4thesilkroad

[4thesilkroad]

And you always go to lecture Paleography, or listen to it, from the great Memos, in that dusty room full of old books, with chairs for the students and where you also sat without even knowing the Greek language; so you learned it, like me, at the Academy on the Piraeus road. That's why maybe we fell in love, with those streets and yours, from where we came out of a dark, a paper door and at midday we could hear the screams and echoes of the children in the school next door. In an enveloping, majestic light. And the destroyed but beautiful houses with creepers, in Plaka. The writings on the walls that seemed so powerful in that alphabet. And the sea that could be glimpsed between the concrete and the trolleybus stations.

Over the olive trees of the Acropolis and in the shining of leaves in the sun.

But I no longer belong to that world, and perhaps I could never belong to it anymore, Because it was our youth.

[4thesilkroad]

I heard the sound of passing planes - and I remembered the planes passing over the route of my apartment in Athens, that one of Erasmus days, near the sea and the old airport. The same road as Aleko Panagoulis.

My Irish roommate would swimming every night, until full November- and always said when back, how beautiful was the sensation of the plane passing over it on Glyfada's condominiums and the lights on the huge billboards of cigarettes -that have been there for years, now no more, with the lights on the sea and Piraeus lighting up.

One time I tried to swim there in November, in the afternoon and maybe there were 19 degrees outside but the water was really cold and I still remember the feeling of the heart that froze for a second. And that day in Imola was snowing and someone told us on the phone.

The degradeted beach, an ouzo to warm up, maybe 2, and even a Greek coffee-frape’.

The music, always patriotic, he said. And a warm pink sky in a day that ended up too early and pungent in all its nuances.

Running home with a ragged taxi and music at full blast and the road full of holes and sloping lanes before arriving in my popular neighborhood, where the Acropolis it sees as a mirage from a crumbling hill of modern ruins.

I made paintings in that house, in the middle of the small bedroom and the kitchen, there was always the smell of acrylics and varnish. But the sounds were all, the sound are all in the solitude, the noises, the dogs barking, the strong wind on the shutters, the skids of the motorbikes, the tinkling music always, the screams of the neighbors, street lovers, cat fights and the taxies horns. How many in Athens.

An incredible smokiness in the kafenions, nobody played cards, only a komboloy between the fingers to roll and still there was the drakma to pay for the wine of the tavern and cigarettes from the Pantopolio.

So, I suddenly thought of that November days at the beach, and a life of simple and dramatic things every day: A long-distance telephone call at the telephone booth, full of hope and love. An evening spent telling the dreams of life, the friendship between people who will never meet again. The impossible loves, the meaning of a life to be achieved, a walk hand in hand in a market of Babylonia.

And everything as a book written in love letters, those, you do not know if they will arrive at their destination, if they are realized, in their fleetingness.

[4thesilkroad]

Imaginary trip to Peloponnese -Memories- Summer slipped away from us in a beautiful September in Methoni. Not as warm as usual would be and the changing season gave us a lot of energies, always together with the locals and Andrea always with an open laptop, looking desperately for a wifi, when 12 years ago, in that part of Greece, maybe only one coffee shop had internet and people preferred to play chess or backgammon, called "tavli" in Greek. With an inevitable “kafe frappe” a glass of water beside, and a pack of Karelias. And the factory in Kalamata of those cigarettes was only 40 km away and I remember that road very well, full of breathtaking curves, in a spell of water mirror, where on certain days you could see the wrecks of the battle of Navarino, like a legend perhaps, and going on to the city, so different from that coast, so degraded and full of a Greek chaos that you can understand only if you have passed from Kalamata, with one of those ramshackle cars and popular and patriotic music with the window open and the left arm released. In a myriad of antennas, stray dogs and the smell of bakeries and burnt honey that you can recognize only in Greece. Peloponnese moreover, that Methoni so different from the neighboring city, Where we found a peace and a reality in its own right from the whole world. The work was always of great mental commitment, especially for Andrea, in whom codes, epigraphs and research sank into a study of data that continued for at least another 10 years. I lived on the sea air and shone in my eyes, I could look at the mountains smiling to a nice little goat with its bell awakening me after a moment of a daydream. Someone was still in the water and it was early morning and certainly not an inviting temperature, and they were Greek ladies of a certain age with an enormous temperament I can say, their conversations with the sound and tone as a wind, came to me at the little port or when I was taking pictures and noticed the sign of a ferry boat that took you to the island of Sapienza, now empty, now beautiful with the design of a figurehead of an ancient boat. The castle always design and background of an horizon illuminated by the headlights of the evening and the moon that in Greek is Panselino. The footprints on the cement, not only of cats, but from fishermen awake at dawn and full of scents and melancholies. Almost like for me right now. On Monday there were so many people at the cafe, from the tables you could hear and see the sea, that cafe was called Ostria.

[4thesilkroad]