Fotis Kontoglou

Fotis Kontoglou started out as a babe and a child in a little part of the world, blessed with beauty and joy, protected by hills, by the vast ocean, by obscurity and unimportance.

The little valley - cuddled by the earth, smiled-on by the sun, protected and hidden by God – kept him and raised him and nourished him until he came to love it, so very much that he would never forget it.

So very much that his heart would long for that place and for those people always. And anywhere he went, he went, always, as an exiled man who remembers.

Wherever he travelled and wherever he went he was a rock of a different color, taken from the shallow ocean bed of that place, smelling of the sun that casts its light on that place, and the earth that showed its fullest glory there. Smelling of the sand and of the clearest sea water.

He was himself a little piece of that eden, and no matter what rains showered on him and what winds blew roundabout him, they couldn’t change his color, or dampen his warmth or disperse the scent of those people and that place that his souls was kneaded with. And so he walked the streets, and lived in the cities as a testimony of God’s secret art, and he lived his life as a sacrifice: for the world to know.

His body was a sacrifice: so that we may know that people come from somewhere. That we have a past and a meaning. That we have a significance. He was a memorial in the hard and broken streets of the city to the Man Who Knew God’s Love. And being there, for us, his days were a martyrdom.

I don’t think he ever forgave the sea that pulled him away and carried him far from the land of his birth. But I don’t think he ever stopped loving the sea, and burning with a longing for it, turning his mind to it, and visiting it, hoping always that that same sea might grab him again and take him back once again to the embrace from which he had come.

You know, it’s not everyone that God treats so roughly. It’s not everyone who lives a long death, torn apart by the beauty he has seen that he can never forget. This man must have been a great man and a very strong one.  Otherwise I truly don’t think God would have burned him so with the fire of an angel.

I hope that now he has become fully inflamed and that the light of that beauty that he bore and endured during his life has become his eternally now. And that it includes him and counts him as one of its own.

Messenger of God, burning with desire for the good and the beautiful, shine your light also on us so that we can see our way.

The astute

of tricksters

the market place if full

they sell charades

and empty glamour

Do not be a fool. 

I know a gypsy girl

I knew a gypsy girl,

when I was in Athens working at a restaurant.

I was young, and she was younger,

a child.

She would come to see me

She called me her friend.

She showed me the secrets of that city.

Behind little doors and under little tires,

where she played, and worked, and spent her days.

Treasures of glass that she held dear

The secret spaces, where the world was hers

Where the sun reached and flowers grew.

She gave me a gift once.

With pride and happiness, and the excitement of a child, she brought me a present.

I took it and gladly I said thank you.

After all, that girl truly was my friend.

Behind the doors of closed closets and under little tires, where purity grew and flowers blossomed,

she liked me and we were friends.

What she gave me was a skirt, a mini skirt,

of such ‘bad quality’ that it looked like something a street-walker might wear.

I knew I would never put it on,

but I smiled

and I said thank you

and I was glad for the gift.

But I have lost that gift. I probably gave it away, since I knew I would never put it on.

And how ashamed I am now!

And how I regret that now!

How my memory of her that is happy, is mixed with sadness, and it bring me tears.

How now, I would give my whole closet full to have that skirt again,

And I would wear it with pride.

2.

I saw a gypsy girl once

When I was in Athens working at a restaurant.

A young woman, a small little lady

With a bucket of roses resting on her hip

hugging it with her arm for some comfort some support.

With hair bleached the color of gold

A young girl growing up

A young fresh face

I was working, serving at the square

I saw her standing there, facing an older man

He sat across her with some others

He was very very nervous

He was very very insolent

He leaned back in his chair, he was very stiff

He played aggressively with his kompoloi to look calm

He looked very upset.

He said to her: ‘I don’t know you. I don’t know her. I have never seen you before’

His voice was loud

It wanted to affirm

It wanted to push her

It wanted everyone to believe with certainty.

He didn’t want that moment between them to seem at all intimate.

She teased him. She stayed there and playfully teased him

With a smiling face.

Wasn’t it because she was shocked?

Wasn’t it because she felt the frost?

And the frost coming over her stopped her?

She smiled but wasn’t she sad?  

In that moment, wasn’t she learning,

That a man’s lie can be so very hard?

I should have hugged her, I should have cried for her her tears

I left her there, in all the violence, with only her bucket to hold her

(And those tears I never cried drown my liver)

How can I forget that?

People, how can we forget her?

How can we forget that?

Do you think that any house you build, however high,

Any carpet you lay,

Any silly old thing you get,

Any success you have,

Do you think that might delete this MINUTE?

Do you think you can get far away,

Do you think you can wash that?

3.

look up, and look at the sun. It still

shines!

You will be six feet under.

That is, with six feet of soil above you.

And you will hear the bacteria of the earth speaking.

They will say: ‘we saw this little girl, she roamed in the city and she collected treasures. In her memory she kept all the gifts, all of the treasures that God let her see!’

And you will say: ‘When!?, Where?!, I never saw that’

And you will say: ‘I had my own gold’

And they will say: ‘we had that for breakfast’

What you said yesterday

I have been thinking about something you said yesterday. We were talking about how you would get angry, about how I felt trapped and shocked. You said I flirted with Hugo. I said that rather, I was happy to see him because I was in a horrible situation with no one to talk to and I needed air. I talked with him happily, I was glad when he was there, because you didn’t yell in front of him, and I felt safer when he was there.

I said I was traumatized and I didn’t know how to deal with you, how to treat you. And you said this: that everything would have been ok if I had approached you and relaxed you and made you feel better, that you would have felt more confident, we would have had some good sex and the problem would have dissolved. Your anger would have relaxed. You said you don’t blame me, because I was young, and yes, of course I didn’t know how to treat you. So it’s ok that I couldn’t do that then. You said that since then you have met kinder women who have shown you such gentleness.

This has been bothering me and I want to tell you how I feel. And you may disregard it if you like.

You were angry and would become jealous and would attack me emotionally, yell at me for hours. Most of the time I didn’t know why we were fighting, and I didn’t know what to do to stop it. So I would sit quietly and wait, but this made you more angry because I wasn’t engaging with you. The only times you would stop being aggressive and turn to being nice to me where the times I started crying. Somehow you liked that.

We have talked about this before. We agreed that we both had our problems then that we brought into the relationship, most of which didn’t have to do with Us (one-another), and that it got out of control. Neither of us knew how to deal with it. We agreed that it is wrong to place blame, because we both made mistakes and we didn’t know then how to handle it. I didn’t know how to handle you. I didn’t know how to manage you. I was shocked and scared of you exploding at any time without reason, and I was living in you room, in a city and a country where I didn’t know anyone. Where you accused me of flirting whenever I spoke to someone, so I was cut off from other people. In a room, where you told me not to meddle with your things. I left when I could and I never wanted to look back. And the thought of being with you smelt of death for years.

This much we have said already.

I want to tell you how I feel about what you said yesterday; that everything would have been ok if I had approached you and relaxed you and made you feel better, that you would have felt more confident, we would have had some good sex and the problem would have dissolved. Your anger would have relaxed. You said you don’t blame me, because I was young, and yes, of course I didn’t know how to treat you. So it’s ok that I couldn’t do that then. You said that since then you have met kinder women who have shown you such gentleness.

If somehow I had found a way, with a bit of humor, to put your aggression towards me aside. If I had had the skill to reach out and touch you from across this black crack that grew between us. If I had somehow taken down your emotional fist and had come closer, and had made you feel that I liked you, that I was happy to be near you, that I enjoyed you and admired you. That I was pleased with your presence. If only I had known how to manage you, and relax you, to release your tension, to pause everything and have a satisfying sexual experience with you, I would have successfully brought out your sweetness towards me. Like beauty and the beast, who found a prince inside the monster. Like the frog who is only a frog until a girl gives his slimy face true loves kiss.

I feel that this is a colonialist’s, a patriarch’s point of view. It is the view of a Man, who is the 1^st sex, who has a woman by him, below him. I feel that it is hurtful, and undermining. I feel that you are telling me to be your poutana (in the wider sense of the word.) let me explain. I hope I can explain it well. This is colonialism, and patriarchy. It is poutanio, the new order of the day for women.

Poutanio: the new sexism.

This is what women keep telling me. They all say this: men are all the same in the following: Their ego is very important to them. You need to feed it, even just that little. It is the key to men. You need to manipulate them a little. That is what they want. They want you to caress their ego a little and then ask them for what you want. Get it from them, but all the while make them feel that they thought of it themselves. That they brought it out from the goodness of their heart. That that is how men work.

That’s what all women say. They say this because it is the ‘collective’ wisdom about how to get along better with our men. And all sorts of women tell to me as advice, to help me in my relationships. And I say no. I can’t accept this. I can’t treat a man like that, because I wouldn’t want to be manipulated. Because I think that it is disgusting, because if that worked then I wouldn’t respect them as people. Anyway, I say, I don’t believe that all men are like that. I don’t want such a man. I want someone who doesn’t want that for himself. I want an equal, who will treat me as an equal. I want a relationship between two adults, a man and a woman who are healthy and want to share with each other, and love one another as people. And women say: well, I don’t think so. All men are like that.

And men tell me the same thing with their action over and over again. They show it in their choices of partner, they show it in their exclamations, like you did in yours.

I was 18 and I wanted these things. If I had been like that, really, it would have been sad. I would have had to have been raised in poutanio. I have always struggled to be who I am. I have made choices, often alienating ones, so as to evolve the way I have, to be honest to my growth. But the world rejects it. Am I insensitive, or cold? I don’t think so. In fact, I believe that the kindest thing I can do for people, for men, is to give them what I think will really allow them to grow and mature healthily. I avoid manipulation.

What you ask of me is perhaps what your mom should have done. Not because she is a woman who is there to make you feel good. Because she was the adult and you were the child and she should have taught you that love is selfless. It should have cost her nothing to put her own issues behind her and treat you with love.

I am these things. I have these 3 things to offer and men keep telling me to be a slave. Does anyone want me to be free? Can they love me so? Is freedom selling your self cheaply to many and getting nothing real from no one. I don’t want that. If men want me to die for them, I am saddened.

I am who I am with my faults. But I treated you as an equal and you are so sure that I haven’t. Like a beast that never sleeps you cynically tore everything about me apart to show up my inadequacy and my dirty heart. And then when people seek to manipulate you and use you you like it and respect them.

What should I feel? What should I expect from the world? How can I be happy about growing, when you, whose intelligence I respect, who cares about the world and cares about justice tells me these things. And its not just you. But from you I want more. What can I expect from the world as a woman? My dad says that a woman’s value is until about 30 (while she still looks good) then she is bothersome and petty. He is dating some girl, some dumb slut (for lets call things by their name) who looks 15. What does that tell me?

You say in your song that you want to burn the kapare, and hit the kaparetzides over the head. Have you ever loved a woman enough to wish to see her grow out of this sexually subjugated world? Have you ever loved me?

Would I do it now that I am older?

It is more women teach other women how to be oppressed – more so than men. My grandmother taught me how to be subordinate. Why is that? Because she cared about me I know. Because she wanted to keep me out of harms way, out of the highway of violence. She taught me everything she knew so that I could get by. I am ever so grateful. But don’t you wish she had taught me obedience rather than subservience? Or maybe she did, and I didn’t understand.

I talk about love. But what is it?

What is oppression? It is when you don’t let the other person express and share their good skills, their human capabilities? Because everyone needs to realize themselves and be happy. 

2010

Elena, Helen and Eleni

‘You’

‘Me?’

‘You’

‘What? Me?’

‘You’

Frossa put down the shirt she was holding – she had taken it off together with the scarf because it had gotten rather warm – and went over to the young woman that was calling her. The woman sat on a tree branch, almost three meters off the ground, and was half hidden by the leaves around her. Her face was in full view though, and she looked strait over at Frossa. Frossa stood near the base of the tree and looked up. The sunlight blinded her a little and she squinted to see, but what was clear was the full broad teasing smile across the woman’s face. A smile that looked like a laugh.

‘Hey you’, the woman said more kindly this time. She wasn’t meaning to stop Frossa in her tracks and pull her over, as she had before. Since Frossa had come over, the woman’s voice became now rather welcoming. And you might say she sounded a bit cheery that her call had actually worked out.

‘Hello’, Frossa returned the friendly intent. In the young woman’s voice Frossa could hear, toned down, the happy surprise of a child, when an uncle does agree to their plea to go for icecream. Also, in her nibble movements, and in the playful way her gaze engaged you immediately into a personal engagement, Frossa thought she saw evidence of lineage from the Goat People. She stood a bit back to see better.

The woman swiftly switched her position and came over to the right of the tree, where the sun would not be behind her, and on to a branch that was about a meter lower. She dropped her self into a sitting position in the middle of the branch, just about at the point after which it wouldn’t have held up her weight. Her feet hung down and swung freely. She had a big scruffy head of hair, some blue trousers that looked as if they lived on her, and a white top.

Noticing that the woman had no intention of coming down Frossa looked at the tree to figure how easy it would be to climb up. It wouldn’t be easy. Feeling uncertain about if it was worth hanging about, Frossa looked up at the woman – whom as you looked at looked more and more like a girl – and with a slight tilt of the head gestured that she had her attention, and that she ought to say whatever it was that she wanted.

The woman just beamed her wide grin and her smiling eyes. You would have thought that she was happy just for her and Frossa to look at one another, as if that was engaging enough. Frossa relaxed and put her little annoyance away. I suppose it was enough, she noticed.

‘Come down from there’, she said, in agreeable response to the woman’s obvious request to be friends, and the woman – the child – hopped to the ground, put her one arm around Frossa in a hug, and they walked like that, side by side, away from the tree.

‘You look rather serious’, she said.

‘I am rather serious’, Frossa answered, ‘what is wrong with that?’

‘What is wrong with playing?’ she answered.

‘I play’, Frossa answered

‘You don’t play’, she said

‘I have fun with serious things’, Frossa answered. ‘I have fun with them’.

‘Do you know what a game is?’, she said

‘I know what a game is’, Frossa answered

‘Do you?’, she responded. ‘Do you know what a game is’, she teased.

‘A game is an activity where the formal outcome has no moral relevance’, Frossa answered.

‘Life is a game’, she said.

‘No its not’, Frosso answered. ‘Life is not a game.’

‘Play a little’, she said

‘I can’t play with my life’, said Frossa

‘Play with me a little’, she said

‘What do you want to play?’ Frossa asked.

Hearing the acceptance of the challenge in Frossa’s tone, the girl yupied around a bit. But she didn’t know yet what it was she wanted to play.     

‘My name is Eleni, but it is Elena too, but it may well be Helen of Troy.’

‘Tell me,’ she said ‘I saw you come, this way from far away. I saw you turn around the bend the way this road is turning. Did you pass by the village that sleeps at the forest’s feet?’

‘I did’.

‘And tell me, who was there and what do they do, did you find them or did they find you?’

‘My memory fades the further I walk, what I have left from there are their gifts, close to my heart, that I hold.’

‘Did you see a river, did you see any fish?’

‘I read about it’, she went on to say. That there is a river and creatures too, and if you speak to them from the bank they will carry messages for you. They can travel to any house, to any person you seek, and that without words, to him, your message they speak.’

Frossa considered this. ‘No,’ she said ‘I really don’t think so.’ ‘But why would I want that? Why would we need such a thing?’. ‘Messages are not secret in our world, they are not hidden. Anyone who wants to know a thing, can look and find it out. If I wanted to say something to any one, why wouldn’t I say it to them myself directly. I lift up my heart, I open my arms, and I speak what I want, where I am. One can lift up their hearts, they can open their arms, they can listen out loud, and can hear it.’

‘And besides’, Frossa added, ‘I don’t seek anyone. I long for them, and I wait. Sometimes I look up and I call to them, I yell out to them, and I wait.’  

Maybe as Frossa spoke, her tone had been antagonistic, because Helen withdrew a bit, and as her happiness had shone on her face as uninhibited as a child’s, now her mood changed to an easy complaint.

‘Why do you speak so quickly,’ she asked, ‘why do you say only so little.’ ‘Why do you tell me what you think, and not what you saw’.

‘My life is my own,’ Frosso said, ‘and only I can live it. Ideas, they are for everyone. As they were given to me, so I also can pass them.’

‘You needn’t be so cryptic’ the girl said. ‘You see those tall cherry trees?’ she asked, ‘I live there.’ ‘From the people who pass by here, who walk, with stories, I walk with them.’

Frossa was silent and she thought. ‘I am sorry, she answered, I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

a lady in waiting.

I.

If you are summoned you appear right away. So, I put down my book in mid-sentence. I shed the cloth I wore where I had been sitting, by the open window. I dove strait into the bath and swam across to its other end. A bowl of soap was brought over and placed beside me, and quickly I washed myself all over, particularly scrubbing behind my ears, along the back of my neck under my hair, the front of my neck, and then the rest of me. My auntie is correct in what she told me – that cleanliness is half one’s beauty.

Soon after, I appeared before the queen. I walked towards her keeping my back strait and my head up, until I came close, where I knelt and bowed down before her. While she spoke I faced the floor, my left cheek touching my left knee.

We did not say hellos and goodbyes. In such situations we acknowledge one another with a pause of silence before she speaks, and another pause of silence, after she has spoken, before I get up to leave.

This is what she told me: she said the prince will come to meet me now. She said: ten men will come to see you, and if you recognize the prince he shall reveal himself and his kindness to you. If you do not, you shall be expelled from the state for thirty years.

When she had finished speaking, she glanced for a moment down at me, and then strait ahead again. I stayed bowed on the floor.  This is the way I showed her my gratitude, and my appreciation of the honor that was being done me. I left without looking at her again.

II.

Going back to my apartment, I took off the celebratory dress and wore another more simple cloth, so light and so flimsy that the breeze touched my skin again as if I were naked.

I ordered somewhat my books along the windowsill, as I did not have time to do that when I left, and, stepping out from the camara into the garden, I went down towards the beach.

The sun was hot, and rising, but the breeze was cool, and the shades wide. I walked down amongst the trees, down the 200 steps, through the cold stream, and down to the beach. The rising sun had not fully reached here yet, and the beach pebbles rested cheerfully in the shade of the boulders. I walked across them and round to the lagoon. My walking disturbed the stones under my feet and little crabs shuffled about me. I mean tiny little crabs, about the size of a fingernail. I reached the sand, and sunk my feet into its body. The coolness of the wet sand bellow the surface layer stimulated my feet. I twisted about, digging my feet a little deeper in, and enjoying the grainy texture.

The sun began to show above the cliff. The soft waves breaking along the beach began to lessen, subdued by the growing heat, and the sea was becoming more serious. I dropped my cloth and ran in.

I felt anxiety and fear. The woman who had the home before me had failed. And the woman before her. Women everywhere were often leaving.

The first thing I decided is that I would not be afraid. There is no usefulness in being afraid.

In fact, fear has one value. It indicated to me that this is an important task, a significant one – and that it is difficult.

But I knew that. Otherwise, fear could only get in my way. I would do everything that I could, anything that I could, and then I would have to let things be and become what they will. It would be ok, as, having done what I could, there would have been nothing I could have done about it, were I to choose badly.

How would I know the prince? I thought, I wouldn’t look to recognize him, I would wait for him to recognize me. I thought, that a normal man usually cannot see you. He looks at you, and he sees only what he already has in his heart. So I would wait to see what he had in his heart in this way. Also, I thought, only a man who can love can see another person as they are. I would wait to see who would recognize me, and I would choose him for a prince.

I lay on the water floating with my eyes closed. So vast is the sea, and so open a space, and still, you can be there and trust that you are alone. You can relax, and open you mind and your heart, let them unfold and spread to fill the whole area – as if there is no one there to confine you by observing you. With this vast expanse about you, you can trust that you are alone there.

I put my ears inside bellow the surface and I listened. I sought advice, and hope.

The other thing I decided was this: that I would give time. Time, I thought, is like a dimension, and it lets you see the shape of a person well. From where we stand, without it, we cannot see.

evening

She sat sitting on the porch, to be alone from her parents, alone with her desire. Her desire to be with someone. She looked at dark fields, some trees, stars and the moon. Overwhelming open space so boring and frustrating, trivial, because it promised no chance for excitement, interaction enhanced with sexual tension, mental stimulation, or spiritual fulfillment.

She wondered if this burning she felt, that she contained, that made her present insufficient and boring, was a need felt by all people. And if this need, the boredom, exploding in her, this wanting, to move, to meet people, consume stimulation, have the environment that realizes her sexual playful intelligent self and feed her hungry self, is the need that makes people seek change and action. A force that invented the light bulb and the night club.

What is this yearning that she feels? To go out, find others, find fun, be part of the fun, eat it, so that it reaches down and punches this strain in her chest.

What do we need?

Can we ever be satisfied or is this a force that urges consumption and movement that will never be satisfied?

She didn’t sit there desiring a man of this sort or that. Yes, sometimes she does. But really, this feeling is so familiar and experimented with, that she can feel it like a concept, stripped of its particular object of desire.

2005

in the town close to the people

I was flying about the city one evening. It was just before darkness, that beautiful deepening of the colors – that hour when the texture of color thickens. When the colors are perfect, that moment before the darkness lies heavy upon them. Several households had turned on their lights, and the apartment buildings came to life with the little golden square windows that told that there were people within. I was coming from high up and the wind was carrying me northwards, but I dipped my head and swooped downwards and eastwards towards the town. I wanted to look inside. I wanted to see who these people are, and what they do.

All and all it is a happy city. I visited first an open window. It was a long largish window opening into an open-plan living room. Facing the window was a desk, and at a laptop on it sat a woman typing. A mug of coffee was on her right, tobacco, and an uncleaned violin near her at the end of the long desk surface. She didn’t see me coming but she saw me there. She pulled the curtain to open completely so that I could see the whole room, and turned her attention back to writing. The room was large and long, with wooden floors. On one side its walls were mostly of window. The furniture was minimal. The woman was barefoot. It is a beautiful warm night.

It is a happy city. Pretty much everyone is doing something that they want to be doing. But there is a sadness. A loneliness. A gap. A missing person. You can see it in the dark gentle eyes of the writer. Something substantial is being missed. Her eyes smile, and they concentrate on their task in a most friendly way, but they also look past their object. They look for something that is not there. They long for it.

You can hear it in the music that is coming out of the people’s windows. In the voices of the singers. Like in the voice of Bill Withers, when it is played in this town, it sounds like a presence is missing. One you know who should be here. In some houses, there are photographs on the walls. The facial features differ in each, but they portray the same presence. The same person from here who is missing. There is a longing about the place. But all and all it is a happy city.

I sit on the woman’s window sill, and I look at her. She looks at me, she offers me a coffee. She pushes her computer slightly to the side, and rolls a cigarette. It is a beautiful warm night.

You know who you are

The right music for this one is saxophone. Try Maceo Parker ‘Children’s World’. On this day, she ran into him in the street. He saw her first. First he felt a cold sweat of recognition, then he wanted to turn a corner and hide, then he felt upset at her for appearing. Though really, he wanted to go over and say hi, and laugh like a child and be merry.

She saw him standing there and she smiled gladly. He looked busy. He seems to always be busy. ‘Hey’ she said. She wanted to hug him and show gladness. Then, they would both run off like kids into the park, and run and play. Then, by late afternoon, they would settle by the pool. Get down to their underwear. Get wet. Stand closer to each other. Feel a warmth. Let the sun go down behind them.

But he has such adult ways. They could never do that now. And he is so busy. And his girlfriend knows his mother. He is a serious man living up to all the expectations (except perhaps those of personal nature). Carrying the ball he has been given. Her smile is happy, but it’s nervous. They say how are you and they leave.

You might have something in common with someone, and that part of you you share with them. But if they deny that part of themselves in themselves, they will deny you too. 

six post meridiem

He called at 6pm. That is a good time. It is after the siesta period during which it is rude to phone households – but not just immediately after. So it showed that he is considerate, but also not rushed. It was a planned phone call, he had thought about it – it wasn’t just from a burst of emotion.

He said Hello How Are You? Of course she recognized who he was. He made a quick joke and laughed himself. During their conversation, she was involved and engaging, in her usual straightforward no-frills manner. But she was reserved. Her attitude said I Can’t Give You Any More If You Don’t Start Taking Responsibility For Your Side And If You Don’t Man-Up And Engage With Me Honestly. He knew that she meant it, though he probably didn’t know what his part was. He knew he had been a disappointment. But he called – that was something.

He said Look, Come And Meet Me For An Afternoon, Do You Want To? And Don’t Plan Anything Else For the Evening, Let’s Have All The Time We Need. I Won’t Plan Anything Either. We Can Stay All Night.

Fine.

Good.  

Then

Her heartbeat beat faster. Physically, nervousness and anxiety feel the same, whether it be because you are excited or because you are frightened. You cannot distinguish, if it is a good thing you are looking forward to, or a bad thing.

She walked up and down the house and did things quickly. She danced to a few songs in her room – that always calms her down – but she did so carefully. She didn’t want her mother downstairs to hear her feet stamping and suspect that any emotional expression was taking place above her.

She showered, and let her hair dry naturally. That way her curls are bouncier. She put on something comfortable – in any case she knows: that she looks good in everything when she wears it with ‘ease’. “I won’t say that much”, she promises herself. “I will let him talk, and see what he has to say of his own accord”. She doesn’t want to guide the conversation this time. She wants to hear what is in his own heart, and what his thoughts are.

She sits on a chair and tries to breathe well. Welling up inside her she feels the anxiety. She knows what it is. It is a rush of hope trying to make it through, but dragging up with it, suppressed tears of disappointment, and words of discontent and reaction against being let down repeatedly. Words that were never heard, and which now, linger on still like a ghost is said to linger in a place, if it is frustrated, because its purpose was never accomplished before the persons death. Hope comes up in her like a stick would surface from a dirty still pond – with figs and gunk attached to its sides.   

These are words that he might never hear. These are her truths that he rejects, because he does not like to accept any responsibility for his part in what went wrong. She knows that by now. She is not frustrated by this anymore. She is independent, and rather strong. She acknowledges her fear, but she does not let it get out of hand. If this, this meeting this evening, is another half-assed bit of socialization where they are to pretend that everything is ok, but they are not to show one another the feelings, and the realizations that inhabit them, then so be it. She will not pretend to be content with him, but she will not surface anything that he chooses to avoid. She will see what he wants, and then leave again. She can do that. She has had to do that before. She does not expect, and she does not hope, that he will care to communicate genuinely with her. Not with all the things that that would mean. If she cannot be pleasant, then at least she can be calm and reserved.

If he does seek to communicate, if he does say: “there is something between us, what is it? Let us look at it. I have something and you have something. Let us look at what we have and what we are for each other. Let us be honest about what is between us, let us speak and communicate. You carry something that you got from me, let me see what it is, tell me about it”. If he does say that, then of course, she will speak. And she will listen. There is no point in playing games about these things.

Otherwise, she has self-respect and a keen sense of dignity. She will not ask this man to share something with her  that he does not want to, that he does not choose to. Frankly, you cannot get someone to do that even if she meant to. She does not know how.

How will this meeting go? She cannot know. As is, she cannot hope either. She will see. But she is ready.

It is ok if you cry. If you cry in front of someone, in such a situation, it is not a bad thing. It is not a sign of weakness. I did not know that for a long time. But now she knows it. She might cry. If it happens she won’t stop it. It is not something to be anxious about.

A love without a Lover

One man without another, is like a walkman without batteries. You have your real self, though, your real self is made of the same stuff that 'potential' is made of. Without a context to be in, you are not anything. Within a context, we are what we are. Of course, each context we are in, each group of people, will judge you in its own way. They will look at you differently, and you will accentuate some other part of your self. 

Some contexts will reject you. Some contexts will inhibit you, and not being able to express yourself, to participate and to do your thing, you will feel frustrated, and sad. A better context will accept you, as you are, and let you express yourself as you feel. Such contexts allow us to be happy. 

I have thoughts, and feelings, and plans, and projects. I see the Purpose of things, and I try to do what I do, well. This makes me excited, and often happy. When I manage to do something well, I am even joyful. But despite my projects, sometimes when I am alone, there is nothing. I sit, and I feel nothing. And to this, the world around me is indifferent. Purpose, and its shining light switch off, and there is nothing left.

It is a good thing that we have Memory. We can recreate a context, and hold on to its life-giving powers, even when we are not with other people. Understanding the contexts we are in, and remembering them when we are not in them, gives us life. They allow the manifestation of our being, of our true selves. Inside these spaces we live, but outside, Nothingness, a darkness and a death, are never far afield.

It is a good thing that we have memory.

I have a notebook. It is magical. I can speak through it when there is no one to speak to. I write, and writing I beat time, and distance. With writing, I speak across physical structures of isolation. When I write, there is a friend for me somewhere, who might sometime hear me. I beat death, I defy Nothingness.

I have my notebook, and the vast, heavy skies, that might otherwise press down and squash me, are held up.

What do you have?

shading

1. She doesn't impress you much at first glance, but actually, she has a very pleasant face. Her smile is soft, and kind, and happy. Her voice that sounds over-sweet at first, is actually gentle. You could quickly overlook her. Literally, you can disregard her when you first meet her and pay no more notice to her from then on. And she would let you if you did so. She would watch you, and learn about you, from the shadows, but you wouldn't look or learn about her. But you would be better off for it if you did. Acknowledge her and she will speak to you. You'll see that she is not in fact shy at all. Rather, she is content, and patient. She is not greedy for attention.

When you look at her you will see how her face shines, how glad her eyes are, how confident her soft, gentle demeanor. She has a pair of twins, she is pregnant now with another two. Her husband loves her and is fortunate to have her in his life.

She sits in the shade of the kitchen. She doesn't drink coffee.

2. She has good-looking characteristics on her face, you notice that right away, but there is something wrong with her posture - it is not exactly right. It feels perhaps as if her muscles are too tense for her body to be strait.

Her black hair is cut bellow her earlobes, but again, not exactly strait. It leans forward like her body. Her daughter is slightly oler than the twins and well behaved, calm.

Her Cypriot is good, she barely has an accent. One feels that she has tried to fit in. She moves in the same spaces, the same people speak to her, but you can feel that there is some destain regarding her. My first thought is that it is racism. I hear there is racism amongst the islanders. 

She knows it. She expects you it. She notices your discomfort with her before you feel it yourself. Then you notice it: in her eyes, that she knows you like her less, and that your gestures showed it. And then you notice that perhaps you like her less. Her eyes tell you that you don't like her, and you are convinced by them.

I ask who the woman was. She is the wife of that man. She is his second wife. He has a son with the first wife, adult children - his son is of age to be in the military. She was taking care of the grandfather. That is how he met her, and fell in love with her, and left his wife for her.

I think about him. There was something not nice about his manner also, something unjoyous. But people ignore these things, and they talk to eachother as if everything is fine. They will listen to you, have coffee with you, and smoke with you. People might talk about these things when you are not there, but in practice they are forgiving. They overlook, and they help you behave as if you are ok. They treat you as if you were respectable anyway. That is the skill of good men - they can do that for you.

3. She always wanted a man she could depend on, a man who will save her from the tower and be her loving partner through the years - doing things together and for eachother. She never found that. On the contrary: she found a man who couldn't even save himself.

But she never got over it. She never stood up and said "okie-dokie. This is it, this is reality, let me get on with it." She never became independent. She just lets herself become more, and more trivially dependent, even though there s no one to depend on. As if we owe her that. As if we need to deal with her that way, because her mother never nurtured her when she was small and she was that way, and that disagreement is not over. Mind, we do owe her that.

Now her mother is becoming senile, she is rather old. "Don't think you can jst get away with it", she thinks, "you still owe me. I need too. I can be dependent too."

I came into the bedroom and found the duvet without a cover. A single sheet and a double duvet. She did not cover it because it is too heavy and she cannot do it alone. "You do not acknowledge my needs", she thinks, "but I will show you! I will have more."

"I cannot do it because no one helps me", she says.

4. I want to write and say everything. I want to speak the details of the lives I see around me. But I don't. I feel it is unkind to speak too clearly about people as they try to live their lives. I feel that if I write too coherently about peoples issues they will cease to be the problems they are dealing with and will become people's character traits and their faults. I don't want to pin burdensome characters to people who are just trying to live their lives. I feel bad. I am ashamed to describe the vices.

Do you that is how abstract are came about? I do think so. You can say it, but no one has to understand you if they don't want to.

Look at people, and you will see. There is light shining upon some amongst us, and there are shades. Some people live blessed, and others are burdened, and captivated in some sort of foul spiritual prison. And we all live side by side, sholder to sholder. We have the same brand of fridge. We share a coffee, talk, smoke.