Personal

I was strolling down the main road to the port, just right after the sunset. Last night as it was, my eyes were savouring the landscape until the next time, the next journey to the island. About an hour or less after that, miles away, in our house in Athens, my grandmother would be unexpectedly leaving me. Two hours later, I would have known, unable to react, unable to make a difference, unable to ask her why.

I spent the night doing the same things once and twice and many times; but time was not bothering to spare me. I arrived at the ship very early, and then again I had nothing to do but wait, gazing at the people entering, most of them already familiar one with the other, chatting their news.

For November it was a sweet weather. I walked up to the deck and as we were distancing on board from the island, the wind got stronger and violent. Violent was also the sun, rising above the mountain's top, the Moon as people call it, hurting my eyes with brightness. There, alone on the ship's deck, so close and yet so far away already, I let go of my grandmother free on the island's paradise. As it had happened before, a part of me was staying back to anticipate my next visit. Only that this time, it was the most vibrant and formative part. I was returning home incomplete, deficient.

It was a month and a half after my return, when my graduation ceremony was held. And my grandfather, after finding a form of strength beyond human to attend it, ran off to accompany my grandmother. In great delight, I can guess, they were - are - together as always.

With their essence surrounding every moment, internally and externally, I proceeded in living the life they had inspired in me. And as this life was proving successful and their presence was still shaping it, I realised that the people who raise us can never fade away. Pieces of them, built inside us, carry on and grow as we grow, change along with our change. I deposited pieces of my grandmother on the island, and pieces of my grandfather on the University. And by their unity, they are present at both places, simultaneously, together. Every visit then, is a return home. A home rooted in the inside of the body, of the psyche, but so distanced at times, so hard to reach.

For I cannot clearly tell if it is me or them who make the return, or if there is an actual distinction between us at all.

"But now and again on more occasions than I can number, in bed at night, or in the street, or as I come into the room, there she is; beautiful, emphatic, with her familiar phrase and her laugh; closer than any of the living are, lighting our random lives as with a burning torch, infinitely noble and delightful to her children." (1)

There they are… lighting our random lives with a burning torch, infinitely noble and delightful to their (grand)children.

And thus that November gave way to other months to come, and it is October now. And once again, I am so far away. And it feels like a risk to take each time; to leave the people, responsible for their lives, deprived of you. It is October now and nobody can tell how this November is going to be. So far away from any home I have ever built, and yet my feet feel grounded on the island, as it is fighting to surface on the sea, as it is getting too close to the sun or taking too much water in. Some days are too dry and some others too humid. But I am barely standing, disorientated as things take up their own life, just like I took up other people's existences and spread them in the world... Distinctions are a convenient illusion, I come to understand. In reality, you cannot tell where you stand and where stands another; if there is ever another.

There is, then, no escape, no place that will feel neutral if I have walked on it before. I am paving my way, leaving behind thoughts, gestures, nods, sounds, fears and aspirations, beliefs and misbeliefs, my-selves and the others' selves; a trail leading back to the initial birth; and a defiance towards death.

There can be no death; for once I stood, so vacant and so yet full (or perhaps fool?), gazing from Samothraki to the sea, and all I could see was the future.

Another was then gazing at me.

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1. Woolf, V. (1976) Moments of Being. Schulkind, J. ed. London & Toronto: Sussex University Press, p. 40.

Photograph: A full/fool gaze. Platiá, Samothraki, Greece, 14 Aug. 2012.

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Έγκλημα στη Σαμοθράκη

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Mountain stars (a collection of irregular haikus)

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Μικρό καλοκαίρι

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Safe place

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Bosphorus

In their cracky voices the seagulls talked – they truly did talk – about things that parted continents and seas. The crowd moved in a mass dance a choreography of nothing momentarily interrupted by streetcars. And the waters howled underneath they howled like a heartbeat soon (any moment now) to cease. Souls passed me by; some lost some wandering and some mine. Jan. 2024, Istanbul.

Composition

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Τι σχέση έχει ο Πάνακτος Βοιωτίας με τον Λουτρόπυργο Νέας Περάμου; Η κατάρρευση της οικειότητας

Καμία. Τα χωρίζουν 32 χιλιόμετρα, ένα όρος, ένα τεράστιο δάσος και τα “σύνορα” νομών Βοιωτίας και Αττικής. Απ’ όσους οδηγούς έχουν σταματήσει ανά τα χρόνια έξω από το εξοχικό μας στον Κάτω Λουτρόπυργο για να ζητήσουν οδηγίες, κανείς ποτέ δεν κατευθύνθηκε προς τον Πάνακτο, ή προς τα Δερβενοχώρια. Κι εμείς ποτέ δεν θεωρήσαμε ότι ο Πάνακτος ή τα Δερβενοχώρια είναι κοντά προκειμένου να πάρουμε το αυτοκίνητο και να πάμε βόλτα προς τα εκεί. Πώς γίνεται λοιπόν μία φωτιά που είχε ξεκινήσει στον Πάνακτο Βοιωτίας να βρίσκεται δύο μέρες μετά στον Άνω Λουτρόπυργο, και συγκεκριμένα δίπλα στην Ολυμπία Οδό; Και πως γίνεται άλλες δύο μέρες μετά από αυτό η φωτιά να έχει σχεδόν κάνει κύκλο περνώντας από τα Μέγαρα και να έχει επιστρέψει στην Οινόη; Βρισκόμαστε μπροστά στην κατάρρευση της οικειότητας, αντιμέτωποι με την αδυναμία πλέον να ορίσουμε τι μας είναι γνώριμο. Το γνώριμο γίνεται γρήγορα άγνωστο, ακόμα και άγονο. Οι αναμνήσεις δεν βρίσκουν τόπο να σταθούν · μετά από κάθε οριοθέτησή...

April’s fools

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From Katrina to Samothraki: Another Deluge.

The Chóra of Samothraki two years ago, on Tuesday 20 October 2015. It was two years ago that I was arriving in Samothraki, no longer a tourist but in preparation for my PhD fieldwork application. It was the same days as this year’s floods that I, ambitious and with a questioning spirit, was stepping foot on the island, just two years ago. Two years following those first days everything is so different. Pictures depict a landscape all the sudden alienated, a stranger. Questions bear no longer their fruitful character, but instead awake nightmares. Words do not flow; and experience is a repetitious limbo stuck in mind. Walking amongst the debris and mud last week, in the aftermath of the pouring rain and squall, I could not raise my hands, hold the camera steadily and take pictures. Who would like to remember this anyway? Who would possibly like to store and return to such pictures in time? Four years ago, while taking a semester of my BA course in Social Anthropo...

Before

I shouldn't have said a word to begin with. Because words hit like waves against coastal cliffs; they make an impression and then retreat to the their chaotic origins – be it sea or sin. 26 Jul. 2020 Photograph: Thessaloniki, Oct. 2023

Poetic Movements

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