Narratives from the field

Step by step, 5 May 2018, Camping Varades, Samothraki.

Lately I often think that to write field notes is to challenge your future self, unaware of who it’s going to be. There are so many things that change while conducting your fieldwork; the first one being yourself. I go through unfinished poems from the past year: the summer break in 2017, my settling on Samothraki the following autumn and all that suddenly occurred, the Christmas time, the travels. All of them, potential routes that remained unfinished.

In the field, there are numerous plans eventually going astray, and even more that you learn about on the way.

So, while in July I was looking for

[…] unfulfilled quietness

as yet another verse

or even a prose

sees the light

unchallenged

(from Listening to Evgeny Grinko: while writing in the mornings, unpublished),

in September I was peeling off pomegranates, unaware of their good fortune and how much I would need it in the near future. And since then a turmoil of changes took off. Sometimes it was productive, and as many others it was not. There have been those pervasive moments, from wonderful ones to terrible ones, which could not be adequately captured by any means.

Of course, there are also routines that never, ever change. To be utterly pedestrian, as it happens every spring I am struggling with my allergies, which for this year is equivalent to struggling with my research (I had this very bright idea to work on people’s perception of nature, and I yet have to regret it even though nature hasn’t got any closer to liking me).

I have added numbers and numbers to my list of – very practical – things that I can’t do: I can’t paint (yet another allergy), I can’t discipline myself enough to leave the laptop and start joking (but I ain’t giving up), I can’t adjust to gossip (but hey there, baby steps). But, a very proud part of me has learnt football terminology (I mean, how many girls you know who can call an offside? → tearing apart gendered fieldwork!!), has adjusted to (heavily) drinking and keeping notes simultaneously (have I mentioned the gender take down enough so far?) and is also managing the local dialect (no comments please).

I find that step by step, fieldwork takes you to unknown places. You stay there – permanently, temporarily – or you can leave immediately. I have also discovered that conducting fieldwork can restore your work-life balance, which given my burn-out last year is equal to discovering the Americas for me.

At the end of the day, things are as simple as always: the camera in the one hand, the notebook in the other, some cramps hurting the back, (the usual) determination to start your next day with a pilates session, and a pile of writings / activities / promises that need to be squeezed into your programme. But, you are different; the today self, the tomorrow self, the future self.

And life (in the filed) goes on.

Comments

Έγκλημα στη Σαμοθράκη

Συγκλονιστικές είναι οι εξελίξεις σχετικά με το μέχρι στιγμής ανεξιχνίαστο έγκλημα στη Σαμοθράκη. Η σωρός του Μολδαβού επιχειρηματία βρέθηκε τελικά σε δύσβατο κομμάτι του βράχου Βρυχού, περιφερειακά του οικισμού της Χώρας. Η αστυνομία κάνει λόγο για δολοφονία, αλλά δεν έχει δώσει προς το παρόν λεπτομέρειες για τυχόν υπόπτους ή για τον τρόπο που αφαιρέθηκε η ζωή του θύματος! Ρίγος στην τοπική κοινωνία εν μέσω καλοκαιριού! Θα επιστρέψουμε κοντά σας μόλις έχουμε νεώτερα... Ο αστυνόμος Μακρής έκλεισε το ραδιόφωνο με αργές, σχεδόν θεατρικές κινήσεις. Όχι πως ήταν λάτρης του σανιδιού · μάλλον το αντίθετο. Τον επιβράδυνε περισσότερο η σκέψη της τελευταίας φράσης που άκουσε. Θα επιστρέψουμε κοντά σας μόλις έχουμε νεώτερα... Ήξερε τι σήμαινε αυτό. Το τηλέφωνο θα χτυπούσε σύντομα. Στην Αλεξανδρούπολη επικρατούσε πνιγηρή ζέστη. Ο απογευματινός παραλιακός περίπατος περισσότερο είχε αυξήσει παρά ανακουφίσει τη δυσφορία που ήδη ένιωθε. Βέβαια δεν ήταν μόνο ο καιρός. Στην πρα...

Mountain stars (a collection of irregular haikus)

I Your dreams are lately red. In the defiant light of the sun we appear less clean. What if I hide underneath the surface of the sea? Love was supposed to be effortless at start. Same songs same rain all the things you are doing with others. Storms unleashed threads pending cuts; your dreams are red. II Night butterflies fill the room night flowers drop tears reflections of us populate the walls underneath the sky I inhale the stars. The sea will expand to the world’s end (I know now) mountains will for once retract is it possible is it thinkable to stand here still? May 2024, Samothraki.

Μικρό καλοκαίρι

Ι Η υγρασία της θάλασσας σκεπάζει τη στεριά αντικριστά και μπαίνει μέσα μου. (Βρέχει ανεπαρκώς.) ΙΙ Τα δρομολόγια των πλοίων φεύγουν κανονικά μα δεν επιστρέφουν πια. ΙΙΙ Ο βραδινός ουρανός διαστέλλεται το ίδιο και η κόρη του ματιού · κάθε νύχτα ο ορίζοντας τρώει λίγο ακόμα από τη στεριά και κάθε ξημέρωμα η θάλασσα μας έχει κυκλώσει λίγο περισσότερο. IV Βουλιάζουμε. Σεπτέμβριος 2024, Σαμοθράκη.

Safe place

What it feels like to watch the ferry sail from ashore an island remote urged to absorb and write about all; the smallness of the houses the vastness of the stars the firmness of the mountain and the thriving sun the stove warmth the cricket songs the raven flights the goat bells from within the heights; what it is like looking for the winter in the uncanny light of the dusk and wanting to stop, eat up the day, and again start. Once, I walked at night in the dark crossing the ancient forest and ever since I walk, the forest every night. Samothraki, November 2024.

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

I Irregular images go by quite naturally. II A pull deep inside the wave plunges before the shore. III A procession of doors shutting firmly behind me. IV A further pull the water mumbles far from the shore. V Gardens how in their beauty spread in front of me. VI Hooded crows paired in the skies time-travellers alike. VII Stairs beneath my feet rise in rambling buildings. VIII A single white feather by the wind carried across horizon deep. IX The train with all its nine coaches drags in tunnels stoically. X Sky creatures bizarrely by me undisturbed in the same sea. XI Words of use written or spoken lavishly, kindly. XII Thick shadows of the olive trees for a moment still unnaturally. XIII In a bookstore’s poetry section we speak for ten minutes then never again. XIV All the sounds finally surrender to the eyes’ silence. Summer 2024, London – Samothraki. Picture: Tavist...

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

I All our traumas sat around the table to dine courteously and with crooked smiles (too civilised for their own good). They exchanged words superfluous and untherapeutic. They drank until it was late and memory appeared to dissolve into nothingness. II Sometimes even after all this time, when the restaurant is empty and the music has stopped, I hear them trying to re-emerge from the surfaces that surpassed them the flowers that outlived them the lights that fooled them – intoxicated and vindicated by no one – into the shadows. I ask myself, sometimes, what will happen if they ever escape the shadows only to find that the dining table has since been replaced and most of their torturous attachments have ceased to be? What hidden and unresolved traumas will we have then? April 2024, Athens. Photograph: March 2024, Loutropyrgos.

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

Search This Blog