the-hell"s. "Getting there" is not as easy as just having a great idea. The road is long and winding just like in any other thing that is worth trying.

In the end, no, I am not going to say that "it's the journey that matters" but I have to admit that one can get wiser on the way. Even if it's just by realizing the value of slowing down, catching a breath and realizing that what we do is not important but that it is important that we do it.

would you trust your vote with this woman?

2010-11-14T12:10:00.004+02:00

Seriously, would you?

In times when explosives are posted via Fedex to elected government officials, in times when students break into the headquarters of the ruling parties, in times when massive strikes are becoming everyday life, when every single bill is met with the fiercest opposition and outrage...

Well, in times like this, one would say democracy is simply not working. Democracy as it is being practiced at least. Democracy as the system where less than half of the people are convinced to choose among a handful of leaders whose ideas and visions are proven to be remarkably identical. Leaders only by name who are obsessive with power, backward in almost every single aspect of thinking, leaders who look frighteningly, dangerously, suspiciously as if they were "being led" instead of "leading". Leaders, governments, officials, think-tanks that appear "know better" and hence with increasing frequency take decisions that are radically different from what they have set out to, upon being elected.

In times like this, we are asked to cast our votes knowing that this is the closest ever we will get to making a difference. Only the difference is never taking place as new faces take the place of old ones only to iterate the old rhetorics and the so-called democratic governing of the talking heads consists of passing one offensive bill after the other without the slightest support of the electoral body, which has to wait stoically until the next election to "send a message".

But all this is about to change, as enlightened leaders are finally reaching to the root of the problem. Angela Merkel knows better.
At the head of a cast of visionary politicians of the 21st century she has proposed that we do away with voting altogether. "That's it!", she thought, "lets get rid of the votes of the poor European states for starters!"
Why should we have them voting if they cannot even buy our exports anymore? Then we can do away with the votes of all states and be left with the real intelligentsia, all these officials of the European Bank, the directorates of the central European committees that are not elected. I mean, just see how efficient THEY are!
Next comes the big step. Why not banish the whole election process? Seriously, does it make any difference? Why bother with such an irrational expense when we all know that what they are voting for is nowhere close to what they are getting? Do we really need to go through all this fuss?

Well, I couldn't agree more!
Upon facing respectable Angela (or Sharkozy, or Cameron) wouldn't you think twice before trusting them with your vote?

cherchez la femme

2010-10-08T14:25:00.006+03:00

Mario Vargas Llosa (left) and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (right).
Gabo's bruised left eye courtesy of the 2010 Literature Nobel Laureate

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded yesterday to Mario Vargas Llosa, a decision that besides being fair (although according to some a very late one) finally brings Llosa on-a-par with his fellow writer, old friend and great rival for the prestigious title of the greatest living Hispanic American writer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Readers around the world are now welcome to reconcile the two literary men as equally great in both public acceptance and critical acclaim.

What remains to be seen is whether this prize will settle a long-lasting feud between them and if Gabo and Mario, once inseparable, will finally talk to each other after refusing to do so for more than 34 years. Over the decades people have attributed this contend between the two once best friends (Marquez being the Godfather of Llosa's son Gabriel) to either professional jealousy or opposing political views. Llosa has been a fierce neoliberal since the early 90s when he even ran for the presidency in Peru, while Marquez has always openly exhibited his left-wing ideas and has been a close friend of Fidel Castro, for which Llosa often refers to him as "el cortesano" (the courtier). Nevertheless the roots of this rivalry are neither political nor authorial. They can be traced back to a winter evening of 1976 in Mexico City, date and place where the incident of the black eye occurred. The story involves two Nobel Prize winners, a right-hooked punch and at least one woman.

The legend has it that on the evening of the 13th of February 1976, while in a movie theater in Mexico City, Marquez spotted Vargas Llosa sitting a few rows behind him. Upon making a move to embrace his good -he thought- friend, he found himself lying on the carpet with a bleeding nose and a sore left eye. (Legend also has that his shiner received immediate treatment by Helena Poniatowska placing a steak on it). In the meanwhile, Vargas Llosa, author -among other works- of the most famous punch in the history of literature, was led outside the theater shouting in rage: "How dare you try to embrace me after what you did to Patricia in Barcelona!"

The background to this incident lies at the verge of being qualified as TV gossip material but since photographer Rodrigo Moya has made it public it has assumed some far-reaching consequences, among which the reluctance of Marquez to complete the second volume of his autobiography or Llosa's refusal to republish his doctorate thesis on Marquez's legendary "One hundred years of solitude". The story goes that while both men where living in Barcelona with their families, Vargas Llosa fell passionately in love with a Swedish air-hostess, for whom he left his wife Patricia and moved to Stockholm. Patricia sought advice in Marquez and his wife Mercedes, the two having always been very close friends of the couple. It was later said that they strongly advised her to ask for a divorce. Even later, it was insinuated that Gabo's consolation to Patricia may have been a bit overly friendly. Vargas Llosa was informed (or misinformed) of the facts (or not) of the matter when he later returned to his wife (they always do) as she was probably too reluctant to contain herself (or too willing to exaggerate).

The rest is history (or not yet). As the two masters casually met in Mexico the following year, Vargas Llosa felt obliged to demonstrate to "the courtier" how the right (hand) can deliver a decisive blow on the left (eye).

How a duel of this kind and proportions can be resolved, even among two of the world's most prominent Nobel laureates, remains unclear.

...................

PS. A couple of hours after this post I read Marquez's latest tweet, posted on the day of the Prize announcement. It simply read "cuentas iguales", roughly meaning "even". Purposefully ambiguous, as all aphorisms, it can be interpreted in many ways. You choose the one you like the most.

going the wrong way

2010-08-01T03:46:00.003+03:00

With lorry drivers all over Greece on strike for a mere three days, the minister of transports ordered them to break their strike, threatening to recall their permits if they did otherwise. Two days after that, and with truck drivers keeping their ground, the Greek government has employed the country's military forces to take their place and thus resume the distribution of goods and fuel throughout the country. As of yesterday army trucks are delivering fuel to airports and gas stations and somehow this is supposed to be restoring "stability" in markets and transportations.

My fellow citizens who are relieved to be filling up their tanks and finding fresh apricots on the shelves of their supermarket, should think twice. They may be heading to the nearest beach on their cars and motorbikes but they are probably missing the fact that this is being done at the cost of workers' rights being stepped on in the most audacious of ways.

This is a government, socialist only by name (like so many, nowadays), that first cuts down salaries and pensions to almost half of the population, then sits and stares at prices going up at record stagflation rates and decides to take action only when it is about further attacking worker's rights according to the dictates of the IMF. The new law -the reason for the lorry drivers being on strike- asks for a change in the status of a so-called "restricted access profession". For more than 35 years, in order to become a lorry driver someone had to pay a lot of money to get a permit that he could later transfer at will and at a price he decided. The government -aka its IMF "dictators"- have now called against this "unjust" system and are attempting a "reformation" (and you have to excuse words within double quotes but they are necessary). The new system will thus "open" the profession by rendering the permits so cheap that they become obsolete. Justice? Well, not quite. What the new law says is that the permit will be almost free to give away as long as someone has set up a "transport company" under which designated drivers will be working on a contract. What the law actually aims at, is opening the way for big food and fuel companies into a new market, safeguarded until yesterday by the lorry driver unions. Because that is exactly what is going to happen. In the past, individuals may have struggled for a permit that, given the organization of the union, guaranteed them a living but there is no chance for a middle or lower-class (if those still exist) guy to be able to start up a company. On the other hand, big companies have their way paved for them by the state. They won't even have to pay for the permits before setting up their own transport branches that will hire the ex drivers who will be unable to work without a contract.
Now does this sound like a "justified" "opening" of the profession to you?
What it really is, is a ruthless attempt to restructure the transportations sector from being limited-profit free-entrepreneurial into an oligopolistic trust with great profit margins for big companies, with the subsequent abasement of the workers.

What is even more striking is the credulity and submission with which the media have supported the government's decisions, first to force the lorry drivers to end their strike and then to bring the soldiers on the streets delivering gasoline as if Greece has suddenly become North Korea. No talk about workers' rights abuse, no talk about dangerous connotations whatsoever.
But the worst part comes when one sees the public opinion dozing off in this media-administered apathy. As the country is experiencing cataclysmic changes in every possible aspect of everyday life, people are actually backing up the government by demanding this strike be over. That is, they are granting officials the right to undermine the future of thirty thousand people, being too short-sighted to see that what happens to the lorry drivers today, will be happening to them tomorrow.

One fifth of the Greek population is living on the verge of poverty. 18% of Greeks will not visit a doctor for not being able to afford it, some 20% have reduced their spending on everyday goods like bread and milk, but in the end what really matters is that the "poor Greeks" get to have a five-day, well-deserved, overpriced summer vacation which is being ruined by them bloody truck drivers. So "bring on the troops", "stop the strike", "put them behind bars" for wanting to maintain their working status. Everything is acceptable as long as people can ride their cars off to a nearby beach.

Well, it's not!

I hope -for the sake of us all- that people start thinking with a clearer mind once the summer is over and sunbathing will no longer be their first and only priority.
Until then and with the lorry drivers holding firm at a brave standstill, it looks like everyone else is going the wrong way.

life in the afternoon

2010-07-31T10:01:00.001+03:00

With summer holiday just about to begin, I now know which book to take with me to the beach. This year, it's going to be "Death in the afternoon" by Ernest Hemingway. Not so much for the fun of it, or for an obvious debt in reading it (probably being Hemingway's most "Spanish" of books) but mostly because this book seems like the ideal way to lightly ponder about a long-lasting debate on the future of Spain's bullfighting tradition.

Were he alive today, Hemingway, a passionate bullfighting "aficionado" ever since -the legend says- witnessing the Fiestas de Pamplona back in 1920, would have suffered a blow facing last Tuesday's Catalan Autonomous Parliament's decision to abolish bullfighting in Catalunya. Given the region's historical background and its constant drive for breaking its bonds with anything that is Spanish, it is hard to see perceive this decision completely decoupled from politics. In fact, it would suffice to look at the distribution of votes on the matter to realize a -not so strange- correlation between an assumed sensitivity for animal rights and political views. In all, it was a heavily divided vote, with representatives of the local nationalist parties being strongly in favour of the abolition act, in contrast to those of the moderate ones who maintain stronger links with the Central Government.

In what concerns animal rights I am not sure how big this step is. In total, the bulls killed in arenas worldwide should not be more than a hundred every year, a number that is far inferior to the pigs slaughtered in the same period in the Catalan province alone to supply its sensitive citizens with a great variety of sausages. The obvious argument that bulls suffer an agonizing death in the bullring, whereas animals slaughtered for their flesh are killed "scientifically" does not make me feel a lot better. A great number of animals are still being horrendously tortured during drug and chemical testing and death is probably agonizing no matter the procedure of extermination being followed. I can understand the shock of a sensitive citizen at the sight of a blood-squirting, animal dying in its prime but one has to agree that there is a clear difference between slicing the throat of a baby lamp before putting it on a spit and leading a raging bull in the arena against a group of men, who have been trained throughout their lives into treating the animal with utter respect.

No matter one's opinion on bullfighting, he has to admit that the whole point of it goes far beyond simply killing the bull. As a long-standing tradition, it goes a long way back to ancient ceremonies with a great deal of symbolism embedded so deeply that has become invisible today to short-sighted modernists who choose to see bullfighting as a display of barbarism but find the running-over of animals on the highways an inescapable side-effect of progress. Yes, bullfighting is a remnant of old times, and yes a "corrida" is a hard sight to which I would think twice before submitting my children, but then again, are all things of old destined to be abolished? and to what extent is a dying bull more offensive as a sight than what one can see on TV?

I cannot say I am 100% pro-bullfighting, although I have enjoyed a couple of "corridas", and I am not the passionate fan Hemingway was, even if I appreciate a well-performed "Veronica" and can distinguish a "pase de pecho" from a "pase de desprecio". In all, I see a great deal of hypocrisy in trying to ban an activity that is has its roots in the veneration of an animal and during which animals are treated with extreme respect if not still considered sacred. Those who have never been in a bullfight, or have never read about them (by "Papa" Hemingway or anyone else) may not be aware of the fact that the bull is treated by the crowd with the same respect and admiration as the "torero", that the bullfighter is to be booed and ashamed if the animal is not killed properly (in a way that it suffers less, that is) and that in some -extreme- cases the bull can be "pardoned" by the fighter if the crowd demands it as a reward for its bravery (see for instance the great Jose Tomas pardoning a bull in Barcelona here).

But in the end, we live in a democracy and the decision of a Parliament is to be respected so there is to be no bullfighting in Catalunya as from January 1st 2012. And so the representatives of the people have decided that upon facing a bull instead of grabbing it by the horns, they might as well jump over it. Or even worse, pretend the bull is simply not there...

Cortescher

2010-07-28T00:00:00.000+03:00

With the World Cup over, an -expected- July heat wave bringing the city to a standstill and with teaching obligations not to be resumed before early September, I am taking advantage of a loosened working schedule to catch up with some long-due reading. Over the last weeks I have decided to take up the task of reading Douglas Hofstadter's legendary "Godel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid" (also referred to as GEB-EGB by "connaiseurs").

Being a book I 've always meant to read but at the same time more of a project than actual reading entertainment, GEB is to be given time and space to breath between reading chapters discussing a wide range of subjects from -the obvious but rather misguiding Music and Art- to -the more proper- computing, cognition and artificial intelligence. I therefore relax my GEB-endeavour with interludes of short stories by some of the South American masters, (Cortazar and Marquez mostly), whom I have somehow always connected with the summer.
It was this way that I came to make a strange connection between, GEB (and the middle "E" in particular, that is "Escher") with a short story from Julio Cortazar's "Final del juego" that I read only recently.

The story is called "La noche boca arriba", which would be translated in English as "The night face up" (non-spanish readers can opt for this interesting comic-strip version). It starts with an ordinary motorcycle accident, with the rider -our hero- being taken to hospital to receive first aid treatment. There he drifts into a strange limbo having and a very vivid dream in which he is transformed into a central American warrior-prince being chased by the blood-thirsty soldiers of the enemy in a dense, tenebrous jungle. As our hero resonates in and out of his drug-induced lethargy the realistic description of the surgery room is more and more blending with the visions of his middle-aged American dreamscape. The warrior has now been captured and is being kept captive in a dim, moist cave. As surgery goes on, the wounded rider dozes off deeper and deeper into this horrible nightmare. His captives are now tying him up on a wooden stretcher as the preparations for his sacrifice -for he is going to be sacrificed- are under way. As the story is slowly drawing to a climax, the part of the warrior is gradually occupying the greatest part of the story, the agony of the imminent sacrifice has become the main theme with the ongoing surgery in a distant time and space shifting to a secondary allegory. The upsetting "finale" resolves in a complete reversal of the story, as we realize that the surgery room, the accident, the speedy motorcycle ride have all been parts of a futuristic vision of the moribund warrior instead of the actual facts.

These reversals are rather a commonplace in Cortazar and the rest of his kind (Borges being the most prominent). But having had recently gone through the wonderous worlds of M.C. Escher, I could not but think of his "Metamorphosen", where a main theme being gradually mixed with a secondary until completely transformed into it, and how Douglas Hofstadter might have been delighted in citing this wonderful literary analog to complementary transformations (instead of filling the gaps of his chapters with his somehow dully pedagogical dialogs).

As it was getting very late -but not much cooler- I switched off the light and tried to get some sleep myself, only to realize that I was too upset by Cortazar's complementary nightmares and that instead of taking a "break" I should have moved directly to Hofstadter's next chapter on recursion.

It's always the 26th

2010-07-26T01:00:00.004+03:00

On July 26th 1953, some 130 men badly trained, poorly armed, wearing second-hand military uniforms, stormed the barracks of La Moncada in Santiago de Cuba at daybreak. As the attack was pushed back by the soldiers of Fulgencio Batista's military regime, a great part of the insurgents died on the spot. Others were executed the morning after and the rest of them were captured in the following days, tortured, trialed for treason and imprisoned for life.
They did not, however, serve for life. For it only took five years and 158 days for the man who had led them against La Moncada to finally triumph in kicking Batista and Co. out of Cuba. Fidel Castro's first official decree ordered their liberation and the declaration of July 26th as a national holiday.

Last week, that same man, Fidel Castro, having outlived nine U.S. presidents, several CIA-orchestrated attacks against the state of Cuba and himself, made an official appearance after being considered seriously ill (at some times even at the verge of death) for more than a year. He looked feeble but in good humour and even had time to talk to the people for a couple of hours, for remaining silent has never been his thing ever since he defended his own self in the trials of La Moncada movement.

Castro will turn 84 next month but will still be at the center of attention of the whole country for today's celebrations of the National Holiday commemorating the attack on La Moncada. Fifty seven years after that first attempt to change the lives of the Cuban People, he is something more than a talisman of the state he rescued from the gangsters and the pimps. He is still active, taking decisions, forming policies and even committing errors, something Bill Clinton (to name only one) can only match with explaining the way he led the World Economy to ruins to University students all over the planet. (His fee for such "inspired" talks amounts in the thousands, they say, but maybe he plays the sax for free on intermission).

In the meantime, Castro, once the pole of an "axis of evil", demonized for trying to impose a "failed economical system" on the poor Cubans, is seeing how his country sails through the latest international economic crisis, the third one since he took over. I guess he must be entertained with the way his fellows in the US and Europe are cutting down salaries and pensions, watching unemployment rise and public spending decrease. I also guess that by now, having been harshly criticized for nationalizing banks and companies, he must be entertained with how European Governments are using taxpayers money to rescue private banks.
I 'm also guessing Castro, having been repeatedly accused for his insistence on not liberating political prisoners, will be laughing at the new laws in Europe and elsewhere forcing women not to wear burkha, forcing everybody to carry new, biometric passports, registering mobile phones, allowing landlines to be tapped "under special circumstances" e.t.c.

And I 'm guessing Castro will be having the time of his life today. Seeing Cuba maintaining its dignity in times that even sovereign states are being bullied by the IMF and some arbitrary world-dictators named G20. Seeing that Cuba -in the way he has defended it against the wishes of "liberals" worldwide- has not had the luck of Haiti or Bolivia, thus it cannot be devastated by natural catastrophes like earthquakes or un-natural ones like Lehman Brothers.

For Castro, it may not "always be the 26th" (as Omara Portuondo sings in this beautiful anthem) but in the end it looks like history may absolve him after all.

PMD (Post-Mundial-Depression)

2010-07-20T11:40:00.005+03:00

Cuando el Mundial comenzó, en la puerta de mi casa colgué un cartel que decía Cerrado por fútbol. Cuando lo descolgué, un mes después, yo ya había jugado sesenta y cuatro partidos, cerveza en mano, sin moverme de mi sillón preferido. Esa proeza me dejó frito, los músculos dolidos, la garganta rota; pero ya estoy sintiendo nostalgia. Ya empiezo a extrañar la insoportable letanía de las vuvuzelas, la emoción de los goles no aptos para cardíacos, la belleza de las mejores jugadas repetidas en cámara lenta. Y también la fiesta y el luto, porque a veces el fútbol es una alegría que duele, y la música que celebra alguna victoria de ésas que hacen bailar a los muertos, suena muy cerca del clamoroso silencio del estadio vacío, donde ha caído la noche y algún vencido sigue sentado, solo, incapaz de moverse, en medio de las inmensas gradas sin nadie.

Eduardo Galeano
El reino magico

*(Find an English translation here)

in the end it's all about football

2010-07-15T20:51:00.006+03:00

Last month was a month of traveling, work, reading and partying but first and foremost it was a month of football. Hard as I tried to explain to my girlfriend that the World Cup -apart from being the WORLD CUP- belongs to that special category of rare events -once every four years- that further adds to their immense importance, she still found my enthusiasm (which of course she could only qualify as obsession) increasingly irritating. Having been in a rather good mood (as it always happens while the World Cup approaches the last-16) the time seemed right for me to confront Demetra with the standard, traditional argumentation for the love of the game and the impact of the World Cup

I therefore tried to slowly introduce her to the history of the teams, the differences in the style of play that for so long -not so much anymore, but still- have been connected to the temperament of the people, the Brazilian "jogo bonito" against the Bristish "kick and rush" etc. But having had recently read Jonathan Wilson's -outstanding- "Inverting the Pyramid" I soon found myself over-excited, talking about formations and tactics, arguing for the rise of the modern 4-2-3-1 and the -apparent- decline of 4-4-2 and preaching about posession football being a pro-active strategy. As I realized the expressions on Demetra's face were rapidly shifting from slightly indifferent to utterly bored, I decided I had gone too far and I let it go. By that time the play-offs had already started and I decidedly announced I was to watch all games left till the end. I stayed in to watch USA play Ghana. She stayed in with me, partly out of support and partly -I assume- for educational reasons. Perhaps she could understand what it is that makes football so important.

As it usually happens, by the time you reach the semifinals, even women get to be -a little- interested in the action. With Uruguay about to face the Netherlands in the first semifinal we decided to watch the game in the company of friends (girlfriends included). Before kick off, having been repeatedly asked on which side I was on, I resolved -time and again- to foolish comments of the type "I don't mind", "I like them both" etc. But as the game went under way I gradually shifted from a mild sympathizer of the Uruguayans to the most loyal of their fans . So, I cheered with joy when Diego Forlan scored the superb goal depicted in this post's photo and I stood up from my chair to watch the last minutes as Uruguay struggled for an equalizer.
A few days later, Demetra decided it was high time she went out a bit. As she was having drinks downtown, I was at home biting my fingernails watching Uruguay's agonizing efforts for a late equalizer once more, this time against Germany in the 3rd place final. When Forlan (again) hit the crossbar from a free-kick on the last minute I exploded in a outcry of curses about the world being unjust, the order of the universe and the such!

It is in moments like these, that one realizes the power of football.

When simply by watching a game you start to get involved even when at the beginning you appear indifferent. It is as if you have been set up by a friend on a blind date only to find yourself strangely attracted to the other person and un-strangely in love before you even realize it. In the same way you find yourself cheering for the goals of a far-away country or feeling compassion for a guy being sent off even if you've only seen his face for the first time one hour ago. No matter what the tactics are, wether 4-4-2 is to be abandoned or if Spain's tiki-taka is a defensive or an attacking strategy, in the end it's all about football.

And one day, perhaps, women may feel it too.

Against the anonymous fan

2010-06-27T18:44:00.004+03:00

Imagine something you love and at the same time respect too much to see it ridiculed. Now imagine someone who is pretending to love that same thing but obviously understands nothing of its grace. One that instead of appreciating it, is using it as an opportunity to show off. Someone who, in summary, is nowhere near your perception of what is considered to be your "common" passion. He is only there to make a mock out of it and outrage you with his stupidity!
Now put this guy in the position of the anonymous clown of the photo and there you have my feelings about football on one hand and the random football fan on the other.

I 've been watching the games of the World Cup just like any other civilized person who appreciates football and I cannot but be disturbed with the frequency with which the cameras turn to the crowd in search of pathetic exhibitionists like the one in the photo. I cannot be precise about the origins of this sick habit of television broadcast but I am guessing it must have started at the same time football was for the first time treated as a massive commercial product. That would be sometime between the World Cups of USA and Korea-Japan. It was around then, that broadcasting a football game started to involve close-ups of Victoria Beckham (back then Mel-C or B, I can't quite remember). And it was around that time that the anonymous idiot, realized he could have his 5 seconds of fame simply by putting on the most ridiculous kind of garment, (or in the case of women, remove every trace of it) and getting admitted into a football stadium (if only someone would stop him...).

Be it wherever and whenever, I am not here to argue on the power of the medium (that is TV in HD or any other quality). The point I am trying to make is as simple as this:
Since when have we fans become a part of the spectacle so that we deserve to be ostentatiously treated side by side with the actual protagonists, the football players and their coaches?
Since when do people feel that going to a football stadium is more about showing off their worst taste in costumes than watching the actual game?
Since when have people become so self-centered that instead of watching the game they sit patiently staring at the big screen (nowadays all big stadia have at least one) waiting for their little, insignificant existences to appear so that they can wave mommy or daddy hello?
And since when has the feeling "I saw it. I was there!" been substituted by "You saw me. I was there!" ?

It may be a sign of the times, a simple manifestation of how, in a powerful media-driven society, the passive spectator becomes the spectacle or -for that matter- how easily he can be tricked into believing he is something more than just that. A passive spectator. In a society where our ability to have a real say about things that matter has been substituted by the illusion of deciding on the next "pop idol" it is becoming increasingly important to realize what order of things we HAVE to be involved in and what not. Football -other than a great game for those of us lucky to still practice it- is a spectacle and should remain one. The moment the fans get to have their own "Fan of the match" webpage, (check it out, it exists) something is definitely going wrong.

To all those that will arguably point out that football without TV would be something very different than what it really is, I can simply offer to lend them a couple of my DVDs of old World Cups where the TV was present only without the occasional morons staring at the camera, making the V-sign instead of watching the game they had paid for.

Please, keep this in mind, for the next time you see a clown like this popping up on your TV screen in the middle of the semis.

So long and thanks for the fish...

2010-06-26T19:44:00.003+03:00

(A guy walking down Carrer dels Flassanders in el Born, Barcelona. Photo by Julien Lagarde)

Some ten days ago, in a bar close to my old working place in the Barceloneta, I indulged into some serious dancing and partying for three main reasons. One, Greece had only won their first ever game in a World Cup on that same afternoon, two after having watched France losing to Mexico in the company of a predominantly French audience I felt we needed to be cheered up and three I was back in the company of good friends I haven't seen for quite a long time. Moreover, we found ourselves in our "natural" environment, the place where we all met, worked and have shared similar moments (that is both vivid disappointments and sudden impulses of joy) over the last years.

It was during that dancing that one of us (I was told later, it was Micha) told someone else (who was Julien): "We were a good group once"

Be it nostalgia, grief or simply "girly-talk" as my own girl put it, there is substantial truth in that. We "were" a group once, we are now individuals that used to be part of the same team, still very good friends, still in the position of meeting every now and then and have fun like we used to. As time goes by and we grow old, some things will necessarily change. And instead of thinking back in sorrow, I prefer to glance forward in joy. I am happy to realize that even though life has moved on, I can still meet my friends and have a great time with them, be it for ten days every few months. A lot of things change in between, but it is as natural, as well as desired.

As time goes by and the perception of time itself is adjusting to a more fragmentary way of "grown-up" life, I choose the most optimistic way of looking at things. Yes, we "were a group" once, but yes we also "are" still a group in a certain sort of way. And no we won't be able to celebrate all of the French defeats, (or any other kind of "defeat" for that manner) but it is quite astonishing that we manage to keep this rate of constancy of celebrating once every few months considering the distances we are all transversing in both space and time.

A few days later during a wonderful ceviche dinner at the place of a couple of friends we remembered the last time I was there. It was almost a year and a half ago, the dinner was lunch then, (but it was again fish), and my friends' precious daughter was sitting at the table with us. Seventeen months later, the precious daughter was sleeping in the room next door, with her -also precious- baby brother who was born on the same night of my last visit. As we wondered what the changes will be the next time we have dinner or lunch together, I thought that witnessing change may be as important as meeting again to share it.

As I once again rode the bus to the airport, on my way home, I promised myself I will be back soon. Not as soon though as not for some change to have taken place. It looks as if I have irreversibly connected Barcelona with the point of reference for my personal development plan ;)

So long, then, and thanks for all the fish...

Barcabios - La vuelta

2010-06-19T14:10:00.004+03:00

(Downtown Barcelona as seen from Montjuic. Photo by Julien Lagarde)

So, I am back in Barcelona, as promised. It took me more than fifteen months to fulfill this -seemingly- simple promise. But things are not always what they seem to be and what has been placed between me and Barcelona over these months ended up being as difficult to cope up with as it was to let go.

So it's been one year, three months and two weeks since I took my girl, my suitcases and two backpacks full of memories on a taxi to the El Prat airport. We had had a paella and then coffee in Absinta in the Barceloneta, had said "hasta la proxima" to those friends who stood there till the end and at the door, it looked as if as even "hard" Giuseppe, my flatmate for over three years was about to cry. Then we flew back to Athens on the first day of March and the story changed so suddenly that it would be hard for one to think it's not a different story altogether.

It sounds weird that I get to remember all these details so vividly. But memories are very much like the forgotten souvenirs one brings home from a trip. You only find them once you accidentally hit on the cupboard in which you have been keeping them. In my case the cupboard is a rectangle defined by Montjuic, Gracia, Gottico and Poble Nou. And as it appears I have carelessly left something in every little corner of it, I am delighted that not a single moment passes by without me remembering, names, places and faces. A terrace in the Barceloneta where four people had dinner yesterday was enough of a reason for my being here and my coming back once more.

A couple of days ago, my good friend Kostas, suggested I listened to "Boots of Spanish Leather". As I now realize my "souvenirs" from Barcelona are something more than a pair of boots, I feel like I am at peace. It's certainly more than a pair of boots I will be bringing back home to my beloved as it's more than certain that my cupboard, with its "loyal guardians" will always be here with for me to randomly go about digging for lost, but not forgotten "souvenirs de Barcelona".

today

2010-06-18T12:42:00.004+03:00

Oh the time will come up

When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be breathin’
Like the stillness in the wind
’Fore the hurricane begins
The hour when the ship comes in

Bob Dylan,
When the ship comes in

let it spread*!

2010-05-10T17:08:00.004+03:00

* Yield spread: The difference between the quoted rates of return on two different investments, usually of different credit quality.

Greeks learned what the "yield spread" (or simply "spread") is only recently. The Portuguese, the Spaniards and many more are soon to find out themselves. In simple words it represents a rate at which a government may borrow from other financial entities. Low spreads mean a country is trustworthy and thus can sell its bonds easily. High spreads reflect a generalized doubt on the government's ability to pay back, therefore borrowing becomes more difficult. At usury rates, borrowing becomes impossible and the country goes bankrupt.

Over the last few months the yield spread of the 10-year Greek government bond rose from about 2.5% (last November) to a prohibiting 8.5%, right before Greece was forced to submit to the IMF and to a record high of 10.4% last Wednesday while the Greek MPs were discussing the ratification of the IMF memorandum and with the house of Parliament being sieged by an uncontrolled mass of demonstrators.

As the value of the yield spread is said to reflect the fiscal reliability of the state economy, I find it hard to understand the degree to which my country's credibility has improved within the last five days. The spread dropped by 50% within thirty minutes yesterday morning and it lies now only marginally (and suspiciously) below 5%, which equals the rate at which Greece is to borrow from the IMF and the EU. As from yesterday, everything seems like business as usual for the "markets". Yield spreads are dropping, the Greek Stock Market marking a rise of almost 9% on Monday and news throughout the media of mass deception talking about "a reversal of the climate", "a new hope" and "the light at the end of the tunnel".

All over Europe, people stand amazed with the clarity and consistency with which the "markets" are behaving. Two days ago, the EU announced a "rescue plan" of 750 billion Euro thus openly admitting for the first time that a number of states -and not only the lazy Greeks- are at the verge of fiscal collapse. To this grave danger, the thoughtful "markets" immediately responded by reducing interest rates and with stocks rising all over the continent. Well aren't they nice?

Well, in Greece in particular, there are a couple of things that happened in the meanwhile. These were the -unprecedented- signing of a treaty that is granting to an outside independent organization (the IMF) the right to decide on critical matters of the daily life of citizens of a member state. These were the complete abolishment of working rights, these were the reduction of the lowest salaries in the EU with a simultaneous rise in taxation. These were all "necessary", "unavoidable", "inescapable" sacrifices the people had to undergo in order to convince some German Bank to lend them money with less than 5% interest.

There are of course the skeptics. The ones who look at the salary reductions, the "reformation" of work rights, pensions being cut down even for the poorest and see "a tunnel at the end of the tunnel". Those who take to the streets because they fear they will soon be living on them, who try to sack the Parliament before it is completely run down by un-elected "loan sharks", who refuse to pay the bill for a country whose 60% rise in GDP over the last decade has gone anywhere else but in their pockets.

And this is what is happening in Greece today, in Portugal and Spain tomorrow and soon to a country near you.

today (more than ever)

2010-05-09T10:30:00.000+03:00

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,

as I foretold you, were all spirits, and
are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
the cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
the solemn temples, the great globe itself,
yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
and, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
leave not a rack behind.

William Shakespeare
The Tempest (IV, I, 148-156)

¡Átame!

2010-05-07T12:52:00.000+03:00

("¡Átame!" is spanish for "Tie me up!". You may know this from the film by Almodovar with the same title.)

Over the past few days, with massive demonstrations going on all over Greece and with incompetent union leaders messing up with the common feeling of protest and the common sense itself, I have wondered more than once on the possibility of alternative ways of protest. Forms of expression of one's disapproval, anger or even despair against an unjust treatment that would be at the same time non-violent, imaginative and reaching to other people.

Then I was informed of this effort by an ingenious, active citizen of Barcelona (from whose blog I obtained this photo) and was delighted to realize that there is still a way to protest in a manner that is at the same time effective, decent and even more, artistic!

The background: Tying bicycles on power light and stop light poles around the city of Barcelona is considered illegal. Bikes found under such circumstances are removed by law enforcing agents and the owner of the bike is then given two options: 1. Get his bike back after paying a 450 Euro fine (starting with a deposit of 59E) or 2.Forget his bike altogether.

The way out: Enters our hero "Pacotilla".
After he had his bike removed from a stop-light pole, he realized the possibility of secret option number 3. He thought that instead of spending 59 Euro to take back his bike and having it removed every time he tries to park it someplace he could do something about it. In fact, he decided to do something about it, about him and the rest of the bikers of the city. So, he took his 59E and instead of getting his bike back he went and bought a number of padlocks which he used in the cleverest and most imaginative way. He simply went about the city chaining all sorts of items on the same poles where he is not allowed to chain his bike. He started with simple things like the stool you see here, a jar or a boot. Then other people heard the call of Pacotilla, joined this initiative which resulted in stop light poles around Barcelona being tied up with suitcases, bird-cages, in one case a whole fridge!

This initiative has become more and more popular among fellow citizens, always open-minded and keen on such ways of expression. "Proyecto 59 interventions" are now considered part of the city's street art performances and a lot of people (count me in) find them superior to many highly esteemed artists' so-called "installations".

The outcome: Well, first of all this great blog and the spreading of the word throughout Barcelona. A change of the regulation and/or the provision of new bicycle parking spots around the city is now imminent.

As someone once said: "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."

this is your future

2010-05-06T09:16:00.002+03:00

There is one clear indication that a society is being destabilized and that is the rise of petty crime. This has been no secret in Greece over the last months. Thefts, muggings, break-ins have increased dramatically not only in the metropolitan areas but throughout the country. Anyone who would refuse to connect this to the current financial crisis would be short-sighted. The crisis is here and it is only financial, but in a society that is so geometrically centered around money, it has assumed dimensions beyond control. A financial crisis has become political, social, moral and -alas- intellectual. Seeing how literally every argument can be twisted, distorted and turned on its head, watching the futility of all measures and protests, one cannot but wonder. Is this the end?

Yesterday three people died during a violent outbreak at the margin of massive protests against the passing of an "austerity bill" that the Greek Government feels obliged to put forward to avoid bankruptcy. The Government is right in suggesting harsh measures out of this dead-end. The Government is wrong in putting forward these measures, which are unjust and whose radicalism is limited to the way it will change poor people's lives. The people have every right to be furious against such measures that limit "austerity" to the lower and middle classes and leave the great majority of the privileged untouched. And some intellectuals are right in pointing out that the measures are futile as they will act only in support and maintenance of the current political system of corruption, injustice and impunity.

There is a new demonstration scheduled for this evening at the same time the bill is going to be voted in the parliament. The people are right in wanting to have a memorial service to the three dead workers. But the people will be in the wrong if they let their anger to drive them down to hatred and violence. The people will be in the wrong if they lose the moral advantage they have always had against their corrupted governments. It is not a question of compliance, submitting to external powers or serfdom. It is purely a matter of survival.

People will be in the wrong if they allow their lives to become subject to pessimism, fear and violence. It is true they have been the constant victims of unjust governments but if the time has come to take things into their own hands -and let us hope it has- they must do so in full responsibility. They cannot -should not- let this society crumble down into a chaos of insecurity that will give rise to "Saviours", bringers of "ultimate solutions", "leaders of the people". We have seen this happen in the past, let us not be the ones who will witness its resurrection.

"Invisible hands" can easilly turn into "iron hands". This is the way it has been planned. They think that the passing from the "rule of the markets" into the "rule of everything" will be assumed physically and with the subservience of a man facing a natural disaster. But this can only happen if we let it happen. In our heads. If we stubbornly keep thinking that the "markets" is the 21st centuries equivalent for "nature", that money is something more than a commodity and that the laws of economy lie beyond and above those of physics.

This is the "dream" they have for us. This is our nightmare. So, let us do ourselves a favour and wake up.

when the pigs broke free

2010-05-05T16:42:00.003+03:00

It was just after noon, one shiny spring day in the year twenty-ten.

Everybody was on strike, except perhaps me.

I was fearing what happened and had my camera ready to take with me to the demonstration. I finally decided not to, having sensed that there was not much to be won from such a protest. I have taken part in protests before and have only seen them turning into dangerous demonstrations of anti-propaganda.

Then this demonstration also turned into a riot. No wonder. It has happened before and will happen again, all the more often I am afraid. It is too hard to contain oneself when one feels so suddenly deprived of what he deserves. When from one day to the next, he is being asked to radically re-adjust his lifestyle in the same way some stokebrokers believe they can re-adjust the figures on their screen.
But it is as simple as that. If you apply "shock-treatment" you have to be ready to face seizures.

Then fires broke out all over the city center and three people fell dead, due to the firebombing of a bank in downtown Athens.
And then the markets became "nervous". CDS spreads went up, the Euro started to fall, Bloomberg reported a rapid decline in oil prices.
The three people were still dead.
Portugal's prime minister started to sweat while listening to his minister. Spain's government bonds were under attack. The Greek Government was passing an austerity bill.
The three people were dead, suffocated, burnt.

The dark lords of economy, the invisible hands of the markets, the abominable speculators that have realized they can bankrupt entire countries overnight have called us PIGS. PIGS stands for Portugal-Ireland-Greece-Spain, PIGS stands for economies on the verge of collapse, PIGS stands for meat for the markets.

Now the PIGS are finally being sent to the slaughterhouse. And as it happens with real pigs, they are not behaving as politely as one might have expected.

And that was the day that my government took away my mom's pension.

today

2010-04-26T08:25:00.002+03:00

"L'homme est une entreprise qui a contre elle le temps, la nécessité, la fortune, et l'imbécile et toujours croissante primauté du nombre... Les hommes tueront l'homme."

Marguerite Yourcenar
L' Oeuvre au noir

a paso de cangrejo...

2010-04-22T12:49:00.004+03:00

...is spanish for "at a crab's pace" or better said "walking like a crab". One needs not be an experienced seaman to grasp the meaning of this expression. It is employed -sometimes at excessive rates- to mock someone's procrastination when, instead of taking a leap forward, he prefers to beat around the bush, walking sideways, towards his scope, sometime even backwards away from it.

In my case, this might be perceived somehow reciprocally. Meaning that instead of myself I find that it is a number of goals I have set appear to be walking away from me. Even worse, in some cases, they tend to ostentatiously pass me by, at their crablike pace, walking sideways as they drift away. Over the last weeks I find the whole essence of time or actually its scantness to have reached some sort of
limit that is beyond me. Desperately as I try to divide my week's efforts among urgent duties, forgotten projects, self-improving assignments I always appear to be running against the clock. At the same time the simplest task of maintaining a marginal social life is all the more being reduced to e-mailing, facebook chatting and talking on the phone. Worse than that, I seem to be not getting any work done.

It might be that I am asking too much from myself (which is not very probable, given that I have more than three days off-work every week) or it might be that I am so tempted by the lack of a tight working schedule that I tend to slack off most of the time (much more likely although I remember far more constructive periods in terms of doing nothing). The fact is that a couple of papers remaining unpublished, another couple of projects remaining un-started, a series of meetings being postponed, combined with a trumpet rusting un-blown, a couple of stories undone and with the end of semester approaching dangerously, I find myself unable to fake the crab's pace anymore. I might rather picture me in the uncomfortable position of the one in the photo, squeezed inside a glass tube and so close to an inevitable stalemate.

follow the money

2010-03-12T16:23:00.001+02:00

today

2010-03-06T11:53:00.006+02:00

Una mujer morena

resuelta en luna
se derrama hilo a hilo
sobre la cuna.
Ríete, niño,
que te traigo la luna
cuando es preciso.

Alondra de mi casa,
ríete mucho.
Es tu risa en tus ojos
la luz del mundo.
Ríete tanto
que mi alma al oírte
bata el espacio.

Tu risa me hace libre,
me pone alas.
Soledades me quita,
cárcel me arranca.
Boca que vuela,
corazón que en tus labios
relampaguea.

Es tu risa la espada
más victoriosa,
vencedor de las flores
y las alondras
Rival del sol.
Porvenir de mis huesos
y de mi amor.

Miguel Hernandez
Nanas de la cebolla

Miguel Hernandez, "tweets" and regular expressions

2010-03-04T18:51:00.005+02:00

Miguel Hernandez, a shepherd-poet, born and raised in the small town of Orihuela, close to Alicante, was a prolific reader since very early. In one of his early poems, "Leyendo", he gives one of most discreet and subtle descriptions of the joy of reading. A young shepherd spends most of his day reading in full harmony with the surrounding provincial landscape.

I tried to follow his example spending most of last Saturday reading an anthology of his poems, one of my favourite books from my time in Spain and one of the few, which made it all the way back with me in Athens a year and two days ago. But my reading could only last this long. By Sunday I had to start preparing the lectures for my upcoming classes. Upon leaving for Crete, Ι packed a few clothes, my notebook and a couple of Bioinformatics books, but refused to leave the poems on my desk. On the boat, instead of preparing slides on regular expressions, I went back to "Leyendo" and Hernandez's "Poemas Sueltos".

I thought I had found the most rewarding way to remember my rusty spanish when I came up with a puzzling recurrence of a certain word. In the beginning of the poem, the sun is greeted by a bird.

Preludia un ave un gorjeo

I faintly remembered "gorjeo" meaning tweet and was about to congratulate myself when upon reaching the last verse I was puzzled with a second instance of that "tweet"

Trunca el ave su gorgeo...

Only now "gorjeo" was spelled as "gorgeo". As my spanish is rather good but still far from allowing me to resolve ambiguities of this kind, I had to turn to a dictionary. In fact I turned to more than one and it turned out that all of them agreed on the "tweet" 's correct spelling being "gorjeo". This could only mean two things. Either there was a typo in my edition of the poem or Miguel had made a spelling mistake. Yet another ambiguity, but one that could not be resolved. I spent the last three days in Crete where an alternative edition of Miguel Hernandez's poems was obviously unreachable. It turned out to be equally difficult to find one in Athens or the web. The only version of the poem I could get was the one I have in my edition of Austral Poesia. Thus I was unable to verify or rule out Miguel's spelling error.

As gorjeo/gorgeo was doing circles in my head, unable to decide which version looked better, regardless of spelling rules, I thought that maybe I had the perfect example of a regular expression right there in front of me.

After all, gor[jg]eo was still rhyming perfectly well.

lost for words...in general

2010-02-27T10:43:00.005+02:00

It's been quite a while since I last woke up just to have coffee and read the newspapers on the web, listening to "Ella and Louis", enjoying this blessed slowness on the advantages of which I have commented long ago. This can be seen from the density (not to mention quality) of the posts of this blog. As it often happens, the less you read, the less you are able to write. In fact, sometimes even speaking may deteriorate once you are kept away from books for long. This is more or less my case, for various reasons.

One. I am to travel to Crete once every week, where I have to either talk ceaselessly while lecturing undergraduates on Computational Biology and Programming, or bust my eyeballs in front of my tiny net-book screen while preparing the next lecture.
Two. Because of this work-travelling overload I have barely managed to read one book since the beginning of the year. A saddening output especially when compared to my prolific reading during my term in the army (which I still do not miss at all by the way). Two more books that I 've started reading through February, are still disgracefully lying on my small bed-table. Last but not least, I cannot remember the last time I entered a bookstore.
Three. Partly from guilt and partly from bad organization of leisure time, I have stopped reading on the web. That is no more newspapers, google-reader, daily news updates in four languages. All this is gone. My old colleagues will understand how big a change this is.

So, in one of this wonderfully ironic coincidences, I sat on my couch this morning to read my favourite Babelia on the web (by far the best thing being printed weekly in the Spanish language) where I came upon this article by columnist-writer Antonio Munoz Molina. Ironic, because this article somehow dealt with all of the above. Books, bookstores, talking and writing. I apologise to the non-spanish speakers unable to read this wonderful piece, for not providing a concise summary, but the truth is that it is not that easy to sum up all of the things that come through it.

The article starts with a quote by Hemingway and goes on to mention the closing of a certain bookstore in New York, then goes through a brief history of american literature of the 20th century and ends with a comparison of english and spanish in terms of verbosity, conciseness and wealth of vocabulary. All subjects I was connected to, one way or another.

One. Hemingway's mentioned quote was: "Each writer should have a built-in bullshitting detector". To which point I can already see the smiles on my ex-colleagues' faces. You see, during my term in Barcelona I have become famous for two things and these were: 1. bullshitting while talking (scientific talks included) and 2. bullshitting while writing (this blog included). Funnily enough, bullshitting got me through then and there and gets me through still through every class I have to teach. It's more of a style than an attitude and dear old Ernest can say whatever he wants.

Two. The bookstore about to close is Morningside Books somewhere on Broadway and 135th (or 136th, or 137th). I have only spent two months in New York but it so happened I was living a few blocks from that place and I vividly remember spending quite sometime browsing its the old, rusty shelves. I also remember its timid, humble window, which looked nothing like the picture above, taken from a fancy Athenian book store, with more books on the display than on the shelves. Come to think of it, Morningside Books must have been the only bookstore I entered while in NYC, probably intimidated by the size of the crowds in all the huge Barnes and Nobles. As I recalled, the boxes filled with old, used Virginia Woolfs and William Faulkners I was deeply saddened to hear the place is closing down.

Three. Spanish verbosity vs Anglosaxon strictness of content. Having lived in a place where I had to use these two languages interchangeably for more than three years I can see what Molina means. But I cannot help but think how overwhelmed he would be if he were to compare them to Greek. Being in that position (even though not at the level of an established academic like the one he is) I can testify Greek to be superior in bullshitting potential to all existing idioms. The wealth of terms, ambiguities, verbal and written forms is beyond any comparison.

In fact it is so overwhelming that I suddenly realize I am not doing well in not talking (or reading) that much these last weeks. And which also reminds me I have to stop writing and go on to make some long-promised phone calls to friends that have not heard me talking for ages.

(...not that they are missing anything...)

three wild alley cats

2010-02-14T13:05:00.002+02:00

For three whole years I have been walking late and alone through the streets of el Raval in Barcelona. I 've wandered in the alleys of the rumorous Condesa district in Mexico City. Once I got lost in the Bronx past midnight and on two occasions I had to go through some of the rough parts of South East London on my way home. But it was fate that I was to get mugged in downtown Athens, just a few blocks away from the place my father grew up.

It was probably fate because it was one of those nights when nothing works out as planned. First we failed to locate the place of the party we had initially set out for. Then, after ending up in Gazi, we chose a relatively dark alley to park far from the busy, noisy streets. And finally, we made for the bar the wrong direction, that is through the end of the alley instead of choosing a wider, busier street with better lighting. There at the end of the alley, three kids were waiting for us.

I 've witnessed similar situations before, not exactly the same, but cases where one needs to come in the defense of his own self. In cases like those there is one thing that always happens no matter how experienced one is, and that is you always do the wrong thing. Yesterday, I simply tried to run away from those three wild alley cats. Naturally I soon found myself lying on my stomach, while two of the kids were kicking my arm while pulling the stripe of my handbag. I came to my senses, calmed down and was allowed back on my feet only to see my friend Giorgos handing all his money to the senior of our attackers who was at the moment holding a knife gently pressed against my friend's abdomen.

I stood there, trying to grasp what was going on while the three kids (because they were just that, three kids with one -or at least one- knives) turned their backs at us, leaving us in the middle of a desert street. I felt less scared than angry, much more furious than afraid and was more eager of getting even than getting away. I started thinking of all the things I had done wrong. Wrong choice of street, wrong choice of attitude, I thought that I should have taken a different street or turned back the moment I saw them. As I looked around for a witness, some aid or consolation I caught a glimpse of a guy at the other end of the street, a guy who as soon as he caught sight of me watching him turned around and fled. Then I realized that there was no way we would have got away with it.

What had been done was done. We checked ourselves for wounds and scratches. As I found my thigh a bit less bruised than my pride and Giorgos felt his heart much lighter than his pocket, we saw that our casualties were not substantial enough to rob us of our first night out together since New Year's. I reached for a fifty Euro note at the bottom of my pocket and we decided to convert it to drinks as soon as possible. Thus we headed for the closest bar and had what must have been our most deserved drinks ever. At the end of the night each of us would go home with one more adventure to talk about.

released-recaptured

2010-02-10T17:22:00.001+02:00

Outside there is a nasty storm going on. I am asleep because of the freaking wind blasting against my window the whole of last night and trying to set up my new netbook while going through some bioinformatics papers with Brad Mehldau keeping me company. Tomorrow I will be leaving for Crete for the first class of my new job appointment. In brief, a lot of things have changed since the last post some weeks ago.

The rainbow seen from outside the window of my new flat is more than three weeks old. Which says a thing or two for how busy I 've been over this period. A new job that needed all the necessary preparations (mostly of psychological and bureaucratical nature), some old projects still pending and a lot of background household life, the thing I dare to admit, enjoy the most.

It seems thus that my wish came true and so soon after getting over with the ironic joke that the military service really is, I am back on track again, more active than ever (or perhaps as active as I 'd like to be), ready for a new start.

Released from the army - Recaptured by life. Lets see if I can stand the captivitiy

the end (is the beginning...)

2010-01-07T18:46:00.006+02:00

There are a number of reasons for why "Abbey Road" is the cover of this post, the first of this new year. For one thing, I have come to think of it as my favourite Beatles album. Apart from the myths and legends connected to Rock's most famous album cover, it contains some of my favourite songs plus the coolest medley of short melodic poems ever written (all the tracks from the "Sun King" to the end of the album are a continuous piece of McCartney's genius). For another thing, I recently read that "Abbey Road", although released prior to "Let it be", was actually recorded after it, thus it constitutes the last Beatles album. It moreover finishes off with a glorious "The End"*, a sort of coda of less than two and a half minutes, which at the same time conveys the message of closure and bids farewell.

Such an end of ends, the last track of the last album cannot but remind me the last week of the last of the weights I had to carry (and "Carry that Weight" is not curiously Abbey Road's next to last track) over the past year. My military service will soon be over and I cannot but look back at these last nine months without a sigh of relief. 2009 was the year of great changes, sudden adaptations and an irreplaceable loss. In all I am glad it's over. In some very different way, so must have been the Beatles about Abbey Road.

Still, all the changes that the last year brought about, the closure in many aspects of my life and completing the one last thing that I really HAD to do, somehow mark more of a beginning than an end. I am soon to be starting a new life, something I am trying for the first time, something for which I have been waiting for too long, something that is probably the reason behind all these changes.
I am starting a common life with someone so special, for whom I can only think of the last, the ultimate line of the Beatles' lyrics.

"...And in the end, the love we take, is equal to the love we make."

See that there is a full stop, right there.

*the album's last track, "Her Majesty's" is a mere joke and should not count

out in the open

2009-12-22T18:43:00.003+02:00

This is just what one needs after two months of keeping with stupid army duties, while at the same time looking for a flat (or rather sympathising with Demetra who was actually doing it). A couple of days out in the open, where one may still pretend to face nature at its purest, unspoiled form.

At the highlight of the trip we found ourselves, Demetra and I and a couple of friends up on the edge of a cliff with the gorge of Vikos spreading -eternal and generous- before our eyes. My current status allows no more lyricism, so I am not going to say that it has been like a revelation. No overwhelming feelings or mezmerized eyes in front of this wonderful view. Just the realization that at the side of all the superfluous, insubstantial obligations that life is burdening us with, there still exist aspects essential and genuine, that remain tangible even from the height of seven hundred meters.

Greece of the Greek Christians (?)

2009-11-30T10:56:00.007+02:00

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

2009-11-25T19:40:00.000+02:00

"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

2009-11-15T18:32:00.000+02:00

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

2009-11-11T10:08:00.000+02:00

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

2009-11-05T23:38:00.005+02:00

...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

things to appreciate while in the army - Time...

2009-10-24T10:33:00.005+03:00

It's 8 pm on a Friday evening. Having just finished my afternoon shift I am wandering around a deserted basketball court surrounded by parked cars. On one side the windows of the dorms where I am to spend half of the night (until my early morning shift starts at 3.30 am). Right opposite, a three-meter wall that separates ours (the General Military Hospital) from the one of the National Air Force. Facing westwards I can make out the sound of cars in the not so distant avenue and the fading lights of a city that is about to start the weekend. Then I turn and look towards the east. Just a few meters outside the wall, there lies the Institute of Biomedical Research of the Academy of Athens. A brand new building made out of a mix of robust yellowish bricks and grey double windows, a proud specimen of that arrogant architecture, reserved for newly-founded research institutes and post-modern bank mansions. Down here I am left with my solitary walk, trying to stretch a bit before my early night sleep, bound to be interrupted at 3 am. Up there, young (and perhaps some not so young) scientists are probably adding the final (and for some not so final) touches to today's experiments. And the fact that their lights are all lit at this time of day doesn't surprise me at all.

Less than a year ago, I was one of them, spending Friday evenings in the cosiness of my milky-lit office, trying to put stuff in order so as for my week not to appear completely lost. Less than a year ago, it looked like there was never enough time. Time for working things out, time for getting the calculations right, time for having a new brilliant idea that would change the course of a stagnating project, sometimes not even time for having a drink before going to bed. Less than a year ago, I hated my job (and I have some really angry posts dated from back then to prove it). Less than a year ago I was thinking of my military service as a way out from a way of life I thought I was fed up with.

But last night, while walking up and down that empty basketball court, listening to Explosions in the Sky's powerful medleys of appeasing and awe-inspiring melodies, the unthinkable happened. Suddenly, I wanted my old life back. Despite all the burdens of it, despite all the load that made me hate my job back then. Last night, I would gladly take off my uniform and join the people on the other side of the wall, take up their problems, read the papers they would hand me, allow their problems to bother my little mind. Despite of all the time they would be lacking, the stress and anxiety of getting things done before Monday's group meeting, I would gladly offer to take their place. I realized that all the things that seemed meaningless and boring, less than a year ago, had regained their old electric-like aura.

And I knew that because there, in the middle of that stupid basketball court, in that incredibly uncomfortable uniform, with "Explosions in the Sky" on my headphones and all that time on my hands, all I could think of doing, all I could do, was to take out my small pocket notepad and write down, single-handedly what appeared to be my next "brilliant" idea.

just breathe...

2009-10-19T12:20:00.008+03:00

...or so it seems. Like you are just breathing.

Then you turn to look back and realize that six months have passed within a single breath. You feel like everything travels at the speed of light, while you are sitting still in the middle of a plain, left in ruins by a storm that grows distant. You find yourself banished, deserted in a world where all which makes sense belong to others, where time is harvested by everyone else except you. You are stranded in the place you really belong. This is your exile. And you just breathe. Life is what takes place in your absence.

You smell the air, trying to follow the path of your own breath. Desperately trying to comprehend the turning of the wind, to grasp what -you think- lies obscure and hidden, absurd in essence, only relatively pragmatic. You realize the passing of time with a sudden blow. You force yourself out of a comfortable limbo. This melody, played backwards, is the only thing real.
You ought to sing along.

"See the path cut by the moon...
for you to walk on...
See the waves on distant shores...
Awaiting your arrival."

things to appreciate while in the army - Breaking dawn

2009-10-18T10:40:00.006+03:00

There is a number of responsibilities that one finds himself burdened with while in the army. Most would agree that those inferring sleep deprivation are the most tedious. It so happens that the great majority of what might prosaically be considered as "army duties" simply constitute of long meaningless hours of vigil.
To my content, the concept of such "army duties" (as well as more or less everything else) is greatly relaxed at my current unit. Staying guard is only loosely connected to the watchful national guards we were in Chios. And those that are to be vigilant guards inside the barracks -the so-called "room guards"- are nor guards in essence, neither vigilant, as I realized last night.

During my first on-call duty at the 401 General Military Hospital of Athens, I merely had to stay awake for a number of hours and make sure that during those hours my on-call colleagues would wake up on time for their shifts. This proved to be somehow chimerical for various reasons. One: nobody preceded (or succeeded) my shift, which resulted in my waking up accidentally five minutes before my shift started. Two: nobody really cared about being woken up so I actually had nothing to do apart from chatting with my friend Tassos, who was the one who woke me up (for having someone to talk to I guess).

Then Tassos left for his own shift (a useless patrol around the hospital) and so I found myself sitting at a lonely desk at 6.00 am with the company of a sadly boring book by Steven Pressfield, which instead of keeping me awake with its (assumed) engaging plot, brought about drowsiness in constant waves. To this my only escape was standing up, strolling up and down an empty, humid corridor until I eventually made it outside the building in the foggy dew-covered courtyard. There I saw it.

It was about 6.30 and a late autumn dawn was breaking above the Athenian skyline. It was nothing spectacular, given my position, surrounded by the tall buildings of the hospital, the time of the year and the rainy weather. It had little to do with vision and was more of something that appealed to the rest of one's senses. The smell of the soaking leaves on the wet soil, the sound of distant thunder and the chilling morning cold which I suffered with an inexplicable satisfaction in my summer uniform. I could not help thinking that it was not the dawn itself I was enjoying, but simply the approaching end of my shift, (which also suspicuously coincided with the beginning of a four-day leave). Still I tend to believe it was a mixture of all that, the sense that there are some brief moments (as all moments are) that one can only appreciate while being in the army, a series of little things that harm noone, while at the same time one would never bother doing.

Staying up all night and watching the dawn break, even a dull, urban dawn like today's is one of these little things.

coming back to life

2009-10-08T10:45:00.001+03:00

It's official. I am back in Athens. From today on, I will be able to walk down alleys like this one whenever (or almost whenever) I want.

As my army gear and clothes are soaking in a bath-tub filled with scalding hot water, which aims at eliminating any trace of bed-bug I might have brought back as a souvenir from my stay at the barracks of the 96th Sanitary (?) Regiment, I take two days off to retrospect.

Has it been fun? No -freaking- way. Whatever people may tell you about missing the days in uniform (and whatever I might have been telling myself before getting there), being in the army is the exact opposite of fun. Even if you are lucky enough to enlist in the Sanitary (famous for bearing a "light" load of army-crap). Even if you are lucky enough to meet genuinely interesting people, of the kind you would -and will- be friends with outside the army. Even if you get to be on a Greek island during August and September.
It is still NOT fun at all. Simply because waking up at 5.45 at the yelling of some complete imbecile whose faint attempt to pronounce something remotely similar to speech barely makes it to "Wake up" is not fun. And with this I think I have summed up most of it.

Has it been worth it? Certainly not. There have been a large number of discussions about the necessity of the military service during some long night patrols in Chios. My colleagues -my poor colleagues whom I shamefully admit to have abandoned over there- would agree with me. There is nothing to be gained from army life after the age of 25 (at least). A mature, decent man with a minimal sense of responsibility already knows how to make his bed, be respectful to superiors, kind to women and responsible while doing his job. If we are to assume that the scope of the army is to deal with people who lack these qualities, there are a number of mental institutions that would be up to the task. If, on the other hand, the service aims at making one accustomed to the absurdity of the Greek public sector, its corruptive routine and its infamous drive towards the utmost forms of laziness then "Thanks, but no thanks!".

Would I do it again? You must be kidding me. I have a bit more than a hundred days left to suffer the stupidity of the uniform and deal with the scum of this country (the mentally retarded or/and lazy asses who choose to become inferior officers instead of getting a real job and a life). I am not exactly looking forward to it but I can assure you of one thing. As with all shit in life I can still take some fun out of it over the next 102 days. I can drive them crazy since they did not manage to drive me.

This is my last master-plan for the army to be put forward starting from tomorrow.

PS. This one goes out to my co-soldiers back in Chios. As they struggle with the our most painful responsibility towards the Greek Constitution, my thoughts cannot but be with them.

today

2009-10-07T13:50:00.004+03:00

He remembered once when the grass was dump and she came to him on hurried feet, her thin slippers drenched with dew. She stood upon his shoes nestling close and held up her face, showing it like a book open at a page.
"Think how you love me", she whispered. "I don't ask of you to always love me like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside me there 'll always be the person I am to-night"

Francis Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the night

vote till you drop

2009-10-04T10:40:00.002+03:00

So it is then...

"Respect the Irish vote"

the problem is: Which one?

In the times of "Enforced Democracy" in which we live the only vote to be respected is the last one. That is the one that gives the "expected", "desired" outcome. The Irish were too stubborn not to ratify the Lisbon Treaty -the evolution of the [in]famous European Constitution- through a parlamentary vote. Instead they opted for a referendum which gave a clear "No" last June. (I also had a few words to say back then).

Too stubborn they were, but not stubborn enough. EU policy is "vote till you drop", meaning till you drop the case, your case, till you realize that what you have to say doesn't really matter. What really matters is that you appear to be voting (even if it is time and again), justifying the republican "ideals" of the union.

Whether the Lisbon Treaty is a "step forward" or a "historical mistake" is irrelevant. It is now clearer than ever that the Europeans need not have any worries about whether their choices prove to be the right ones.

Because they actually have none.

PS. Greece is holding a general election today. Isn't it sad to see how similar a feeling of vanity the whole process yields to us Greeks?

busy as a bee

2009-10-02T14:56:00.002+03:00

Yes, work -or to put it nicer a great number of activities- is the reason behind the lack of posts. My coming back to Athens is going to be official soon (yeaaaah) and some things need to be taken care of. People also need to be taken care of, and good care that is. So they have been my priority over the last week and I intend to make it -the taking care of them, I mean- even more regular as soon as I am stationed back at my old spot: 401 Athens General Military Hospital.

In the meantime, the pre-election fever has forced me to be reading two papers a day (hard work), catching up with the news and giving a lot of thought into finally deciding what to vote next Sunday. (It's not a real dilemma, I am just considering a slight variation from my previous choices).

Getting back to everyday life in Athens, which means everyday life in Greece with all that comes with it has forced me (yes "forced" is the right term here) to start another, lighter blog of almost entirely greek content (and therefore of entirely greek posting and commentary). Greek readers are to be greatly discouraged from checking it out at
http://koympariomaxoi.blogspot.com
as they are bound to discredit everything they thought they knew about me.

Still I have to say that the aforementioned blog is one more reason for the lack of posts in this one, although I promise to try to keep up both at an equal pace.

ChiosBios #3. Life after rain...

2009-09-15T09:29:00.003+03:00

So it is official. I am not gonna get my first permit from my island prison before mid October. We still have one more full month to go, which means I want see friends and family until after I 've spent two and a half months in Chios. Since I was advised to keep a positive attitude I can only say it could be worse. Worse being having broken my foot while patroling the barracks at 3.00 am and while it is raining cats and dogs (which almost happened last Friday). Or worse being having no governement after the coming election, which will mean our permits will be once more postponed until Allah knows when...

So, we are crossing fingers...

Autumn seems to be here for good. Having spent the three last Autumns in Barcelona, where September mostly means rain, I was kind of expecting that. It is hard though to be on a Greek island and face the cloudy skies so early in Autumn. It gets harder when you get to have half of your clothes wet, (because the Sergeant does not allow clothes hanging on the string during the day, as if they were going to dry overnight) and half of them being lost at the drycleaner's (good news, I located them this morning!). Under such conditions, the aforementioned positive attitude becomes a hard to bear task.

But it has happened before and it is bound to happen again. The rain will eventually stop, the sun will rise above the island (third sunniest place in Greece if what the locals say it true), the clothes will finally dry and then mid October will be here and I will be boarding a boat back to Athens, to meet beloved people, catch up with friends and my mom's adorable craziness, see Branford Marsalis live and forget about the army for a couple of weeks.

Come to think of it, it will be hard to come back here in November and it will be probably raining, but then again, this is not positive thinking at all...

today

2009-09-08T21:39:00.000+03:00

Memory believes before knowing remembers. Believes longer than recollects, longer than knowing even wonders. Knows remembers believes a corridor in a big long garbled cold echoing building of dark red brick sootbleakened by more chimneys than its own, set in a grassless cinderstrewnpacked compound surrounded by smoking factory purlieus and enclosed by a ten foot steel-and-wire fence like a penitentary or a zoo, where in random erratic surges, with sparrowlike childtrebling, orphans in identical and uniform blue denium in and out of remembering but in knowing constant as the bleak walls, the bleak windows where in rain soot from the yearly adjacenting chimneys streaked like black tears

William Faulkner
Light in August

ChiosBios #2. Not having a life...

2009-09-07T21:20:00.004+03:00

While in the army, I received the -finally- good news of getting a paper published. (Weirdly enough it made it to the cover of a well-respected journal). This would not have happened without the strenuous efforts of my good colleague Hagen and the perseverence of my boss Roderic. This work belongs mostly to them and my name is on it more or less due to an accidentally good idea. (But then again most of the good ideas are purely accidental).

The fact that I choose to post about this -very, very- late publication, to the final acceptance of which I only marginally contributed, can only be highly indicative of the lack of any interest whatsoever in my life, nowadays. Truth be told. Over the last weeks in the barracks I have a reached a point of utter boredom and idleness. Not that I am not doing stuff, quite the contrary. It's just that they mostly consist of activities that could only be described as offending to the the human brain and worst of all they leave absolutely no time for useful thoughts -let alone deeds- that all one can do is to whine about the lack of meaning.

Then again I feel like I am repeating myself over and over and that this post is only here to let me -indirectly- brag about my work (seriously, what has become of me?) and whine -once more- about the army. It's just that, of late people who actually read this blog, (yes there ARE some), were curious about the lack of posts. Not exactly the best way to make them feel I back and active, but still.

Promise to be able to talk about something more interesting next time. After all, football season is on its way.

ChiosBios #1

2009-08-03T20:15:00.003+03:00

So this is it then!

The Army starts now! (as a lot of my superiors were fond of stressing out this very morning). As from yesterday afternoon I am part of the 96th Regiment of Sanitary in the picturesque island of Chios (whose beauties one cannot appreciate from a simple look at the map but you can trust me, they 're there.)

Thanks to my very good friend Charis the habilitation process has started quite well. Still the idea of spending some four months in an environment which falls far from being considered idyllic is not very appealing. They say that one can get used to practically everything and I 've always thought of this as a really bad aspect of human nature. Nonetheless it can only prove useful in the army, where letting time pass by is all that one really needs to worry about.

I am still looking for the Holly Grail, that is a way to make army time useful. It looks tricky and has become even trickier here. But then again it wouldn't be the "Holly Grail" if it was to be that easy, would it?

today

2009-07-19T22:10:00.003+03:00

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

H.P. Lovecraft
The Call of Cthulu

The dark art of wasting time

2009-07-16T20:58:00.001+03:00

There is a certain blessing that transcends all races, latitudes and eras of mankind and that is that men, at the prime of their youth hold a firm conviction that they may -one day- change the world. The military service aims exactly at smashing this wonderful -yet dangerous- aspitration.

There are various motives behind such hideous an operation. Superstition, Conservatism, Backwardness and pure, powerful Stupidity to name only a few. But even if one is to accept the inevitability of the nature of things and submit to the idea that his time in the army is to reduce him to a mindless, opinionless, frightened peon -and consequently a burden to society-, there still remain inherent difficulties in grapsing the way this transformation is to take place.

I am writing this on my small notebook, having completed three hours of sitting at an empty hospital waiting room, where I am supposed to stay guard. Gurad of what exactly I am unable to tell, given that it is only 5pm, all the doors are still open, the cleaning ladies have not yet left the building, not to mention my superior officer who is -rightfully?- browsing the net in the office right opposite my post. Over these last three hours, I have grown weary with reading and bored of strolling up and down. My mind has become numb in absence of any possible stimulus and I dread to think that two more 4-hour shifts of pointless guarding nothing await me before dawn breaks over this blessed, military hospital.

I know that people who have already served -or still serving- and are reading this post, will by now attempt to decide between a lawful scorn and an ironic grin. After all, I am -at the moment- serving in my hometown and under circumstances that for the bulk of the Greek Army dwellers would be considered comfortable beyond any possible hesitation.
But that is not the point I am trying to make here -if any point can be made or is worthy of making. What my desperate, silent, solitary cry is attesting is that there is one thing in stripping a man of all his vigour, energy, will and right to become a productive citizen and it's a completely different one amputating him in such a way by deliberately enforcing on him the practice of a deep, unjustified and meaningless nothing.

It's the passivity of this art of time-wasting, that kills all that is good in us. How many books can a man read before he decides to quit reading altogether? How many songs can a man listen before he grows tired of music? How many blog posts can a man draft while strolling up and down for half a day, before deciding to quit his stupid blog once and for all?

But then again, how much more time need be lost before he concludes that if this world was ever to change the military would be the first thing to wipe out?

at the wrong place, at the wrong time

2009-07-06T19:10:00.003+03:00

As life in the Army is a constant exercise in the Art of the Redundant one gets used to facing the ancient dilemma. Get utterly bored with doing nothing or get overwhelmingly frustrated with doing something completely useless? Today I confronted secret option number three. Which is doing something that is both useful and not boring but which you would strongly prefer to avoid in its entirety.

While in the army I have been asked more than ten times to elaborate on my computing and language skills and provide additional details on my PhD thesis. After careful consideration of all my qualities my superiors decided that I should better indulge into any sort of possible drudgery, thus providing me with a variety of activities NOT to choose from, which include mopping floors in the barracks (rather dull since it is always dirty), washing dishes in the restaurant (personal favourite) , carry boxes in and out of army trucks (veeeeery dusty boxes) and -last but not least- today's (and tomorrow's and the day after's) task of reorganizing a huge pile of garbage.

The latter, highly demanding mission -therefore the fact that the select group of seven included three University Degree holders- consisted in sorting out a small hill of garbage that contained debris, used hospital material (mostly mattresses) and junk in general into smaller piles of the aforementioned categories. It lasted more than three hours until it was interrupted temporarily due to the unfortunate event of the discovery of two medium-sized wasp nests in the depths of the pile. It is to be continued tomorrow with slightly increased protection measures.

It looks like somewhere on the way, my eagerness to serve the country and my country's needs decided to follow different paths.

today

2009-07-04T19:47:00.005+03:00

Through all he said, even though his appalling sentimentality, I was reminded of something - an elusive rhythm, a fragment of lost words, that I had heard somewhere a long time ago. For a moment a phrase tried to take shape in my mouth and my lips parted, like a dumb man's, as though there was more struggling upon them than a wisp of startled air.

But they made no sound, and what I had almost remembered was uncommunicable for ever.

F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Great Gatsby

L' enfer, c' est les autres

2009-06-27T20:16:00.004+03:00

People who know me can speak for my defense. I am known to be rather tolerant. In the sense that only very, very rarely do I complain about other people and their behaviour in general. I am more than averagely easy-going and I tend to find excuses on behalf of others. Nevertheless, it seems like one and a half month in the Greek army can put this extreme tolerance under extreme stress.

Let's face it. Having to live in the same building with 250 more men, with whom you share a -very moderate- burden of responsibilities is not a simple task. Still, it would be manageable if only the majority made an effort to minimize this burden in a collective way. But they don't. In fact, I have come to believe that the army is the last resort of men (let's just leave women out of this for the moment) against the contagious virtues of solidarity and cooperation. Everyone (or almost everyone) is simply doing their best to avoid doing anything, which mathematically leads to a situation where most of the tasks are carried out by a few men, while the rest of them just sit and stare. Under such conditions, even tolerant people like myself find it hard to go by.

You see, I spent my last week in the Training Centre of the Sanitary Department in Arta working overtime just because most of my colleagues preferred to do nothing instead of the -very little- that we were asked to. The term "working" here needs to be adjusted to army standards, which translates to "unable to have fun outside the barracks". There is absolutely nothing fancy or complicated with army work. In my case, the frustration was only caused by the fact that "the others" were taking such a cruel advantage of the few of us. Thus, although I thought I 'd never say it, I remembered Sartre's famous words that give the title to this post. "Hell; it's other people."

Truth be told, I don't believe it. I just find it appropriate for the barracks (and perhaps not all barracks). I am still positive towards others, most of them, if not all. On my way back home yesterday afternoon, I found myself carrying some 35 kilos of luggage and having to make a 15-minute walk home due to works in the metro station. There I was, in the midst of a hot, Athenian June afternoon, in full garment and sweating like a pig (or like a soldier). A car passed me by, it stopped five meters ahead of me and the door opened.

The kind stranger who was offering me a lift home, came as the proof that in most of the cases "Le paradis, c' est les autres aussi".

Midsummer day's dream

2009-06-21T11:06:00.003+03:00

Last Friday after a tiring morning of doing absolutely nothing I finally got my permit to leave the barracks and come home for a short weekend. I rode the bus all the way from Arta, in the Greek midwest, to Athens on a sunny summer afternoon, trying to regain some of the sleep one inevitably loses while in the army. This proved to be more complicated than I thought mostly due to the radiant sunlight and the anticipation of seeing the people I love back home. It was going to be summertime in Athens and there are few things that can match a midsummer afternoon walk on the hill of Philopappoy before heading to Thissio for a couple -or more- glasses of wine.

As the bus was crossing the bridge that connects the Greek mainland with Pelopponese, glancing from my window, I saw the city of Patras, where I spent more than one happy years of early student adolesence back in the late 90s. A lot of nice memories came to my mind. A beach party next to the fortress of Antirrio, dinners with ouzo near the Citadel of Patras, nights out in Vrachneika. It realized that most of these nice memories were summer memories, around this time of the year when long days of study coupled with warm nights of thoughtlessness.

As the bus crossed the bridge and a two-more-hour drive laid ahead of us, I turned to the day's paper to fight boredom. There, at the bottom of the third page an air-company was advertising its new summer destination. It read: "Summer in Barcelona". I could not help smiling. Over the last weeks I had thought a lot about Barcelona, the place I left four months ago and which I had no time to reminisce ever since. Midsummer in Barcelona, with the "Fiesta de Sant Joan", nights in Barceloneta with cold "turbio" wine, sounds of jazz, and that special summer breeze cooling you down.

Then it occurred to me. That the essence of summer is exactly that. That "summer" is not a season but a place. It is THE place you want to be. It is -even more- the sum of all those places. It is the projection of all those midsummer nights in Athens, in Patras, in Barcelona, one cold evening at the edge of Yellowstone Canyon, a warm, humid night looking through a window down on Broadway Avenue, an afternoon up on Kastro in Sifnos, waiting for the full moon. Summer is that special space, the geometrical locus of all the smiles you have cast on the midsummers past.

And on the midsummers to come.

The Kingdom of Rust

2009-06-15T20:19:00.003+03:00

Speaking of the army. Again.
The councel I got from all those who have gone through it already is unanimous. Getting through the military service is like going through war. One has to try to suffer minimal casualties. And in the context of a propagation of a series of daily, pointless activities, not suffering casualties simply translates into trying not to be bored to death.
Trying to follow this (easy to say, hard to go by) advice, I am taking some small but important steps.

One is, I am reading as much as I can. And this means a lot. I have always been saving books for my retirement. Tough, thick (and very likely to be boring) books. Books of the kind that everybody talks about but noone has ever read. I am now through with Mann's "Magic Mountain" which had moments of greatness but could have been much, much shorter (except if it is meant to be read during one's military service). I have some good candidates lined up for next. I am talking about "big fish" and not the normal novels. Of those I read one every two days. Regardless of the boredom, this is something I really appreciate about army life.

Second step, I am trying to work a bit.
Scary.
That's why I am doing it in a slow and steady way. A little bit of reading, some thinking, a few notes on the margin of my small notebook, (already filled with stupid army info). It is still kinda fun and lets me think I am still into it. Perhaps it becomes productive in the future. Only time will tell.

Step three. The crucial one.
I need to change mode to be able to do all this. I look back at previous posts and recognize the source of painful nostalgia in the sound of music. Music that accompanied moments of joy, but moments that hold me back.
Punchline: I need a new soundtrack. New melodies to invest everyday life in this newly discovered Kingdom. This Kingdom of Rust.

The Doves sing about exactly one such "kingdom" in their latest album and Patrick Watson talks about a "big bird in a small cage". My case exactly.
So here I am, I take my books, my notes and my new albums by the Doves, Patrick Watson and Sonic Youth and set out to become the King in this new Kingdom. First I have to spend the next two days on guard for four hours every night.

But then again, as a great poet has already said:
Rust never sleeps.

the works and the days

2009-06-09T12:30:00.002+03:00

The "Works and the Days" is one of the oldest poems ever written. Its chapters contain a large number of the most popular myths of Greek Mythology. In contrast to his other great work "Theogony", Hesiod chooses the "Works and the Days" to talk about the five ages of men. Therefore the "Works and the Days" deals with the "works" and the "days" of humans, not Gods. It thus states what might now sound perfectly obvious, which is that only humans may undertake "works" and that "days" have meaning only for them, contrary to the eternal Gods who neither have a sense of the passing time and whose existence is self-contained -even if the Greek ones always had a certain tendency for "acts" ( and often rather dubious ones). In this sense, people throughout history have always been meaning to pass their "days" in strong connection with some kind of "work" to leave behind.

In my -humble- case (as this STILL remains a personal blog) my "works" and "days" have been quite disconnected lately. Being in the army is the closest I can think of to being imprisoned, not just because of the obligatory confinement but mostly because of the utter boredom that the repetition of a useless life cycle brings about. In this way one has to face a paradox where on one hand the passing of time is what mostly matters while, on the other hand, the days pass with almost zero production of "work". One has to admit that there is an inherent impossibility for the conduction of any productive, constructive or by any chance meaningful task in the military environment but this only makes the frustration bigger. And which may become even bigger when it is combined with a relative necessity for work, work that cannot be carried out merely because the circumstances do not permit it.

Such were my thoughts last week when I found myself riding the bus back to Arta after a short weekend leave. In front of me lied a bunch of papers containing the comments on one of the papers I had finally managed to submit right before joining the army. And there I was, keeping notes on the margins, replying to some -often suspiciously- mean remarks, thinking over some parts of my work that could be considerably improved, accepting in the end that most of all this was quite useless. I was going back to a place where nothing of what I was thinking could be done, as there are no computers in the army (for the recruits), nor internet access (for the soldiers), or a way to download scientific papers from the web.

In the end I was simply trying to convince myself that my "works" over the last years were important enough to need some more time.
In the end I was deceiving myself with the thought that some "work" of that kind could still be done while in the army.

As I went on turning the pages, listening to Coldplay, I remembered the last time I rode a bus listening to the same album. Some one year ago on the way from Seville to Cadiz, (instead of Athens to Arta), while on holiday (instead of the army), in the company of good friends (instead of on my own), reading a nice book (instead of a paper review). I remembered that back then it seemed that all the "work" could be done in the next few "days", while now it looked like all the "days" I have are not enough, not even for a paper revision.

Most of all, it seemed like the time of the innocence had irrevocably passed by.

Life in the barracks

2009-05-30T18:17:00.004+03:00

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

2009-05-29T19:50:00.006+03:00

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

2009-05-13T15:42:00.003+03:00

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

2009-05-04T15:59:00.002+03:00

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.

coming back...

2009-04-25T15:07:00.003+03:00

"Il me semble, bercé par ce choc monotone

qu' on cloue en grande hate un cercueil quelque part.

Pour qui? - C' était hier l' été; voici l' automne!

ce bruit mystérieux sonne comme un départ."

Charles Baudelaire

Chant d' automne

Everything has changed, everything's the same

2009-03-03T18:28:00.003+02:00

I look down on my desk to see my two copies of George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". One, a Greek translation was given to me as a present from a dear friend before I left for Barcelona back in 2006. The other, a translation into Spanish with a wonderful cover, featuring a rare photo of Eric Arthur Blair (aka George Orwell) himself, was given to me as farewell present by a very good friend right before leaving Barcelona to come back to Greece. Books, ideas and literature transverse time, space and people's minds trying to defy boundaries. The boundaries themselves draw equatorial lines around our lives. As we move tangentially around these boundaries, it appears that our lives are making circles. But they aren't.

I look outside my window and recognize a familiar view. It is like spring in Greece since I came back to Athens yesterday and by 6pm the setting sun, lights up the antena-infested skyline I can see through my bedroom window, with my desk strategically positioned so that I can face outside. The view is nothing like the one I had from the 4th floor Bioinformatics lab until last Friday, the sea is emphatically missing but it could be worse.

There is a scene in "Howard's End" where one of the main characters, "brittishly" arrogant and genuinely phlegmatic lets out a silly aphorism which goes something like this:

"My father says there's only one great view, and that is the view of the sky over our heads"

Somewhere among some old photos I took before leaving Athens in 2006, somewhere among the published photos of the blog I kept while I was in Barcelona, I found the one that appears at the top of this post. My old colleagues may still be able to see it hanging on the lab wall over my old screen (if Pedro who inherited my desk has not made any radical changes yet).

As I have been in Greece for only two days, I am still trying to cope with simple things I have become unfamiliar with. Trying not te be run over by cars while crossing the street or getting used to the idea that taxi drivers (sometimes even bus drivers) will smoke without asking any permission. The feeling that you have to get to know your own country after sometime has something charmingly unsettling. One needs a set of references to get by, at least in the beginning.

Looking out of the window it's good to see that the view of the sky over our heads seems to have remained reassuringly constant.

deciamos ayer...

2009-03-02T16:44:00.000+02:00

They say that brother Luis de Leon, one of the greatest poets of the Spanish renaissance started his first class after a three year imprisonment (convicted for having translated the Bible into vernacular Spanish) with these words:

"Deciamos ayer..."

meaning "As we were saying yesterday..."

Thus he wanted to state the fact that nothing had really changed over those three years and that everything could resume from where he had left them.

Here I am, having just come back from Luis de Leon's country, back to my hometown after three years (that were nothing like imprisonment), starting anew all these things I once left behind as if nothing has changed (or has it?)

"Deciamos ayer..."

Homage to Barcelona

2009-03-01T09:00:00.001+02:00

The photo was taken by Robert Capa in Barcelona on the 17th of October 1938. It pictures the perfect portrait of a man bidding farewell to Spain at the last parade of the International Brigades of the 35th Division of the Spanish Army.

Today I am that man.

I have not fought in a war (yet) but in an ironic way I am bidding farewell to Spain to join the army back in Greece. But today I am that man, in whose eyes I can see the determination of someone who knows he has fought the right war. Thus I am, today, leaving Barcelona after three years and 29 days having no regrets about anything. On the contrary, this farewell post should be a homage to Catalonia's pride capital.

There are so much I can say and so little space. Three years and 29 days would not fit in a post, even if they were completely void of emotions, memories, colours, sounds, tastes and odours. My days in Barcelona, happen to be full of all of the above. But how can one squeeze it all in here? People I 've met, friends I 've made, places I 've seen...
As this blog was created in the first place so that I can treasure the finest (or the most intense) of these moments, it would be a pleonasm to try to sum them up here. A blog is not a scientific paper. Thus it doesn't have to end with conclusions, or future perspectives. This blog could only end with acknowledgments.

Today I am the man in the photo. Speechless, overwhelmed, sad, thankful, I bid "Farewell" to Barcelona, I say "Thank you" to all of you.
If you still like me you should be proud of yourselves. You made me a better man.

You guys know who you are.

Barcabios has stopped but life (βιος) goes on. As I move to Athens I will take everything with me here : http://enathinaisbios.blogspot.com
We 'll keep in touch

ligero de equipaje

2009-02-23T12:42:00.001+02:00

They say it's hard to say goodbye but they very rarely say why. Last Saturday I found out. And it is all right here in a tuft of little papers hanging from a string.

Next Sunday I 'll have to take the plane that takes me back to my hometown. One of the petty things I have to take care of is the size and weight of my luggage. Even though I 'll be taking the trip with the person I most long for to be with back in Greece, I still need to keep it tight and light. No heavy books, no bulky objects, no clothes I have not wore over the last three years but somehow am still keeping in my closet. There has to be a choice of stuff I take with me and stuff I leave behind.

What I could never leave behind is the bunch of little papers you see hanging from my closet. Each paper carries a small goodbye message written on it. Funny or sad, emotional or cool, "goodbyes" and "till we meet again" messages from the friends I made in Barcelona over the last three years. I see it like a small arc of memories and it's what I will most cherish to take with me on this trip back home.

I am just so lucky that memories have no mass. Because otherwise I would have to carry a lot overweight luggage.

leave the keys on the engine

2009-02-18T17:54:00.001+02:00

I read this for the first time in an article in the Times and was reminded of the story reading about it again in Greek newspapers yesterday. More than 3000 cars (most of them luxurious vehicles) have been confiscated by the Dubai authorities after having been abandoned at the parking lot of the Dubai International Airport. Stricken by the crisis, their owners had no choice but to leave them there before taking flight from what used to be the Mecca of real estate economy. That was before the bubble burst. Now that it has, all those aspiring entrepreneurs could think of was to abandon the sinking ship leaving everything behind. Most of the cars had the keys on the engine. And in many back seats, there were piles of unpaid bills, bounced checks and overdraft credit cards. A few have even bothered to leave an apologetic note:

"So long and sorry for everything!"

I was thinking about these abandoned cars -as symbols of jobs that remain undone- while getting ready to leave Barcelona next week, leaving a number of pending issues behind (almost all of them work-related). It then occurred to me that I might look like one of those car-owners "abandoning the ship". I even remembered my boss using this exact term in a sudden outburst of poetic despair one day last December.

I don't think of myself that way though. Next week, when I come in to pick up my stuff I 'll have the sense I am leaving as a gentleman and not as a coward. No unpaid bills, no unfinished reports, no traces of latent procrastination in the back seat. Instead of a goodbye note, I will be leaving my boss with 100 pages of well-documented results. I 'll then load 60G of data on my external hard disc drive and clean up my desk.

The car may stay here but I'll be taking the keys with me.

thus spoke the man in the street

2009-02-13T17:30:00.001+02:00

"What a curse living in a world so damnably orphic, where there is no room for the language of the man in the street. In a world where the man in the street cannot speak, even the poet has to remain silent"

Umberto Eco
On Symbolism

I recently read "On Literature" by Umberto Eco (on loan from Valentina), an interesting collection of essays on literature and literary criticism. Although some of them were probably a bit advanced for my literary background, I found most of them quite entertaining and with stimulating aphorisms like the one I am posting above. Apart from its certain appeal to my political views (not to mention my disdain to any kind of elitism) it reminded me of the nicest anecdote I can remember regarding art and its appreciation. I post it below the way I remember it, probably a bit embellished by the passing of time since the first time I heard it narrated by a very good friend.

Here it goes:

Three renowned film directors were once interviewed on a popular radio show. The show host started by asking the first one -known to be a passionate realist- what in his opinion was the purpose of art.

He said: Imagine an everyday scene in a very common place, a small street of a middle-sized city. Now imagine a common man, let's make him a builder or a docker. We give him an imaginary line in the film. What would this line be? In my opinion, what the man on the street has to say is a simple phrase, something as common and ordinary as his ordinary life. Because in the end, the purpose of art is to imitate life.

The host then turned to the second one, a prominent representative of the romantic wave and asked him the same question.

He said: Art is indeed an imitation of life. But life is not always ordinary. Life can be full of surprises. Utter greatness and extreme misery may sometimes be hidden in the most obscure clefts of everyday routine. Art's function is to reveal the unexpected. To clearly state the possibility for every man to rise above the ordinary. What the man on the street has to say? I say put in his mouth the greatest universal truth, the most outstanding, crucial aphorism. Make his words resonate in the souls of your spectators forever.

The radio host was delighted with this exchange of opinions. It looked like he had touched a very sensitive point and was very excited with the way the conversation was developing. He turned to the third director, one that had never been a particular fun of a given art movement and asked him his view on the matter.

Then he said: It is true, life can be ordinary and life can be exceptional. There are people who lead passionate lives, those that weave the same fabric of history and there is the man on the street who passes his ordinary days entangled in this fabric. Nonetheless there is space for greatness in everyone. Each one of us, our docker father, an illiterate man who works in a factory, an uneducated housewife are all very likely to spend our days without achieving greatness. Still, for each and everyone of us, there will come a day, long after we will be gone that someone who knew us, someone who loved us, someone whom we have hurt, will remember us. He will remember something we did or something we said, something that made an impact in his life. It may be a simple joke put brilliantly in the context of a moment, a proverbial curse, or wonderful words of love, nothing that would sound awkward out of our mouths but still something that touched the other so deeply that he still remembers them. Such are the words that make us immortal, and such words would I look for to put in the mouth of the man on the street.

And that was about when the show was interrupted by the stupid advertising jingle of one of the sponsors.

limerick

2009-02-04T16:00:00.001+02:00

High-throughput sequenciation,
made Christoforos beg for salvation.
Once a productive young man.
Alas! he was doomed to become
a grand-master of procrastination.

where did all the scientists go?

2009-02-03T15:58:00.001+02:00

The following letter is to be published in the upcoming issue of the London Review of Books. It is a brief statement appealing for peace, responsibility and -above all- reason in the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Among the undersigned I spotted musicians, actors, photographers, film directors among a number of prominent writers. I could also recognize the names of at least seven Nobel prize laureates for Literature.

The reader is kindly asked to try and spot at least one person even distantly related to science.

He is also kindly advised to make a useful comparison with this document.

(In the photo: Participants of the 2nd Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affaires, organized in 1958 by Linus Pauling, Nobel Laureate for Chemistry AND Peace)

below the letter addressed to LRB by Daniel Barenboim et al.

The London Review of Books
Volume 56, Number 3 · February 26, 2009
'Please Listen, Before It Is Too Late'
By Daniel Barenboim

To the Editors:

Your readers may be interested in the following statement by Daniel Barenboim and the list of those who have supported it.

For the last forty years, history has proven that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict cannot be settled by force. Every effort, every possible means and resource of imagination and reflection should now be brought into play to find a new way forward. A new initiative which allays fear and suffering, acknowledges the injustice done, and leads to the security of Israelis and Palestinians alike. An initiative which demands of all sides a common responsibility: to ensure equal rights and dignity to both peoples, and to ensure the right of each person to transcend the past and aspire to a future.

Daniel Barenboim

Adonis, Etel Adnan, Alaa el Aswany, Dia Azzawi, Agnès B., Ted Bafaloukos, Russell Banks, Tahar Ben Jelloun, John Berger, Berlin Philharmonic, Bernardo Bertolucci, François Bayle, Idil Biret, Christian Boltanski, Pierre Boulez, Jacques Bouveresse, Alfred Brendel, Peter Brook, Adam Brooks, Carole Bouquet, Daniel Buren, Ellen Burstyn, Huguette Caland, Jean-Claude Casadesus, Carmen Castillo, Patrice Chéreau, William Christie, Paulo Coelho, J.M. Coetzee, Roger Corman, Jean Daniel, Régis Debray, Robert Delpire, Jonathan Demme, Plácido Domingo, Umberto Eco, Elliott Erwitt, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Rupert Everett, Michel Faber, Carlo and Inge Feltrinelli, Ralph Fiennes, Filarmonica della Scala, Jodie Foster, Eytan Fox, Fab 5 Freddy, Bella Freud, Martine Franck, Mary Frank, Eduardo Galeano, Jean-Luc Godard, Richard Gere, Gamal Ghitany, Amos Gitai, Edouard Glissant, Jean-Paul Goude, Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass, Jürgen Habermas, Michael Haneke, Donald Harrison, Milton Hatoum, Sheila Hicks, Bill Irwin, Steven Isserlis, Philippe Jaccottet, Elfriede Jelinek, Samih al-Kassem, Naomi Kawase, Ya¸sar Kemal, Rachid Khalidi, Edouard Al-Kharrat, Michel Khleifi, Gérard D. Khoury, Abbas Kiarostami, Stephen King, William Klein, Abdellatif Laâbi, Jacques Leibowitch, Jemia and J.M.G. Le Clézio, Stéphane Lissner, Radu Lupu, Yo-Yo Ma, Amin Maalouf, Claudio Magris, Issa Makhlouf, Florence Malraux, Henning Mankell, James McBride, John Maybury, Zubin Mehta, Waltraud Meier, Annette Messager, Duane Michaels, Anne-Marie Miéville, Marc Minkowski, Thomas Mitchell, Ariane Mnouchkine, Sarah Moon, Edgar Morin, Jacques Monory, Fernando Morais, Jeanne Moreau, Georges Moustaki, Oscar Niemeyer, Jean Nouvel, Kenzaburo Oe, Orhan Pamuk, Clare Peploe, Michel Piccoli, Maurizio Pollini, Christian de Portzamparc, Simon Rattle, Alain Resnais, Claudia Roden, Arundhati Roy, Moustapha Safouan, Walter Salles, Susan Sarandon, Fazil Say, Elif Şafak, George Semprun, Hanan Al-Shaykh, Pierre Soulages, Wole Soyinka, Ousmane Sow, Staatskapelle Berlin, Salah Stétié, Juliet Stevenson, Meryl Streep, Elia Suleiman, Peter Suschitzky, Tilda Swinton, Sam Szafran, Zeynep Tanbay, Uma Thurman, Desmond Tutu, Shirley and Charlie Watts, Abdo Wazen, Jacques Weber, Wim Wenders, Debra Winger, Daniel Wolff, Neil Young

a thousand days and three months

2009-02-03T09:00:00.001+02:00

On the last Saturday of January 2006 I arrived in Barcelona after a three hour flight over a rainy and windy Mediterranean. Maria and Fernando were kindly waiting to pick me up from the airport and so around 10pm I entered the flat located on the third floor of a renovated building on Carrer de la Merce, number 6. I went to bed early as I had nothing better to do and I slept my first night in Barcelona in the company of the sound of the rain on my window. The next morning I woke up to find out the day was as rainy as the previous night. I called my parents back home to reassure them I was fine. Then I watched #1 ranked Federer win the Australian Open and spent the whole day in front of my computer. At night, I watched Isabel Coixet's "La vida secreta de las palabras" winning the Goya award for best film.
Before going to bed I posted the first ever post of barcabios, whose name was decided mostly on the availability of a term combining "Barcelona" and "bios" (which is Greek for life). It had this same photo of Parc Guell on a cloudy day on top and was entitled "Intro".

There is a number of reasons we remember some days in detail. One of them is that some days are more special than others simply because they are radically different or because they signify an event of a certain -subjective- importance. First day at school, graduation day or -for that matter- my first night in Barcelona. Another reason for this memory-imprinting is that some days assume a latent character of periodicity. They tend to be recurring, most of them annually. Birthdays, anniversaries, the final of the Champions League, or -in this case- the last weekend of January.

Comparing that weekend three months and a thousand days ago with the last one, would be of no importance or purpose if it wasn't for yesterday nights insomnia. In my desperate attempt to finally fall asleep, I ended up thinking what happened inbetween days since January 2006.

Some things never change. The last weekend was as rainy as that one back in 2006. Perhaps not as windy as then, since the wind only came one week too early this year. I still call my parents every Sunday, still to reassure them everything is fine.

A number of things have changed. For instance, instead of having nothing better to do than going to bed on Saturday nights I have to fight for my right NOT to spend the whole night out going from dinner, to concert, to party and back. It's normal. Back then I knew nobody. Today I know some people. And they are so good to me that they never stop inviting me out. Even when I am as anti-social as possible.
Other things have changed too.
Federer is no longer ATP's top seed. In fact he lost the Australian Open's final to current #1 Rafa Nadal. Isabel Coixet is now considered to be the most promising Spanish (or I sould probably say Catalan) director. Nonetheless she has done only one film in the meanwhile ("Elegy" starring Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz), which was not exactly great.
Barcabios has now 167 posts in addition to that distant, lonely "Intro"(ductory) one. It still has more or less the same number of readers (somewhere between three or four people I would say).

As the though came to me that the last weekend of January 2010 will probably find me in military uniform somewhere in Greece, I suddenly fell asleep.

a day in the life of Francois S.

2009-02-02T15:50:00.001+02:00

But not just any day. A particular Tuesday, September 9th 2008.

Early in the morning of said Tuesday, Francois S. enters the bakery "El Pan" in a poor neighborhood of Badalona. He has not slept well. The night before it rained for the first time after many weeks and he had to seek shelter under a nearby bridge. He is weary and starving as he goes into the bakery past the cashier, reaches out, grabs a baguette and attempts to leave without paying. The woman at the cashier also reaches out and manages to grab the other side of the baguette. She doesn't let go until Francois S. threatens her in french, pushes her away trying to take the bread out of her hands. As she holds firm, the baguette is broken in two and Francois S. flees the bakery with only half of the bread. Later on the same day, upon being arrested by local policemen he still has some crams of that half baguette all over his ragged shirt.

Two days ago, Francois S. is under trial for having stolen half a baguette. He is tried in absentia as the authorities had no way to locate the bridge under which he is currently sleeping. With or without him present, the public prosecutor asked for the maximum penalty to be imposed against Francois S. Eighteen months for the violent robbery of half a loaf of bread.

It could have been a mockery of Victor Hugo's "Les Miserables" with Francois as Jean Valjean and with the attorney playing the role of Javert. Only it is a true story and you can read about it here.

In case the prosecutor has not read the book, he may want to know that in the end, Javert commits suicide
by jumping from a bridge into the Seine. And although the river Besos, flowing through Badalona, may not be deep enough to serve for this purpose, he may end up meeting Francois S. still sleeping below one of the bridges.

the greatest of all ideas

2009-01-31T15:51:00.002+02:00

It is perhaps my greatest ambition, if it qualifies as one, to be able at some point to reconcile the worlds of art and science (in that order). It goes without saying that such an ambition is -in my case- to be undertaken at a passive level, that of the receiver and not the one of the transmitter.

On today's El Pais, in a very interesting article , Antonio Muñoz Molina came to encourage this ambition of mine, by comparing Darwin's "Origin of the species" to the works of Dickens and Balzac. It's been a long time since I read the "Origin", mostly out of curiocity than out of literary or scientific interest. Back then I was a young student of chemistry with no particular interest in literature or biology. Therefore, I am not ashamed to admit that I never noticed the special style that Molina is talking about.

Almost a decade has passed since then, I now hold a PhD from a biology department, I have grown more interested in literature and forms of art other than football, I have read a number of books, among them "The voyage of the Beagle", Darwin's log of the most famous journey in the history of science. I still cannot admit being able to perceive what Molina sees in Darwin that reminds him of Flaubert or Verne, or Tolstoy. Nonetheless I agree that the pleasure we get out of a great idea is very similar to the spell cast upon us by a great book.

And in this sense, the austere simplicity of Darwin's greatest idea, its development and final conclusion and the influence it still has today, can only be compared with the finest of prose.

reflections of a scyscraper window cleaner

2009-01-29T01:00:00.000+02:00

What thoughts may come to him, while looking through the window?
Staring at us in our warm and comfortable cubicles, protected by rain and wind behind a curtain of soapy water and a soundproof glass shield. He might consider us fortunate, for being able to chat on the phone or with each other with our mugs filled with hot coffee, so inviting, next to the keyboard. He might even consider us worthy of this secure working place, blaming himself for not having been able to be considered capable of a job as dully secure as ours.

On the other hand he may not be thinking of us at all from this aspect. Perhaps the reflecting window and the prismatic layers of lather are not sufficient to hide our weary faces after Wednesdays' meetings. Or the way we look back at him, pretending compassion simply to hide our guiltily envying him for being able to whistle while working.

When the only thing we can do is jokes about computers...

PS. This post owes its existence to a conversation I had with Flip looking at one of the window cleaners of our own building and its title to Elbow's brilliant "Loneliness of the tower-crane driver"

hrönir

2009-01-27T19:59:00.000+02:00

or
[On the uncertainty of a past to be invented]

While reading Umberto Eco's "On Literature" (on loan from Valentina) it is impossible not come across a number of references to my beloved Borges, who is after all one (if not the one) of Eco's main influences. I ended up spending half of last Saturday reading Eco's essays in parallel with re-reading some of Borges' finest pieces. And then I reached "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", one of his most important works and my personal favourite.
I am not going to be the first, and certainly not the last to point out the number of ways in which Borges has acted as a "prophet" of modern science (hypertexts, www, reference networks are only a few examples). Nonetheless, there is -to my opinion- something really original in "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". Here Borges describes the conspiracy of some of humankind's greatest minds to create a fictional world whose foundations are based on completely subjective and anti-scientific concepts. The planet "Tlön" is an ultra-platonic universe, whose founding principle is an indisputable, extreme idealism and whose classic culture comprises -according to Borges- "only one discipline: psychology".

The most remarkable of all things "Tlönian" though is the fact that -here comes the best- "centuries and centuries of idealism have not failed to influence reality". Enters the astonishing concept of the "hrönir". These are objects which literally come to existence once someone laboriously tries to imagine them. A guy loses a pencil, starts to look for it persistently imagining where it could be, ends up in finding it on his desk, but we are no longer talking about the pencil he lost. That one is still lying on the bus seat, having fallen out of his pocket. Apart from other aspects (which Borges fails or avoids to mention) the "hrönir" have provided invaluable service to Tlön's archaelogists who are in the position to better interrogate as well as to modify the past, sometime making it as unpredictable as the future.

Leaving Tlön and coming back to the cynical Earth, it appeared to me that there is a striking similarity between the production of the hrönir and the results of my scientific research (or even worse, everybody's scientific research). You see, more and the more often I find myself trying really hard to make something appear, where it once not existed. Data are just too stubborn to corroborate your elegant predictions and hypotheses. As time pressure and lack of money renders the repetition of their natural production (that is the experiments) impossible, they simply need to be re-invented.

But as Tlön only existed once(?) and only(?) in the all-too-powerful borgesian imagination, I find myself unable to produce some convincing, hrönir-like results to support my work. It seems that my way of thinking is either too materialistic (an abominable sin in Tlön) or that I am so unbearably romantic to keep hoping that the day will come, when the numbers will add up, the plots will fall into place and the statistics will need no fine-tuning.

But then again, the inhabitants of Tlön also have a name for the objects that come to existence out of hope. They call them ur.

today

2009-01-21T12:13:00.000+02:00

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain

that could hold you dear lady from going insane

that could ease and cool you and ease the pain

of your useless and pointless knowledge

Bob Dylan

Tombstone blues

the symmetry of age

2009-01-18T13:51:00.000+02:00

Given the fact that I just came back to work one week ago, I should consider it a success that during the same last week I had the chance to read two short novels that two friends of mine had individually suggested. I decided to read them back to back as a small project on age and how it is developed from two opposite points of view. The outcome of this so-called "reading" project was a bit unexpected and that is the reason of writing a post about it.

I started with "Everyman" by Philip Roth (suggested by Faidra), which tells the story of an old man struggling against a failing health and the bitterness of reminiscing the splendour of a lost youth. Over the last years, I have been reluctant to read anything by Roth and I guess this had to do mostly for not wanting to submit to the Roth-mania, stirred by all literary media. At the same time I have always been reserved against prolific writers with an ability to publish a best-seller every two years.

Nonetheless, I found "Everyman" quite rewarding. More of an autobiographical sketch of old age, it transmits a certain optimistic feeling without taking it too far. While it is supposed to be a book about death it ends up being one about life without resorting to easy and simplistic euphoric messages. In the end it is an honest book by an honest writer and even though it starts off with a funeral and ends with a death, it leaves you with a sense that what lies inbetween is -like life- trully worth going through.

In a sort of counterpoint, I went on to read "Youth" (suggested by Filipe), the second part of JM Coetzee's autobiography, describing his life as a young wannabe writer in the London of the 60s that ends up working as a computer programmer. Although this was supposed to be the "optimistic", "young" side of the project it proved to be quite the opposite. Coetzee uses the dullest of colours to paint the pictures of his youth, the proze evokes a feeling as gloomy as the style, everything is grey like London. The book also ends in an abrupt way with no resolution or even a catastrophe that would signify -at least- a partial closure. Throughout its 170 or so pages we see a young man struggling against his own incompetences without being able to feel any sort of pitty for him. This man grew up to win the Nobel Prize for a number of great books, of which I admit to have read none. "Youth" is certainly not one of them. To me it appeared more like its creator's self-punishing apologee.

I am not a book critic, neither do I like writing or talking a lot about books. It was just the fact that these two books, both suggested by friends, both written by well-respected writers. What I found interesting is that the one talking about old age is the optimistic one while the one referring to youth is the darkest. The one that talks about dying makes you want to live and the one which talks about living makes you doubt if it is really worth it.

In the end, the pretty banal point I am trying to make is (apart from the obvious that appearances can be misleading even when it comes into simple book-reading) that there appears to be a sort of compensating symmetry between age and the way we reflect on it. While young we tend to think everything is worthless. Then we reach a certain age to appreciate everything that has passed us by. As in most of human activites we tend to disregard the grace of some simple things, cherishing them only upon their inevitable loss.

But then again, this is nothing new.

today...

2009-01-16T09:00:00.000+02:00

He has a list of words and phrases he has stored up, mundane or recondite, waiting to find homes for them. "Perfervid" for instance: one day he will lodge "perfervid" in an epigram whose occult history will be that it will have been created as a setting for a single word, as a brooch can be a setting for a single jewel. The poem will seem to be about love or despair, yet it will all have blossomed out of one lovely-sounding word, of whose meaning he is as yet not entirely sure.

John Maxwell Coetzee
Youth

once the bombing has stopped...

2009-01-14T16:31:00.000+02:00

...the siege will still continue.

"On 13 November production at Gaza’s only power station was suspended and the turbines shut down because it had run out of industrial diesel. This in turn caused the two turbine batteries to run down, and they failed to start up again when fuel was received some ten days later. About a hundred spare parts ordered for the turbines have been sitting in the port of Ashdod in Israel for the last eight months, waiting for the Israeli authorities to let them through customs. Now Israel has started to auction these parts because they have been in customs for more than 45 days. The proceeds are being held in Israeli accounts."

Sara Roy,
The London Review of Books, Jan 1st, 2009

on freedom of speech (and other demons)

2009-01-13T16:30:00.000+02:00

Let's say tomorrow I wake up and go to work to give my lab meeting seminar, wearing a T-shirt like this one. What will the reaction be? Some may look interested, others might congratulate me for making a statement, there will be the ones who will find it a bit irritating. Will anyone care to fine me with 3000 euros? I guess not.

Nonetheless, this is what happened to Frederic Kanoute, FC Sevilla's striker for showing off his T-shirt after scoring a goal against Deportivo La Coruna in last Wednesday's Spanish Cup game. Even worse, Kanoute just escaped a fine of 30.000 euros since the message on his shirt (reading the word "Palestine" in multiple languages) "bore no direct references to violence"! It seems absurd that such a penalty comes directly from the penal code of the Spanish Football Federation in accord with the one set by UEFA. T-shirts with political messages are strictly forbidden, and of late even players taking off their shirts in celebrations are to be shown a yellow card. Such is the mind of people who run world football nowadays.

It seems that according to them, football players are only to score silent goals, they are to keep their opinions to themselves and they are to be severely punished if they choose to defy the shameful "omerta" that fines a T-shirt reading "Palestine" as much as tens of fans firing flares against the visitor crowd (it happened in Espanyol-Barcelona last October). The reasoning is as simplistic as is false. Football players, they tell us, as all athletes, are role models for young people. Their image comes in every home through TV. They simply cannot be allowed to transmit messages of any sort. What they don't tell us is that it is perfectly normal to transmit a number of messages, ALL strangely related to buying sponsored products, during the same football games, while the players are to perform silently and in accord with carefully spelled out instructions. Neither do they tell us that the TV broadcasting of football games is by far the greatest source of profit of all footballing federations on the planet and that on top of making millions out of the football players' efforts they claim the right of dictating their "politically correct" behaviour.

But should it be this way? Would you keep working for someone who would fine you if you wore a T-shirt with a political message? And what limits are there to freedom of speech? Is "Fight global warming" acceptable and "Kill all hippies" punishable? It just seems unfair to me that football players are free to wear T-shirts that read "Jesus Saves" but a message like "Save the people of Palestine" gets a fine of 30.000 euros!

But UEFA's bright minds should have known better. And as football fans throughout the world are something more than numb morons destined to buy PlayStations and Heineken six-packs, over the last two weeks, messages like "Free Palestine" and "Stop the War" have been appearring more and more often among the crowds in all great European stadia. It looks like we, football-"consumers", have already been contaminated by dissident voices like Kanoute's.

Or perhaps, we have never needed to.

and the circus leaves town

2009-01-13T15:20:00.000+02:00

since the "circus" will apparently stick around for a few weeks more, I am posting this as a reminder, more to myself than anyone else...

Soon barcabios will transform into athensbios (and then probably to wherever life -and the Greek army- takes me). It will be hard to take off after three years in this wonderful city, but on leaving and the inevitable feelings this will bring about I shall talk when the time is ripe.

for the time, this is to remind me that I am here and well, ready to start posting about stuff that I like (sometimes) or that annoy me (mostly).

So stick around. I am not through with it yet.

same shit, different country

2008-12-13T20:27:00.000+02:00

On the left side, Jean Charles de Menezes, a 29-year old Brazilian citizen who lost his life two and half years ago in the London Metro. On the right, Osman Hussain, the supposed terrorist, after whom the Metropolitan Police of London were after in the aftermath of the July 2006 attacks. The striking (???) similarity between the two men, tragically misled two Scotland Yard firearms officers who gunned down de Menezes inside the train at Stockwell Station before he could even say a word...

The jury initially rejected the two officers' recount of the "incident" and a significant amount of doubt is still remaining on whether the killing could by any means be justified.

Despite of all that, I read on today's news that Scotland Yard is about to allow the two officers to return to frontline duties.

And I can only think that for as long as governments keep drifting away from the majorities that have elected them, for as long as the establishment keeps turning its back at the people who are supposed to sustain it, and for as long as the "law enforcers" think more on the enforcement than the actual laws, then tear-gas cannisters are about to be going out of stock more and more often.

today

2008-12-09T13:07:00.000+02:00

Κάποτε θα 'ρθουν να σου πουν
πως σε πιστεύουν σ' αγαπούν
και πως σε θένε
Εχε το νου σου στο παιδί
κλείσε την πόρτα με κλειδί
ψέματα λένε

Κάποτε θα 'ρθουν γνωστικοί
λογάδες και γραμματικοί
για να σε πείσουν
Εχε το νου σου στο παιδί
κλείσε την πόρτα με κλειδί
θα σε πουλήσουν

Και όταν θα 'ρθουν οι καιροί
που θα 'χει σβύσει το κερί
στην καταιγίδα
Υπερασπίσου το παιδί
γιατί αν γλιτώσει το παιδί
υπάρχει ελπίδα

Λευτέρης Παπαδόπουλος
Κάποτε θα 'ρθουν

on the sunny side of the street

2008-12-08T14:56:00.000+02:00

Walking back home late last night, alone through the streets around Arc de Triomfe and la Ribera, as my two most beloved cities stood at the opposite coasts of the same sea.

Athens in flames, finally facing its mostly underestimated contradictions, while Barcelona was serenely cruising into the uncompromising limbo of an enduring prosperity.

Going down carrer del Commerc with Interpol singing through my headphones:

"sleep tight, grim rite, we have two thousand couches when you can sleep tonight"

I passed by the front of a bank, one such as those burning in the Athenian major avenues, when I saw a homeless guy -one more of the many- who, unable to spot one of the couches Interpol were singing about, had found refuge in the little space, cramped between to ATM machines.

I wondered what he might think if I told him about my angry compatriots' bank-burning back in my home town. And whether he would even care knowing. Equally unaware of his thoughts, his dreams or nightmares, indifferent to the sufferings of Athens, Barcelona carried on her gaudy, sleepless night.

Tomorrow, this homeless guy will wake up. And maybe one day, he too will stand up between two burning ATMs.

...but seriously

2008-12-05T16:53:00.000+02:00

On the bus today, going to work, re-reading my favourite parts of Marcuse's "One dimensional man"...

Next to me I saw a young mother with a baby carriage. Inside it her baby daughter was sleeping, her tiny little hand holding tightly to her mom's mobile phone.

It must have been the saddest thing I have seen in a long time. And the saddest confirmation of what I was reading.

a one-dimensional man

2008-12-02T19:34:00.000+02:00

I happened to re-read the "One-dimensional man" by Herbert Marcuse a few months ago. I was hoping to get a better grasp on it being older and -supposedly- more mature than when I first read it during my early university years. But although I did not, I got a pretty good reminder of a number of concepts related to this so disturbing uni-dimensionality, which Marcuse puts at the center of his attention. Most of all, after re-reading the book I regained part of my revolutionary reflexes, which I seemed to have lost after a hectic summer full of useless work. Today, after a full 36 hours of increasing pressure and with a terribly busy rest of the week ahead of me, I realized I am about to lose them again.

I find myself in the rather unpleasant situation to have to produce, interpret and present a significant amount of work in a very short period. The way my boss put it -in a rather stressful way- yesterday night I have "a lot of work and too little time". This stems from a number of things.
One: I am not the finest example of a hard-working scientist. Always too easily distracted, always getting my hands on too many things just because of curiosity, most of the times leaving unfinished business behind me. Well, this business needs to be finished now.
Two: The business to be finished looks quite stubborn to remain unfinished. Numbers don't exactly fall into place but rather need to be "massaged" into it. It's something I am supposed to do, but more and more I find I am quite reluctant to do so.
Three: The business remains unfinished because my bosses thought it could go on forever. Now that they know that I am about to leave soon, they find this to be a comfortable way to put some extra pressure. A pressure not exactly that comfortable to me though.

Still, my laziness and increased sense of inertia notwithstanding, I have put myself to the test. How about getting up earlier and leaving from work later than usual? I can save two more hours of work this way. How about a bit less of reading before going to bed? That would help me wake up earlier. How about skipping climbing on weekends while trying to put some of my results on paper? That will compensate for the fact that nobody feels like writing the papers his name will be on. How about a bit less blogging, a bit less of reading the newspapers, a little less (meaning almost null) of practicing with my trumpet? This way I can run three or four different analyses at the same time, while preparing slides for my upcoming presentations.

Well, guess what! It works!

Now don't get excited, this doesn't mean science is progressing at a fast pace, nor that major breakthroughs are being accomplished. Nonetheless it means that I am being more productive. I program faster, I design the analysis pipelines more efficiently, I optimize my time in such a way that I am getting an unprecedented amount of things done and I manage to put them into slides or on paper in a sort of fashion that resembles a factory's production line. In brief I have convinced myself that I can be what I thought myself completely incapable of. Work like there is nothing else in life. No music other than the one that helps me program (Rage against the machine mostly). No books other than science-related ones. No leisure activities other than the necessary rest to keep me going. Even this post is to be seen as a major distraction but it's just because all my CPUs are working to burning temperature.

At last, after three years of being a post-doc, I have managed to become the one-dimensional man. And you cannot imagine how utterly boring it is.

today

2008-11-28T09:00:00.000+02:00

"There remains however a difference even if one takes into account the fact that the scientist never carries on a dialogue with nature pure and simple but rather with a particular relationship between nature and culture definable in terms of his particular period and civilization and the material means at his disposal. He is no more able than the 'bricoleur' to do whatever he wishes when he is presented with a given task. He too has to begin by making a catalogue of a previously determined set consisting of theoretical and practical knowledge, of technical means, which restrict the possible solutions."

Claude Levi-Strauss
La pensee sauvage

the -almost- greatest moment ever...

2008-11-27T17:31:00.000+02:00

There are a number of reasons for which I love football.

Most of the times football is beautiful to watch, like a nice film, only that you witness it taking place right there in front of your eyes. In striking contrast to people considering scientific results as "exciting", football IS exciting. In fact it is more than that. It is fascinating in a sense that it lights up passions and allows reactions that would otherwise be considered inappropriate for adults at my age. (For those who disagree, try about imagining the members of a certain "scientific" community celebrating their latest "exciting paper" in the streets).
Most important of all. Football means bonding, football means roots, in the sense that we all support a team that carries at least a distant connection to our social, national or familiar background. I support the team of my home town, the team of my father and my late uncle. It could not and should not have been otherwise.

The "greatest moment ever" is the title of the chapter that Nick Hornby devotes to his dearest memory as a football fun in his -great- book "Fever Pitch". Last night, in the loneliness of a half-full pub named Palace, somewhere in the Born, I was lucky to live my own greatest moment ever during my days in Barcelona. The "loneliness" stems from the fact that I was the only one passionately watching the game of Inter against Panathinaikos in one of the two screens available. The rest of the people were either boringly glancing at FC Barcelona thrashing Sporting Lisbon or indifferently having a beer while chatting. It was in the midst of this sort of surrealist atmosphere, when at the 68th minute a sudden scream of joy pierced the pub from end to end. "Yeaaaaaaah"! The rest of the people only momentarily turned my way to look at my blushing face, swollen with a slight embarrassment and a great deal of pride. My friend Julien, who "high-fived" me and the nice barwoman, who shouted "Happy hour!" in solidarity, were my two sole companions in that joyful moment. But I did not care. We were about to beat Mourinho's Inter and take a great step forward to qualify for the last-16 of the Champions League.

There is one reason, for which I hate football, though. And that is excess of love.

Which meant that the twenty-five minutes to follow were -as expected- an agony with no end. There is one thing in trying to achieve victory -or in my case, watching your team trying- and a whole different one trying to hold on to it. As the minutes were passing by with the scoreboard still the way you see it in the photo on top, my nerves were becoming more and more fragile. I hated football or I hated myself for loving it and I wished I was one of these indifferent people that only hear about results on the news and say "Really? they won in Italy?"

Now I know that I cannot be one of them. Simply because once you experience the uplifting effect of a great footballing victory, you can never go back to being a bored "couch-fun". Games like yesterday's are to be seen at the tip of your toes. After all, this helps you jump around more freely once the final whistle is blown.

a thousand splendid suns

2008-11-26T09:38:00.000+02:00

"A thousand splendid suns" is the title of a book by Khaled Hosseini, which refers to his native city of Kabul. It is a direct reference to a poem by 17th century Persian poet Saib-e-Tabrizi, entitled "Kabul", which talks about the city's beauties. A certain couple of verses -loosely translated into english- talk about:

"One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
And the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls"

Living a few thousand kilometers far from Kabul, I have had enough time to appreciate Barcelona's uncountable moons. On the other hand, I have been somehow missing out on its splendid suns, an accidental negligence I only realized this morning. In a city like Barcelona, the sun is more perceived than actually seen. One simply knows it's there but never manages to directly look at it. Except of course if he tries to do so very early in the morning. Which brings me to my main point.

Wednesdays are always difficult to start with. Stuck right in the middle of the week, too far from the weekend, but with an already accumulating weariness, they become even worse when I remember the lab meetings, scheduled every Wednesday morning at 9.30. To my bad luck, it happened that today, Barcelona's coldest day of the year so far, this time was pushed half an hour earlier, which meant I had to set my alarm for sometime around 7.30. Coming out of bed was as difficult as expected but I finally managed a few minutes before 8. As I was preparing a coffee-to-go and while getting dressed as fast as possible, I realized something of which I was subconsciously unaware until then. The fact that 8am is a quite reasonable wake-up time -for some people.

It was more like discovering an unseen world. As I was trying to be as quiet as possible, I noticed Giuseppe already having breakfast in the living-room, welcoming me with a rather ironic smile. I was in the shower, when glimpsing outside the bathroom window, I saw people already at their desks in the building next door. As I came out, hurrying for the bus, thinking I would find myself in a dark, deserted town, I saw people walking their dogs, reading their newspaper while having coffee, some of them having even finished their morning jog. A new, unknown world, lived and breathed under Barcelona's splendid sun, the same sun I came face-to-face with as soon as I turned right on Carrer Braille. A glorious sun rising out of the Mediterranean horizon, waving good morning to us all.

And a good morning it was. On the bus, the driver let two homeless people ride without a ticket.

Pessoa's trunk and some useless papers

2008-11-22T21:00:00.000+02:00

I mentioned Fernando Pessoa in a previous post and I got bombarded by comments about him and his work. (Most of the comments were communicated orally so don't bother to look for them here, most of my readers are either too shy to write or too direct to come and talk to me in the face).

Then I got into a conversation with one of them about the legendary trunk, where the great inventor of his own antonyms kept most of his work, unpublished until after he died. Apart from the obvious appeal old, wooden trunks may have on everybody, recalling treasures kept in wooden chests, there were connotations -for us "informaticians"- of storage, memory and registries. The mythical literary treasure, which you can actually see in the photo above contained 25,426 items (a precision that our "informatician" reflexes highly appreciated), which have still not been fully catalogued. Parts of this material have been incorporated in the Book of Disquiet, a fragmentary collection of texts Pessoa must have been writing throughout his life, taking notes on envelopes, back sides of old manuscripts or even pieces of carton.

It was then, when I thought of my endless efforts to present my -mediocre- scientific work in an appealing way for a journal editor, all the attempts to start, complete and most of all to wrap-up a scientific paper. For a moment only, I committed the sacrilege to see my incompetence as an analog to Pessoa's shyness or introversion. I imagined a trunk in my bedroom filled with pieces of paper of various sizes, colours and shapes, carrying all the unfinished abstracts I have started to write, the summaries I never managed to expand, the brief reports that never made it to become real papers, last but not least a couple of papers I have actually finished but which I doubt will ever make it to an editor's desk, due to various reasons, not necessarily relevant with the quality of the presented work.

Then I realized, that I should not take it so personally, that probably every scientist on the planet could have his own trunk full of failed or incomplete attempts to communicate his work, to send a message out there, to become heard, noticed and accredited. It is all a matter of exposure in the end, it is the same exposure dreaded by Pessoa, that we are longing for. It is thus inevitable not to fill drawers, hard disc drives or even trunks with all our fruitless endeavours. Only that, contrary to the case of Pessoa, there is the additional fear of becoming obsolete, that is in plain words, forgotten. In fact, the constant fear that drives scientists is the fear of their work being forgotten sooner or later, in the worst case -of the papers that fill trunks and never make it out- being rendered unnecessary, forgotten before it could even be remembered.

It is this fear, which marks greatest difference between works that actually matter -like Pessoa's-, works whose persistence against time and oblivion cannot even be bent by deliberate attempts to withhold and work that doesn't really worth any mention apart form in posts like this one. All we can hope for is that during our wonderfully, joyfully mediocre lifetime we have the luck to produce a couple of papers that would be remembered at least for a while and be worthy to be held in a "cultural arc" like the one of Pessoa, only much, much smaller.