depart

just below, I remembered Proust and reacted as if he was alive today to write those words.

there is such a repetitiveness in history, that one might be misled and think that it all happened in just one glimpse.

"each writer has to create his own language, exactly like a violinist is obliged to develop his own "tune"...
There is rightness, just like there is the perfection, but not before the originality, when one has left the defaults behind him..."
Marcel Proust

this opinion makes sense to me; in fact I think it is rather obvious. But then he adds:
"the only way to defend our language is to attack it, yes, indeed..!"

* * *
no more violence, please

* * *

in such a vaguely experienced universe where can one seek to refine his calmness?

towards the sky there are optional moments of untouchable constancy.
towards the water there are unpredictable sights and reflections.

towards the sun there is unimaginable ending. Infatuated children imported their featherly hope to reach.

In the millions of hearts which have been alive today, their deep flow in veins is to be revealed as threat.

So, I ask: what can we touch?

II
the rain which is felt on the tip of the tongue, traceable only on the humid air and clothings worn on the outside.
the earth which is dug raising dust; the heel moving on the earth contending our trust to surpass its limit.
we humans consist of water, yet our lungs shall admit also the air.


I plant I seed I think I speak
in my words there is the feeling, not a real feeling in as such.

III
a return to the woods, the sculpture of ancient roots
the imprint of the airy feathers and songs
there is smell
that the mind ceases to conceive.

I

More than twenty years ago, the old painter approached me as I was trying, for the first time in my life, to portray the little girl who was actually standing in front of me. The girl's name was Κερασία (it means the cherry tree).

The teacher took a pencil and with trembling hand she draw a trembling eye, whereas I was trying to create a perfect almond shaped figure.

The hand was kindly certain.

The minute i got out of that cell it was like a return.

But I got right back in, because I was right outside my intended limits.

II

As a pianist later on I found it hard that a person must not tamper too much with the written music. I could only pretend to be the right pianist. In any case I would not stand mistakes and imperfection.

So, I thought, even the imperfection must be perfect in its expression.

Imagine how a pianist with trembling hands would sound at a concert.

[to be continued]

More than a decade ago, I wrote these lines:

Is the earth cold or is it hot?

I dig deeper; I dig

even deeper.

One of the few lines I still remember now.

yellow

Burnt Norton, in Four Quartets

by T.S. Eliot

I

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future,

And time future contained in time past.

If all time is eternally present

All time is unredeemable.

What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.

[...]

* * *

And, on another occasion, I suddenly knew what Christos Giannaras once meant when he said: "a building with many houses means: I come from nowhere and march towards nothing".

So now I have collected many pieces on the theme: time and space location. When Bachelard speaks of the past as a memory in space, it is as if he talked about the Eliot's abstraction making an effort to subside the force of speculation. And then, the place of an ancestor or a tree in your grandmother's garden are an anchor to the particularity.

May I now say that there is little wonder about this picture, although I could not answer whether there is a door or a window behind the shutter.

Someday, I passed again by that building which I had been passing by for years. Someday, I suddenly stopped to look at it with both of my eyes.

Some other day, as I was mumbling a melody and the lyrics (a poem by Seferis), I suddenly stopped at the line: no fire on their top (καμιά φωτιά στην κορυφή τους). An actual conquerer!

The conquerer finally possesses and shortly holds all the pieces of his quest.

it's been a while; like the thunder in a white sky

and a mist around the rainy self.

There has been a while since speaking, now wondering

if the same voice might be ours yet.

In the dreary moment of change whispers of the old songs

in the trousers of a new era.

we can build a different personal history based on the trivial moments of the surrounding time and space in-between. That would throw new light on ourselves. That would expand time experiences and our familiarisation with space.

ps. this thought includes people as well, all those we 've come across throughout our life. See how many our memory excludes. We come to define ourselves by such a limited memory, a selective approach of our thinking and action. Still, you may argue that we include much more because we are shaped by the acquaintance, not by their memory. But our perceived identity is a different measure of our being.

twin

framing

the travelling of the previous year, the mountains whose name I forgot, the seasons I 've noticed changed, the neighbourhood I came to be in, the feeling of coming back home, my bird, the scattered opened books with pencil writing, the entrance, the usual path. People.
I 've framed the memory like a cloud seemingly timelessly moving between lines.