Disabled Stories / by Nicholas Perdikares

THIS BLOG IS DEDICATED TO DIMITRIS SKOUFIS

2007-11-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

Today, I said the last “goodbye” to my good friend and Mentor, Dimitris Skoufis.
This blog is dedicated to him, for he was the one who inspired me and encouraged me to “build” this blog.

No matter what, this man will keep on reminding me how to stay decent, patient and strong.

Thank you for everything, my friend.

THE END

2006-09-19T04:32:00.000-07:00

16.04.05

My dear fellow travellers. I come back with this text not only to leave your life, or even the bloggers’ community, for good. The time has finally come for me to stop talking so directly about myself.
My decision to desist from blogs does not need explanations and justifications. It’s simple. I decide to move on, intending to do equally important things that those of you who know me well already or those of you who met me recently through this almost daily contact might imagine. I would like to thank you all once again. Without understanding it, you helped me figure out a lot of things about myself, mainly as regards what I can succeed in and what heights I can reach.

It’s true that I can’t forget that this blog was created for specific reasons and this is why I couldn’t finish this personal work of mine but by being clear now about what I have been implying through my stories.

Deriving from my personal experience, I am proud to state that in this world where I’m living there is not or there should not be any person with a disability in the way that we tend to describe them or meet them, i.e. like shadows or figures or existing things inside our body or the body of the person next to us. Noone is born absolutely capable of doing everything. Noone has the same opportunities, abilities or capacities with the other. Despite that, everyone of us has the ability to choose the eyes with which he or she will look at oneself and at the other person both when we are awake and when we are dreaming.

Disability is nothing but a situation that we have invented all by ourselves (disabled or not), trying to explain the difference, the hardship, the things that are impossible to understand or the random facts. Most of the times, we decide to speak of ourselves starting with the word ‘not’. We say: ‘I cannot walk, I cannot see, I cannot hear’. This is the worst thing we can do. Without understanding it, we align our existence with a huge problem that is impossible to solve precisely because we insist on emphasizing on the problem and not on its solution. We should say: ‘I can become someone great’, persuading ourselves and the others that we have equal rights and obligations. That’s the only way we could really help you understand that there is indeed a reason to rate us highly as people who claim a place in the empire of able-bodied people. And I go on saying: ‘Despite being a person with a disability, I have the right to life and therefore I can, if I want to, go for a walk to the supermarket and then just look at the ceiling of my house. Nonetheless, the important thing is that with much effort and a little luck I can achieve thousands of things so as to have absolutely no reason to feel sorry for myself or for the people who are in my place or in an even worse state. When this happens, I stop being –or being considered- problematic and I can laugh at you who might still believe the opposite. (Somewhere deep inside I suspect that, if you look straight into my eyes you may even fall in love with me. Would you really take that?)’.

I take you by the hand before you ask me anything, before you wonder whether my words are political or not. You are ready to talk to me about the movement again. What movement? The one of the people with a disability. That’s where the wrongdoings begin; that is my answer to you. From the insiders. From the people who take advantage of their disability to make money. Not all people are the same, luckily. There are people who really fight, knowing how to claim things. I don’t belong to them either. I have done very few things to be considered a fighter. I was never a rebel with a weblog, as the ‘Postman’ wrote for me and the other bloggers. I’m just a worried passer-by and my decision to ‘quit’ this weblog proves the truth of my words. Of course, I couldn’t say goodbye but with a song, a Greek one this time. I was looking for something but I found something else. Never mind.

If you don’t find a place for yourself in a wrecked country
If wishful thinking is not enough for you
If you don’t find serenity in a magic dream-catcher
If an armful of prison’s cells are not enough for you

Then what a pity, what a pity, what a pity
You are excessive and you breathe your last
Then what a pity, what a pity, what a pity
You fit nowhere, you fit nowhere at last

If you don’t find yourself in a stupid joke
If a cruel prayer is not enough for you
If you don’t find room in an empty brothel
If a broken body is not enough for you

Then what a pity, what a pity, what a pity
You are excessive and you breathe your last
Then what a pity, what a pity, what a pity
You fit nowhere, you fit nowhere at last, nowhere at last

Thank you for being able to find room for yourselves in the pages of my weblog

A DISEBLAD’S GOODNIGHT NOTE

2006-09-19T04:25:00.000-07:00

05.04.05

I am diseblad. Yes, there’s nothing wrong with your vision. That’s how a guard called me a few hours ago at the court of Badminton in Goudi. We are speaking about the place where this famous musical of mister Weber, entitled ‘Cats’, is performed. Although I am a cat-hunting devotee and I don’t really dig musicals, I decided to enjoy this superior performance myself, since it was attended by most Athenians anyway.
I still laugh at the silly guard who approached us from the beginning in the mood for inquiry.
‘You know, the gentleman uses a wheelchair and this is why we would like to park the car as close to the entrance as possible.’
He bends sown and looks thoroughly at the back seat. He asks:
‘And where is he?’
‘Who?’
‘The disabled guy.’
I get out of my seat. ‘I’m here, man. A quite big lout and you don’t see me? What do you expect to see? Snow White lying in a glass coffin?’
The guy loses it. He yells at someone else: ‘Open the door, man, the kid is diseblad.’
(What am I?)
He turns to my mother. ‘How did you say that?’
She can’t answer. She bursts out laughing just like I do.
‘Oh, yeah. Disabled.’!
[Tomorrow the rest – or the day after tomorrow. I am sleepy and I have to wake up early. I would write you from work too but they cut our connection to the internet and the bosses claim that they don’t have money to pay for the subscription.]
Yours sincerely,
The diseblad.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF SPRING

2006-09-19T04:10:00.000-07:00

01.04.05

Vivi asked me to become tragic again. She wanted me to find this tone of my voice that is so direct and dramatic at the same time. She was moved by that tone of voice, she says. I believe that. I did what I could to play the part of a man who looks like me but is not like me. I was thinking of all the tortures of the world in order to feel deeply sad. Today I couldn’t do the same thing. She asked me if I could understand the difference between the last and today’s rehearsals. I understood it in the way that the dissonant person understands his/her wrong notes but doesn’t know how to fix them.

Right now that I’m writing to you my dog sighs in melancholy and I wonder if he has his reasons for being sad. We are listening to the arrangement of the song ‘Ta paidia tou Peiraia’ (= ‘The children of Peiraeus’) by the Pink Martini. For some undetectable reason, my mind goes to Paris. I swore not to write anything about trips on that post but I find it to be impossible. Those days I love Athens like never before and yet I can’t manage to cancel my imaginary trips. I wish the weather would be spring again. I would at least have a good excuse for being absent-minded and also in a hurry all the time, as always.

My father would prefer that I drove with less speed. He holds the roof handle all the time and shouts ‘slow down, slow down’. I hold the gear stick in my left hand. The more I pull it close to me, the faster I drive. When I push it to the front, I pull the brakes. I have the steering wheel in my right hand, which I turn with the help of the well-known attached handle of the lorry drivers . This way of driving can lift you high. Some times, you get the impression that you pilot an aircraft and not that you are driving a car.

My palms are full of corns. I finally stopped using the walker and go around the whole house with the sticks. I put enormous strength in my hands in order to stand up. Some times I stagger, I sweat and I am scared. The physical therapist said that my fear is stronger than my weakness. I repeat that sentence every time that I think of calling it quits. In the end, I insist on doing it.

ON BRACKETS

2006-09-19T03:54:00.000-07:00

22.03.05

Two little hairs curled up at the end of my washbasin, forming brackets. I don’t know how many times this must have happened without me noticing it. I wound up philosophizing once again in the bathroom just like that, really out of the blue. To do that is really boring and a bit too hackneyed. Of course, I’m referring to the daily and repeated event of oversimplifying and also praising every sort of theories and things. It’s true that ideas come to your head at most improper times. If you ask me, I will answer that I don’t like that, I just accept it when it happens. Yesterday, for instance. I was shaved while listening to Sonic Youth. Everything seemed to be natural, until those small brackets were presented right in front of my eyes.

I had seen the importance of brackets very early (that’s why I use it very often in my texts). Brackets are there for something that must be said but can also be omitted, since their content are not equally important and interesting as the content of the rest of the text. Everything is all right until this point. But what happens in the case of a bigger, continuous, imaginary text, according to which our current and our future activities are constructed so as to make us able to say that we live exactly as the script says, a script that we are writing and in which we are starring without even understanding it?

We go a thousand steps further towards a direction unknown in theory, while we are trying to foresee and plan everything. And we do all that without paying attention to the brackets. At least this is how I personally understand the problem that deals with ranking desires and targets. That’s my problem. ‘I’m writing’ a multi-paged script of life and forget the brackets. Consequently, I have a hard time separating the important things from the less important things. They all look like ONE.

Most of the times, I have to lose or sacrifice something precious in order to understand what was the thing that I really needed or what was the thing or notion or idea thanks to which I could have gone even higher without material or other kind of loss. That’s when I figure out that I’m dominated by persistent ideas (like that about New York, for example), most of which are of symbolic nature. In fact, I should put myself in brackets, hoping to understand at some point what’s the meaning of the world that surrounds and forms my personality whether I like this world or not. I might then be more interested in ‘common’ things, politics, news etc etc.. Only then would my blog comprise objectively interesting texts and only then would it desist from dealing with a boring and repeated range of issues. I recognize that my last narrations are of very little interest to those who are not in my head or to those who don’t ‘experience’ me in the first place. The conclusion is that I must definitely put my (recent) self in brackets not because I want to exempt myself from life but because I want to see clearly all things that are useful and interesting and still exist around me and might have nothing to do with me in some strange way. When I achieve that, I would like you to acknowledge that for me.

Here’s what one learns during the weekend and half Monday

2006-09-19T02:50:00.000-07:00

07.03.05

Here’s what one learns during the weekend and half Monday:
That there’s a great café somewhere in Melissia called ‘Petrogaz’

That you can meet people there who remember you, whereas you give them a silly look and try to guess when and where you met them.

That it’s not so simple to paint on Photoshop, no matter how inspired you are.

That, even if you and your friend agree to wake up early to take a walk around Athens, he will be sleeping like a log while you, like a silly man, will already be drinking your coffee and will be waiting for him, having woken up at 9:30 on a Sunday morning.

That you can’t be great if you don’t have money to support your dream. In other words, most great people were already a bit great before they became really great, since they stood out from the others, at least as regards their financial ability.

That, even when you win a scholarship, this will cover your expenses only partly and thus you have to have money anyway.

That, in all likelihood, you’ll never find so much money in one year, unless you write a best seller like ‘Judas was a great kisser’ (by Maira Papathanassopoulou).

That, despite all that, your life goes on fine and you must be happy to have alternatives and spare all the time in the world to do whatever you can (even to turn things upside down if needed).

That Athens is a beautiful city when you can see it like one.

That even in your own city there are many great unknown places with very interesting people who wait to meet you even accidentally.

That there’s a great performance entitled ‘Penalty’ at the ‘Epi Kolono’ theatre. The performers are young, pretty good (and not necessarily pretty faces) and have a very interesting view of what theatre is.

That there is a small concert in the same place after the performance; small Greek bands of no importance play there but they have fun because they gather all their friends as if they have come to Athens for an excursion in a bus.

That an able-bodied guy might be right next to you but he is so drunk that he is staggering much more than you.

That, despite staggering much more than you, he is harmless and you owe him congratulations, since he is entertaining you.

That the next day (Sunday) you will wake up early again, because you have an appointment with your professor.

That you would not have to wake up early in the end, because you agreed to meet in the coming week.

That it’s a great day but none of your friends want to go out for coffee. They’re all asleep.

That you and Dimitris will go visit the newborn kittens of Soly in the end without using the car. You will use your electric wheelchair so as to practice.

That you figure out it’s not too difficult to handle but you have to be careful when you climb pavements that are taken down. It’s highly possible to end up lying down.

That you would indeed end up lying down if Dimitris wasn’t behind you to catch you.

That you figure out there’s absolutely no way to make reconciliation with cats. They hate you and they are afraid of you because you smell like a dog from head to toe.

That, in case you can’t do anything else, you have to admit that the cat’s claws cut as sharply as Uma Thurman’s sword in Kill Bill.

That you would happily eat a cat baked in the oven or a cat soup after you take off her claws one by one without having killed or anaesthetized her.

That (luckily) you are not such a barbarian to do something like that. You will have to pay someone to do this for you or undergo always the unexpected and rude behaviour of cats.

That you can open the front door all by yourself as well by using the small key and that you should have tried to do that a long time ago.

That you will finally be able to walk with the sticks soon, since you can already walk with them in the living room.

That if you turn on Mad TV you might catch a tribute to Bowie and to Prince.

That even Gods like David Jones, known as David Bowie, wear dentures when they grow old.

That they remain Gods even like that.

That Prince has pigeon lofts in his living room.

That you and Kostas will go again to Cetropia, which is next to the Escoba. Without understanding it, you already have your hangout places.

That, even if you come home early, decided to do a bunch of things, you will end up doing less than half of what you plan and thus gape idly at everything for no reason but to waste your time.

That this is acceptable to a certain extent.

That, although it may sound strange, you will wake up with a cool mood for work and will even have time to drink coffee in your house’s kitchen.

That you are already at work. Time goes by and the new week has started for good.

That two official holidays are approaching!

That you have your birthday on the 21st of March and you will become 26 years old.

That you will be 30 in 4 years.

That this is cruel and unfair.

That nobody asked you if you like that and therefore you’ll have to decide that you can’t always be 20-something.

That, since you are growing up, you definitely have to leave your house, otherwise you will end up like the creeps you mock.

That, after having thought and understood the meaning of all aforementioned statements, you are heading off to a good pathway.

WITH REVERSE STEPS: FROM INDUSTRIAL JAZZ TO WALKING STICKS WITH FOUR LEGS

2006-09-19T02:44:00.000-07:00

01.03.05

We hadn’t been driving for more than a few metres when we heard a terrible noise. It was like something was creeping behind the car, scratching the asphalt and deterring us from moving forward. At first, I thought we had dragged some garbage can, some fallen sign or something big anyway; in fact, so big that it could cause incredibly loud noise in the middle of the night. Dimitris came out to see what was happening and he it happened. He stepped slightly on the accelerator and started sliding on the street like a bruised figured out that the spare tyre had gone out of its metal position, which was almost loose and thus dragged on the street. He took his coat off, he rolled up his sleeves and started seeking in the dark under the car, until his hands were black because of the dirt. He needed just a some string in order to tie that metal thing.

I felt really bad – as I feel every time that I can’t help and just sit there like a woman in confinement in the seat next to the driver without doing absolutely anything. My friend (what a great thing to have friends!) reminded me that I could listen to the radio if I wanted to. I didn’t want to, how could I be singing while he was there struggling? The least I could do was sit quietly, not ask too many questions (like ‘What’s up there? Did you fix it? Are you close? Can I do something for you?’) and wait.

Later he came in. I suggested him to go to the central square and ask for some string from the kiosk seller (at midnight). That’s how it happened. He steped softly on the gas and started crawling on the road like a wounded and noisy snail. The noise was deafening. We were probably hard like the cleaning vehicles of the municipality. Some people welcomed us from their balconies. They wanted to know where the noise comes from. Dimitris was cool and his composure was surprising to me. He turned up the music (It was Jazz music on the ‘En Lefko’ –this means ‘In White’- Radio Station) and closed the windows.

‘I find you really cool.’
‘And what am I to do? Spend my time in misery like my mom?’
‘Do you know how I call the kind of Jazz that mixes with the noise of a metal which by the way throws out sparks while sliding?’
‘Industrial Jazz!’

The kiosk guy gave us the string. Dimitris rolled up his sleeves again, dirtied his hands again and everything was in place. We went for a drink somewhere north. Nothing ventured nothing gained. I was experiencing ultimate pleasure. The wine was tickling my throat and hit me slightly on the head. This was the perfect compensation for the temporary bad luck. I was excited anyway. Before Dimitris came at home, I had tried to stand up on my walking sticks with the four legs, the ones that I used before I was forced to buy the walking device, while I was still a kiddo and hadn’t been under any operation. I have forgotten how to use them and it’s difficult, because they require a much bigger capacity for keeping one’s balance. Despite that, I did it. I even made a few steps from the bed to the desk. This is a big achievement for me. I decided to stop –gradually- using the device. From next week onwards I will start physical therapy again. What the hell! If I am to live in New York, I must get in and out of the limos comfortably.

ON PLANET ‘HAPPY’

2006-09-19T02:28:00.000-07:00

14.02.05

So we decided to fly up to planet Happy . How did it stick to my mind that the aforementioned planet was on number 256 (instead of 205)? After such persistence, it’s not strange that we found ourselves outside a taxi agency, somewhere on Liossion Street. Panayiota had a hard time. It’s not easy to slide on the slope with Nicholas: you have to avoid the buses, the dug and narrow pavements and you also have to have your mind on numbers, in case you find yourself completely elsewhere.

At some point, we finally reach this ostensibly known stellar sign of the city, which is overtaken by night, without suspecting that, although we arrive late, it’s still very early. Why didn’t anyone tell us that the Mikro would appear after eleven at night and not at 21:30 as was written on the ticket? No problem (in the beginning, at least). We were watching Gousgounis’ face on the video-screen announce the ‘good old’ Greek film festival. I saw it once. I saw it twice. I had a drink too. A small quantity. Not much stuff. How could I imagine that I would desperately need to pee? I could do nothing about that of course. I stood in the front line to hold the bar (a regular one, not the prison one). The toilets were upstairs at the back. So I decided to forget about it. I got up to dance, move, struggling for good, in order to forget struggling for bad. I sat down again only for five minutes. I was standing for almost two hours.

I wasn’t excited. I found that the new songs were far too mediocre; songs of the drawer, as I call them. They are included in the category of songs that you preserve in case of an emergency when your company presses you to make an album right on the spot. At first, the band was dispirited. Afterwards, something seemed to strike them and they started bouncing all over the place alone. I was bouncing too so as not to lose my spirits. Every now and then I smiled at Panayiota. I really believe that when your expectations are proved wrong and you wind up with boredom instead of having fun, surpassing the mediocrity of the moment and making it great or at least memorable is something that is in your hands no matter what. Well, I had done it: laughing at the whole thing, which was to laugh at anyway. When I was tired, I finally sat on my chair (for the five minutes to which I referred before) and observed everyone and everything. I thought that the concert would be over. I wanted to scream: ‘All right now. It’s time to go home. Don’t you think?’.

Nah. It was time for planet Happy again and again. Hello. And if we’re up to it, hello again. And see you. And see you again.’. Same old stuff.

‘Mercy guys! When am I going to reach the magic loo?’
The concert is over (at last). When the time for freedom comes, Diamantis comes out of the crowd. Yes, Diamantis! (Not the snake. It was someone else. Unknown.) He was in the mood for talking.
‘C’mon’, Diamantis, now that we found you, do you happen to know where exactly are the toilets?’
‘You can’t go there. They’re upstairs. Be patients. Take a cab and rush home.’
‘What are you talking about, Diamantis! The situation is serious here. We’ll go and go again. We won’t take a cab anyway. We have a car.’
‘And where do you live?’
I look at Panayiota. (‘What is that fellow asking now?’)
‘Do you need help?’
‘No; well, yes. Sit here and keep an eye on the coats and the wheelchair.’
We go upstairs. We reach the top of the stairs. A fat 45-year-old lady comes out of the toilet right on time.
‘Can you give me a hand?’
‘Yes, darling.’
‘Take care. There’s another step inside.’
‘Wow. How big!’
I’m about to ask: ‘Who are you? The mother of the members of Mikro?’
She catches me first. She doesn’t ask questions. She explains herself.
‘Don’t close the door. We’ve seen other birdies and we know about that stuff.’
‘You’ve never seen one like mine.’ (She provoked me. Didn’t she?)
‘What do you suggest me? That I sit there looking?’
‘Do what you want. I have to pee.’
At some point, the lady loses it and disappears.
After relaxing from our serious and urgent task, we go down the stairs with the help of some other volunteer this time. We wear our coats and get ready to go outside. No word on Diamantis. We forgot him completely; not intentionally but out of forgetfulness. Suddenly, I have a flash.
‘Want to go and talk to John-John?’
‘Let’s do it.’

We didn’t found John. We found Nikos. A great guy (he seems to be). Very friendly and smart, which is exactly what I was not since I uttered my stupid words without even realizing.‘You were very good after the middle of the concert.

LOVE ME TENDER

2006-09-19T01:51:00.000-07:00

10.02.05

Ever since she was a child she was wondering how it is to kiss a frog on the lips. She had to wait for many years befores she could agree. It was indeed a disgusting thing to do that could shock her greatly.

Your body turns blue and there is a ringing in your ears before and after your transfer to the hospital. You are suddenly found looking at the ceiling, lying on a bed in a room with another 24 patients. You want to talk and you can’t. You want to tell your nurse that you saw him with your own eyes and that he is the one and only to blame that you still can’t sleep.

‘Elvis is sitting on the windowsill and bugs me. Please tell him to shut up.’
‘Elvis died, honey.’
‘Then who is that fat man out there? The one with the black sunglasses, the red cape and the sparkling white clothes singing Love Me Tender in broad daylight?’
‘What am I to tell you? I can’t hear anybody.’
‘You don’t have to. You can see his face stuck on the glass.’
‘Don’t misunderstand me but your frog put us in big trouble.’
‘What frog?’
‘The one you kissed a little before you came here.’
‘It was the only way to get the ring. I opened the little box and he burst out. He stood still and kept looking at me. He looked like a wise man. Jimmy said he was harmless, even though he looked scary. What I want to say is that he was green and spotted but I’m no beauty either. Right? It wouldn’t be polite to turn down one of God’s creatures without second thoughts.’
‘And the ring?’
‘It was stuck immediately on my left nostril while the green monster threw his tongue over me. Jimmy gave me a meaningful look, waiting for a yes or no from me.’
‘What did you answer?’
‘Nothing.’
‘And then?’
‘I opened my eyes and saw him.’
‘Jimmy?’
‘No, Elvis.’
‘How many times will I tell you that? Elvis died!’
‘Now why are you crying?’
‘Because he died. You just said that.’
‘You mean, you didn’t know?’
‘How could I imagine that? A few hours ago he got me to the ER. He wanted to save my life and then he died in the end.’
‘You started getting your memory back. That’s good.’
‘What do you mean, I started getting my memory back?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me. Tell me everything.’
‘I can’t find a reason to trust you. I don’t know you.’
‘And if I told you that I’m a relative of the frog?’
‘What frog?’
‘The one you kissed a little before you came here.’
‘No way. This frog is an orphan. We got him from the lake while he was scratching his guitar. (Jimmy was excited with his expertise and decided to adopt him). He was playing some very well known tune. I think it was Love Me Tender. It was sung by some guy called Elvis Presley. Have you ever heard of him, I wonder?’
‘It’s the first time I hear of him. He’s good.’
‘He was. Very good. Now he is dead. I’m sorry but can I ask you something?
’‘Whatever you want.’
‘What’s that green thing stuck on your shoe?’

FEVERISH THOUGHTS

2006-09-19T01:42:00.000-07:00

03.02.05

I can finally stay in front of my computer and write some more crap. I am still feverish (38 degrees) but I feel all right, if you think that this was 39 and a half yesterday. If the indications of the quicksilver were translated into TV ratings, I would definitely make a big success on the small screen. I’m sick of my life here, from the couch to the bed and vice versa. I hadn’t caught a cold for more than two years. Now I’m completely stuck with it.

A little while ago I saw Pulp Fiction again. My father got it from a Sunday paper. He asked me to watch it together. I told him ‘Nah, don’t bother’. I don’t know why but I wanted to watch it again all by myself. Well, I couldn’t do a greater PhD on Tarantino. His films are the example of beyond-text-narration in cinematography. So I do that PhD. What will I be afterwards? A tarantinologist or some expert on cinema theory that everybody will hate?

I missed my job. I want to be with lots of people. I don’t like sitting at home like an old man. I have had a lot of time to think lately. I decided that my future profession must guarantee social exchange for me. All right, I’m not very patient with the others but that can be fixed. It’s enough to try. I need a creative and definitely not a lonely job. The writer in me can wait.

Do you know who put those ideas in my mind? Jonathan Coe is sure to blame. I am finally reading his book ‘What a Carve Up!’ and I confirm my opinion regarding the loneliness of the writer. Well, I am already strange enough and I don’t want to push it to the limit. Social exchange is a compass for a traveler like me. From that point of view, even that fact that part of my job is to pick up phonecalls gives me the right to believe that I’m on a good way. Many citizens might be swearing at me every time that the gardener is late in pruning their tree but they try to communicate with me at the same time. In the end we always say: ‘Thank you’ – ‘You are welcome’.

24 HOUR PARTY PEOPLE

2006-09-19T01:38:00.000-07:00

31.01.05

Weekends go fast, unfortunately. I will have a lot to remember from the weekend that just passed, fortunately. And of course I won’t forge that I set you all up and of course I won’t forget how often my phone was ringing when someone from you was asking ‘But where on earth are you?’. May my teddy bear be well, with his great face and unforgettable profile, entering the room and relaxing everyone: ‘Nicholas is coming’. And Nicholas was indeed coming with Dimitris.

There was a huge traffic on the road. This is no excuse. Moreover, it took us about half an hour to park (this is no excuse either) and a lot of cleverness to avoid the huge Rottweiler that we met loose on some corner of the street before it chopped us (it was the first time of my life that I was afraid of a dog) – and this can definitely not be any kind of excuse.

In the end, this meeting took place about an hour later (you know better than me how much time passed). To my great joy, I found you sitting altogether and I confess that while approaching you I was wondering whether or not I would get away with slaps and swearing. I don’t use to appear like a Diva in the middle of the stage and, although I don’t think of establishing that, I admit that I was impressed with your patience. Well, you are unbelievably polite. I congratulate you on that. I also congratulate you on your resilience regarding ‘heavy’ guitars, drums and bass or (let’s put it differently) your ability to appreciate good music. And yet the best music of the whole world would sound terrible without your presence.

Thanks to you, my dear –old and new- friends, I can experience the best thing that is happening to me right here right now. Not somewhere else, not some other time, but RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW! Somewhere among the tables with the various drinks, hiding behind smoke and colourful lights, I am standing up. I am holding you and you are holding me. We are dancing afterwards, as if this is the most natural thing in the world (not that it isn’t). Before I get tired, I let my legs fall on the floor. I move as I can. I sweat as I can and I am now sure that our sweat is what makes the ground so slippery (disgusting but plausible discovery).

When I finally decide to sit down, I’m done but I wish I can always be tired like that: being exhausted after a great party (those of you who left early will be wondering if I am exaggerating). Around 5 o’clock in the morning, having managed to arrive at home, I see that I have a treaded and dirty cigarette end stuck on my shoe. I pick it up fast before the dog finds and eats it. I take a quick look at my dirty shoes: they look as if half a centimeter from the soles is melted. I laugh at myself. I remember I used to tell my mom: ‘You know, I don’t mind that I can’t walk. What kills me is that I can’t dance.’.
Well, I’ll never say such crap for as long as I live.

Dreadlock holiday

2006-09-19T00:57:00.000-07:00

27.01.05

We’ll put on a new piece based on improvisations. At first, I was happy to participate again in the municipal theatrical group. I was happy until they told us that we’ll have rehearsals twice a week. They’ll kill us again. And yet this professionalism and this responsibility do have some sense. The performances are organized for June. There’s not much time until then. I just wonder if I should sound the alarm, since I still haven’t handed out my dissertation; and I should be stressed but I’m not. But then again, why should I struggle to feel stressed anyway?

Something else makes me doubt: my work on things that I did at the age of 18 raises questions. Is it possible that I am becoming a kiddo again? Is it possible that I’m looking for new tricks among old ones? Is it possible that I’m still a teenager? Is it possible that my dog is way more mature than I am? My dog knows what he wants. He wants to play, sleep and eat. He has no inhibitions. He doesn’t go to concerts. He doesn’t think how cool it would be to have a band; neither does he write any lyrics. I did all that stuff years ago. I still go to concerts. Some times I look at the younger guys who go crazy and I say: ‘Wow! The world hasn’t changed at all in the end.’. I thought the same thing about those who work with me in the theatrical group when I saw them the day before yesterday. They’re all as I left them the last time. Is this good or bad, I wonder?

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe all of them have changed and I haven’t understood that. They’ve certainly changed. It’s not like I care about what happens to the others. I just try to see my signs of progress by observing the changes in those who surround me. No matter how strange it may seem, my fellow humans comprise elements of my external surroundings when they are perceived as subjects for observation. In other times, people are bridges for me and they unite my present with my past of my future. I remember them the way I remember a characteristic summer tune in deep winter.

Suddenly, I am singing 10cc and Dreadlock Holiday. I turn back time a little bit but I am advancing:

I was walkin’ down the street
Concentratin’ on truckin’ night
I heard a dark voice beside of me
And I looked round in a state of fright
I saw four faces one mad
A brother from the gutter
They looked me up and down a bit
And turned to each other

I say, I don’t like cricket oh no, I love it
I don’t like cricket no no, I love it

Don’t you walk thru’ my words
You got to show some respect
Don’t you walk thru’ my words
‘Cause you ain’t heard me out yet

Well he looked down at my silver chain
He said he’ll give you one dollar
I said you’ve got to be jokin’ man
It was a present from me Mother
He said I like it I want it
I’ll take it off your hands
And you’ll be sorry you crossed me
You’d better understand that you’re alone
A long way from home

And I say, I don’t like reggae no no, I love it
I don’t like reggae, I love it

Don’t you cramp me style
Don’t you queer me pitch
Don’t you walk thru’ my words
‘Cause you ain’t heard me out yet

I hurried back to the swimming pool
Sinkin’ Pena Calarda
I heard a dark voice beside me say
Would you like something harder
She said I’ve got it you want it
My harvest is the best
And if you try it you’ll like it
And whollow in a Dreadlock Holiday

And I say, Don’t like Jamaica oh no, I love her
Don’t like Jamaica oh no, I love her oh yeah
Don’t you walk thru’ her words
You got to show some respect
Don’t you walk thru’ her words
‘Cause you ain’t heard her out yet

I don’t like cricket, I love it
Dreadlock holiday, I don’t like reggae, I love it
Dreadlock holiday, Don’t like Jamaica, I love her
Dreadlock holiday.

A LITTLE MORE SMOKE

2006-09-19T00:28:00.000-07:00

24.01.05

There are times when I have to prove myself that I’m not a nerd. There are times when I quit the books and learn to live without them. I am looking for something to lift my spirits, to make me get high, even just for a moment. Well, I hadn’t smoked narghile until recently (Jenny had brought us once a rather big one from Constantinople. It’s still somewhere in the living room).

On Saturday afternoon I was already sitting on a couch. My feet were put on carpets that were a little bit worse than those that mrs. Miraraki used to advertise on her show. I was a bit crushed for some reason (there was so much space, why didn’t you guys sit a little bit further?). The notes of the East were heavy to my ears. A bit of Volanis and a bit of Rouvas translated in Arabic. Other than that, everything was all right. The atmosphere was warm and the female presence stood out. Of course I would drink coffee. And of course I would taste the very delicious smoke of the narghile scented with apple.

What was missing? Nothing was missing. The bunch of friends was big in the end. I only wished I could have a feline lying in front of my feet. A tiger or something like that. Mr. Pi is to blame for this fantasy of mine, no doubt (I’m still reading the respective novel of Yann Martel – this has nothing to do with "P" by Aronofky, I assure you). Anyway, with or without a beast in front of my feet, I enjoyed it. Do you know where I can find smoke for narghile? It helps me relax (not more than needed) and I get the impression that it will help me do better with my study.

THE LAST DAY

2006-09-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

02.01.05

I am still awake, although I have no obligation to fulfil and no work to see done, although I am tired to death from last night’s late feast, and I write this prologue, although I know it’s stupid to start always with a declaration such as ‘I am like this and I feel like that’ etc.. I stop it right now.

Yesterday:

Party with Vassilis somewhere near here. Invitation. 30 Euros. Free consumption of drinks. Lift only for commodities. From the side door. We cross the fridges. We see the girls. They are already down (to work). They serve drinks; with or without ice.
The space. Big. Huge. With lights and pipes on the ceiling. For decorations. The music almost horrible. A big crowd. I love that! Countless girls; with or without boyfriends. More people come. Right now they are about 700 in total! On the side. I see my ‘gang’. They greet me. We talk. More people come. Unknown. They pass before me. They walk on me. My glass is empty. My glass is filled again. It is empty again. It is filled again. 9 Ursus in total. Movement in front of the DJ. Dance. Jolt. Dizziness and need to pee. The tile is wet. Slippery. Another ten people wait outside. I bite my tie (purple, in glam rock style) so as not to pee on that too. My hands on the wall. I’m holding on. I think I’ll fall. Relief. A little more dance. People looking back. Wishes being exchanged. Friends saying goodbye. Coats that find their place around the body. 6:30 in the morning. The dark sky. We’re looking for a car. Where did we leave it? Wasted. We’re all wasted. The car is coming. The sky changes its colour. The mobile informs me of the time most definitely: 7 o’clock in the morning. 1/1/05. A simple addition (+365 days). A celebration. I want to think of a beloved face, not of family or friends. There’s noone. I am tortured. For a while. For seconds. I come around. I make a wish. A wish with a cause. Without a pretext. Vassilis is smiling. He ‘reads’ me: I return that. With a smile. The day becomes whiter. The lights go high. Higher. Higher.

DANCING TO THE BEAT OF ROCKABILLY

2006-09-18T23:54:00.000-07:00

31.12.04

I just watched a DVD dedicated to the legend Jerry Lee. I thought that there hours are neither for ‘heavy’ guitars nor for whispered outbursts. I was dominated by a bizarre mood all day: happy, relieved, and yet a bit sad. But what do I have to lose? Another year passing by. Well, let the year go. May the next year that is to come be a whole lot better. It will be; it will be better for me, at least. I feel it. That’s what I told my friends and they were surprised by my good mood. They ran to put an end to my optimism. I clarified: ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen to our country or to the whole planet but I will have a good year ahead of me. I am referring to my personal history and not to the history of the world. I know that the next decades are going to be hard for everyone in general. I let things go with the flow and I am dancing to the beat of rockabilly.’. Someone whispered a secret in my ear a few years ago: ‘If you want the whole world to be happy, you have no reason to pray for the common good. You should take care of yourself. Try to be alright and tell your friends to do the same thing. If we all take care of ourselves, we might achieve a better world, because we (those who are seen and those who are not) are the world. And those who are unhappy without being to blame, may they be strong enough to have hopes. That’s how they’ll make their step to happiness.’. I still remember those words, although they weren’t said in that row or in that way.

I repeat: I will try to have a better year ahead of me for as long as I can. Everything will be alright. I’m sure. I wish the same thing for you too.

TOTAL (RE)CALL

2006-09-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

16.12.04

I am happy and tired; happy because I finally don’t have to be sorry for not being able to use the buses for my transport and tired because I keep reading and writing non-stop and having a minimum of sleep. As for the blog, I have almost forgotten about it, because I can’t do anything else right now. Even yesterday’s news arrived in fragments: ‘3-6 hostages were released’ and so on. I was hearing about people’s troubles and remained indifferent. It’s Hollywood that has made me so indifferent to everything. I sit in front of my television and just watch the news, reacting as every spectator who has had enough, who is not moved by violence any more or by the horror of an unexpected situation and who is being constantly surprised without reacting to that. The more I think about it, the more I figure out that studying is to blame for it probably. I have become comfortably numb. There’s no other explanation to this.

At nights (if I manage to lie down before 4 o’clock) I turn the television on and I am looking for Samantha from the ‘Sex and the City’ series. Lively, mature, funny, smart and decisive. The best woman to give you exactly what you need and nothing more. When you are fed up with her, she is fed up with you as well and wishes you good night in a wicked way. You can enjoy her or dream of her but not love her. If you are to love somebody, love yourself, since yourself is the one who needs you more than anybody else. In the meantime, if you want to give explanations to anybody who believes that you have become a narcissist, you can listen to the whole last album of Morrissey and whisper song number 5:

I’M NOT SORRY

On returning
I can’t believe this world is still turning
The pressure’s on
Because the pleasure hasn’t gone
And I’m not sorry for
For the things I’ve done
And I’m not looking for
Just anyone

On competing
When will this tired heard stop beating?
It’s all a game
Existence is only a game
And I’m not sorry for
For the things I’ve done
And I’m not looking for
Just anyone

I’m slipping below the water line
I’m slipping below the water line
Reach for my hand and
The race is won
Reject my hand and
The damage is done

I’m slipping below the water line
I’m slipping below the water line

The woman of my dreams / she
Never came along
The woman of my dreams / well
There never was one
And I’m not sorry for
For the things I’ve said
There’s a wild man
In my head
There’s a wild man
In my head

I STARTED WRITING ONE THING AND I ENDED UP WITH ANOTHER

2006-09-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

10.12.04

I was looking at Rembrandt’s engravings and I thought I was looking at sketches designed with a pen nib. I was checking out the engraved metal flagstones afterwards and was aghast. I had seen those sketches before or other similar to them in coloured pictures and I admit that I wasn’t moved at all. On the contrary, the pictures I admired yesterday were really astonishing. You don’t have to be an art critic to understand the importance of those works. You just have to have a little imagination to bring to life a scene presented right in front of your eyes and to travel in older eras, at times when there were no cameras to depict reality as it actually is, at times when the great painter was the one who could really depict the looks, the smiles, as well as the shadows of lights, exposing like that his/her own experience regarding pain, joy, expectation or relief. And this is the importance that, when attached to things that have been said a million times, makes them sound new and pioneering.

At the museum store, I met my friend Panayiota, who told me that some fascists had started a march close to the Syntagma Square. She advised us not to get there, since it was highly possible for them to beat the hell out of us. I had never thought that someone could hit me out of the blue. I was initially scared, since I wasn’t exactly looking for trouble. Later, though, I was carried away by the desire to provoke my own luck and dare to walk among the beasts. My friend Nikos said that this was not a good idea. I was finally persuaded with his words and decided just to visit the museum toilets. It was a toilet for disabled people, or probably not, since there was no easy access to those who would decide to use it despite the indication there. It was big and had room for three persons like me but there was no bar next to the bowl which I could hold and be able to stand up (I just wanted to pee). There was a bar next to the washbasin instead, as if someone would put his/her towels there.

I had no other choice. I reached the washbasin and stood up using the bar. I touched the tiles with my hands, I stuck on the wall and started moving on the sides towards the bowl. I was whispering, swearing and praying inside. The tiles were slippery and I was scared. I didn’t exactly wish to find myself lying down. I finally managed to reach the bowl and grabbed the cistern. When I sat on my wheelchair again, I already felt lighter. A little while ago I had let water run not to wash out my excrement but to get rid of all those bad thoughts that ruin my day every time that my life becomes harder due to some people’s indifference. [Since you make the bathroom anyway (and you are subsidized for that), make it right, damn you.] I didn’t lose my mood anyway. But would it have been better if I gather five or six colleagues and march with them in order to beat some guys black and blue?
Sorry, Rembrandt, I outshine your greatness.

ON THE SEABED

2006-09-15T03:32:00.000-07:00

06.12.04

Thanks for your namesake wishes. It’s beautiful to go to work in the morning and read wishes on your screen. I apologize for not writing so often now but I really sleep and wake up lying on the books. I’ve become unbelievably boring both to the others and to myself. I will make up for it. Other than that, I have no other way to ‘walk around’ online. Some programme destroyed the Explorer and I decided to take advantage of the situation, since I am handing out my dissertation in the end of February.

I visited the ocean closest to me to figure out how cold the water of the sea is during the winter. I found a deserted submarine somewhere there. It was made of metal and its colour was electric blue. I got it and was buried under tons of water. I stepped on the accelerator, hoping to overcome myself. I was on the seabed. I lifted my head, as I used to when I looked at the sky, and I saw people from the backward reflection of the water. I saw people passing by, sliding skillfully on the waves. They were on the surface and I was lost down there. I have a lot of work to do. The sharks are watching me. In the end, they will either reward me for my hard work or simply give me my life. When this happens, I will be brought out again.
Best wishes both to me and to Nick Cave, whom we saw yesterday and he was great.

THE PINKY DRINKS LIFT MY SPIRITS

2006-09-15T03:22:00.000-07:00

27.11.04

I’ve had some drinks with a pinky colour that are sweet and drive you crazy. I’m really stoned and I like it a lot. I came back home with a taxi and the driver was listening to radio ‘Cosmos’. I’m talking about a crazy drive, I’m telling you. Full of sax and husky voices. Afterwards, we listened to Lou Reed on ‘Take a walk on the wild slide’ and I wanted nothing more. Honestly. We had our drinks, we said a lot and this was enough to make us happy.

You should be there to look at me gaping idly at the colourful lights and the wooden table. I confess that some times I fall in love with objects. I let my eyes stick on them for hours, especially on details that would be considered stupid by some people. That’s why it takes me an hour to go from one room to the other, because while going there I look and think. I admire my dog, for he seems to be the sweetest dog on the planet for me, I look at Melina’s portrait and try to understand the shape of her smile. I’m in my world. Imagine me drinking. What nonsense am I talking and what stupid things am I doing!

Throughout this funny delusion I remembered to call two friends and asked them to record on video for me the interview of Soti (Triandafyllou) on NET. I love her very much and I wish she logged on my blog to read it too. Later (later means now) I understood it was time to lie down on my great bed, in order to wake up quite early tomorrow morning and work on my great dissertation. But I’ll first take a walk on the wild slide, as mister Lou Reed orders:

Holly came from Miami, F.L. A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the USA
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild slide
She said, Hey honey
Take a walk on the wild slide

Candy came from out on the Island
In the backroom she was everybody’s darlin’
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She says, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild slide
Said, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild slide
And the coloured girls go
Doo do doo do doo do do doo

Little Joe never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City’s the place where they said, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild slide
I said, Hey Joe
Take a walk on the wild slide

Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the streets
Lookin’ for soul food and a place to eat
Went to the Apollo
You should’ve seen ’em go go go
They said, Hey sugar
Take a walk on the wild slide
I said, Hey babe
Take a walk on the wild slide
All right, huh

Jackie is just speeding away
Thought she was James Dean for a day
Then I guess she had to crash
Valium would have helped that bash
Said, Hey babe,
Take a walk on the wild slide
I said, Hey honey
Take a walk on the wild side
And the coloured girls say,
Doo do doo do doo do do doo
Please don’t freak out with dirty words!

STORIES

2006-09-15T03:16:00.000-07:00

26.11.04

A great walk around New Orleans on dirty streets while worried passengers stare at me, either inside or outside a circus. People who look strange, bored performers on a show that is repeated in order to entertain, to empty the pockets of citizens, to make profit; for the rich to be richer and the poor to be poorer, for the gangster to get away with it all and the creep to rot in prison or the creep to get away with it all and the gangster to rot in prison. And all this takes place in a space blurred by the fumes of the cigarettes of those who smoke in the basements, listening to piano being played from the hands of black musicians. The dark colour, the dark looks and the bright imagination that describe what happened and what didn’t happen. Whatever I saw and did not see yesterday on my small screen.

This is what I like. This is what pleases me, along with voodoo and angry cocks ready to kill one another, because when the cock is well prepared, he takes that out and thus his ‘colleague’ spurs like mad. The others just place their bets on the name of entertainment. Watching a crash is always attractive to the viewers. That’s how it always goes. That’s what happens here too, except for the fact that there’s no winner here but, even if there was one, he wouldn’t earn money. He would only take what would be left from a story with ambiguous end. This end might be different not only for its quality but also for its outcome.

I remember my father telling me stories while on trips. I was little and had to sleep. My father slept first before he even finished with his story. I was then left with the complaint and told myself: ‘When I grow up, I will make my own stories all by myself with my own beginning and my own end.’. That’s what I said and did and it seems that I will be doing this for a long time.

AND I SUFFER (For my own good)

2006-09-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

25.11.04

I got out of bed wishing to be sick and not go to work. Last night I was printing your answers to the questionnaire for hours (each one in different print). I was doing the whole thing mechanically until I started seeing birds and stars and all that stuff in front of me. I have gathered about 70 answers, most of them encouraging. What I have to do now is to produce the percentages for the most crucial answers and maybe present them in some sort of diagram. I still have a lot of work to do but it’s enough that everything goes well for me. Moreover, I’m fed up with reading and I think that being dead tired will finally have very positive consequences to my future scores. When I started my graduate course, I knew very well that I would be tired; and I really wanted to struggle with them. It might sound insane but I believe that this kind of education ‘nurtures’ me and prepares me for even bigger things. On the other hand, I can’t wait to stop reading and do some sports. My body is stooped from sitting on chairs all the time and I can’t take it any more. It’s because I’m sick of picking up phones at work. My patience and my resilience are tested on a daily basis. Yesterday they made me a remark because I am very polite with citizens and therefore I keep the lines constantly busy for longer than I should. The conclusions are up to you.

FOR ‘MY’ PEOPLE

2006-09-15T03:06:00.000-07:00

24.11.04

I was waiting too for the Teddy Bear to swear at me (as he had promised in his blog that he would do). I opened my window and then started reading. Was that all the swearing? How great it would be for everyone to swear at me like that. Without understanding it, it seems I’ve started something greater than what I think. I read the messages posted by Thodoris, Michalis and Katerina and said: ‘All right, there are some people who make my life more difficult but there are some others who try to walk in my shoes and understand me. It’s for them, then, that I will be writing and exposing myself whenever I need to tell the truth for as long as I can.’

What I want to describe today is how happy I was yesterday. I went to see my older brother (not that I have a younger one; I’m just giving hints regarding his age!). I’m very happy each time that all of us meet, even if we are bored. There is an explanation for that. I haven’t lived with my brother as much as I would like to. I need something more; one more picture and one more word to hold and remember. I am ashamed of saying so but when people ask me if I have any siblings, I say: ‘I have a sister’; and a few seconds later, I add: ‘and a brother’. There is an explanation for that as well but I don’t disclose that.

What I do want to disclose is a conclusion to which I came a few years ago: Nobody loves you as much as your family does. No doubt that this can be uncertain; but I can’t understand brothers and sisters who argue to death and parents who don’t care about their children. I might be mad at parents’ behaviour but I recognize their effort to be right beside us. The same thing happens with brothers and sisters. They might beat you black and blue, take your favourite things or not always have time for you but they care about you like nobody else. I don’t know if I sound traditional or if I just had the luck to grow up in a happy family. No matter what, I feel great every time I know that wherever I am going there are always somewhere some people to whom I can always turn and return.They are not just ‘my’ people. They are points of reference in my personal history.

Goffman, Ziggy and Me

2006-09-15T02:54:00.000-07:00

23.11.04

My father was looking at the newspaper today. He said ‘The Teddy Bear and Evi are there’. Then he shows me the paper. I track a reference to the ‘stories’ (the blog). I’m happy for them and laugh indifferently at my case. I was never part of a community (although I know I am). In general, I don’t like belonging to something. All right, I have made you freak out and I definitely have the inferiority complex. Let’s put it that way. If I don’t admit it, I won’t stop being like that. If I do, I might manage to change something/some day.I had said that I wouldn’t write anything! It’s impossible. I’m addicted (I repeat that) to the blog and I’m being dead serious! In the future I might wind up in a detox clinic in order to get rid of constant blogging.

Yesterday I was reading an article from a book written by Erving Goffman: ‘The Presentation of self in everyday life’. I understood a lot about what I did both to you and to myself. I have confused you, speaking about the defence of difference on the one hand and presenting myself as a guy just like the rest on the other. I see what I mean (and I’m not worried for as long as this happens) but it’s something that I can’t explain. Nonetheless, the wisdom of things is somewhere in the middle (as usual). Anyway, that’s not the question. The question is, how can I be so tired from this procedure and yet find it extremely difficult to take my hands from the keyboard? Someone yells at me: ‘Go back to your normal life, you dumbo’. And I answer: ‘This has become a part of my normal life’.

I remember David Bowie (he is probably my favourite artist) when he was living as Ziggy Stardust and almost got sick with schizophrenia, because he believed so much in the personality he had created for himself that he forgot who he really was. I hope that this won’t happen to me, because, let’s face it, no matter how real myself is here, I really get into my new role. As for publicity, what am I to say? When you aren’t after her, she finds you. When you are after her, she doesn’t come to you at all. Unless you are Ziggy Stardust.

About being a punk

2006-09-15T02:31:00.000-07:00

17.11.04

It all started many many years ago when I first saw real Punks walking around Leicester Square in London. I was in a red bus looking at the street from the window, when I suddenly caught a colourful picture. A bunch of freaks were standing at the end of the street, breathing in fumes. If someone asked me to describe them, I would say that they look like colourful birds. They didn’t look at all like the people I knew until then. They were different. They were impressive. They were mysterious, aloof and silent; they were even scary. They had dyed their long hair –their ‘standing’ hair- that covered their heads in many colours and looked like colourful crowns. They had studs on their necks and on their wrists too. Tons of trinkets were hanging from their ears and their faces were dyed with colourful powders. They were standing there in the middle of nowhere, looking indifferent, as if their own life was just a word in brackets, comparing it to the lives of the others. The truth is that I was scared of them but I admired them as well. I told my mother: ‘When I grow up, I want to be like them’.

Years passed and I grew up. Countless are the times that I came back to London (I still go whenever I can) and I was sad to have figured out that the freaks had disappeared. True Punks don’t exist any more (according to Papazoglou- Manolis Rassoulis, the train must have run over them) The world is full of imitating people, of people who pretend to be anti-conventional, of people who try to look different. They pierce their tongues and ears, they dye their hair; and all this in a desperate effort to cry out loud and thus declare their presence without suspecting that they end up looking so much with one another, precisely because they end up using the same methods and techniques in order to stand out. I see them all dancing at the rhythm of noises, amidst smokes and under colourful lights. I’m there with them too. They are so passionate that they can’t see anything beyond the end of their noses. They fall on my wheelchair and apologize because they didn’t see me. I am invisible and yet so visible at the same time. I am different without even having planned to be. From one point of view, I am lucky. Maybe I should pierce my ear for a second time? Not to stand out but to look like them?

All Along The Watchtower

2006-09-15T02:02:00.000-07:00

11.11.04

Ever since I’ve started this blog, I’ve ended up to a specific conclusion. Your participation is inversely proportional to my mood. Whenever I am angry or sad, all of you run to make some comment on my bad mood either to console me or to advise me of something or just to tell me that you have been in my shoes. On the contrary, I get the impression that my joy makes you feel awkward. It could be said that positive feelings are proved to be more personal than negative ones.

I imagine that many of you might say that I’m happy for no reason, as if it’s not important to be photographed next to public faces of to receive a letter from them, even when it comes from the other end of the world. This is why you decide not to take part in a dialogue that is none of your business, according to you. Your absence causes mixed feelings to me. On the one hand I’m sorry to understand that I might sound boring and on the other I’m unbelievably happy when I can take advantage of this absence of yours in order to take a breath, refraining from daily writing which, let’s face it, wears me out.

Forgive me for being descriptive again but I picture myself walking (yes, I can even walk with my imagination) all along an endless corridor next to a window equally huge that allows the sunrays to get through. There are open doors –the one next to the other- opposite the window, all along the corridor as well. Those doors lead to rooms less bright but not dark. As I go from one room to the other, I figure out that my legs step on black-and-white marble squares that form a giant chessboard. I don’t need much to become a pawn. And yet I’m not one. I’m the owner of a deserted tower. I’m the crazy owner of a deserted tower. I’m so insane that I hear voices expressing my thoughts before me. Those voices could only belong to you.

WHEN HAPPINESS SUDDENLY STRIKES ME

2006-09-15T01:51:00.000-07:00

11.11.04

You are not going to believe this. My father just called me from home to tell me that the bassist of Doors finally sent me the photographs that we had taken backstage, after the concert. He had promised me that he would do that but I hadn’t believed him. That guy’s name is Phil Chen and he appeared with the newly composed band for the purposes of the concert. As you know, this band did not use a bassist for the studio recordings. So we are dealing with a session musician and maybe this is the reason why this doesn’t have to do with some dupe but with a very modest (for now, at least) artist. Right now that I am writing this I am excited and there is no other way to show that than write it somewhere here. Some times, things happen that reward you for the problems of a whole lifetime.

I was equally excited yesterday when I picked up the phone and I heard the voice of my beloved teacher and chief of the theatrical group of the municipality. She let me know that the group will be re-united. We are about to put on a piece based on improvisations. I can’t wait to finish writing my dissertation and work again on things that I long for.
P.S.: The envelope was sent from Hollywood (I’m serious). The recipient was someone under my surname and the names of Anna and George (the friends with whom I attended the concert).

1+1=25 (that’s my age as well)

2006-09-15T01:47:00.000-07:00

09.11.04

A while ago, they asked me at the office to make some calculations so as to record the revenue of the Municipality from the assignment of works. I did this without providing any objection of course, since it was not something difficult (I used a calculator, naturally), but I was still (and I still am) cautious regarding the reliability of the result. When I have numbers in front of me, I run in panic. This is definitely part of my childhood memoirs. I was scared of mathematics and I realized how important this science is only when I decided to be deal with me. Everything is mathematics, my friends. Even what I’m writing here for you. If you don’t make any sense from what I say, this happens because I’m hopeless at arithmetic. I can’t understand the sequence of operations and adopt a specific logic. And yet I love mathematics (in the end), as much as I love a lot of things of which I happen to be afraid. Don’t ask me how I do that. I can’t –and I don’t want to- explain that. It’s enough that it happens. I imagine myself engrossed in the algebra books one day, trying to solve exercizes with integrals and swearing at every direction, regretting that I spent my years studying the writings of ancient thinkers. I know: I will have no reason to regret. They are mathematics too.

I’LL SAY HERE WHAT I DIDN’T SAY THERE

2006-09-15T01:43:00.000-07:00

05.11.04

Athina told me that the show was successful and that the discussion at the studio was interesting. I thought that I would envy her a little, because she made another decision and finally had the chance to say what she wanted in public. I didn’t envy her at all in the end. I just wondered if something new was told during that show, where normally standard things are said. I wish that someone found the roots of the problem, explaining that the phenomenon of cities inhospitable to people with a disability deals first of all with the small communities and the policies of local administration. This is the one that first controls the application of policies that are targeted to securing the rights of those specific minority groups. If all municipalities met the standards for providing us with equal opportunities as regards our participation in daily activities, then the whole city of Athens and thus the whole of the country would be a place friendlier to people with a disability. That’s about it here.

TIME FOR WHINING

2006-09-15T01:35:00.000-07:00

02.11.04

I’ve become angry those days. I am not arguing with people, neither am I blaming them. I’m just a bit aloof. I get the impression that I will pay for this behaviour of mine but I couldn’t care less, to say the truth. It would be wise to refer to a specific event.

Yesterday I was asked to attend the making of a show during which the video we made in the centre of Athens would be presented. The show is programmed for Sunday noon but the shoot will be made in the studio tomorrow. So they called me on the phone to ask me to go there and I refused. I don’t know if there was some specific reason to do that but I said: ‘No, thank you. I will watch the show on television.’. I told them that they really gave me a hard time. That was true. On Friday they asked me to attend a third exterior shoot as well, saying that they had to have more outside scenes. I refused as well, since this was not part of our agreement. Nonetheless, I gave them the phone number of a good friend, Athina, who accepted to attend the rest of the shoot instead of me.

I was angry because I understood once again that some people who are professional journalists just want to use you. They told me: ‘We definitely want you there for a last shoot’. They didn’t ask me if I had the time or if I was in the mood. They actually didn’t ask me at all. They demanded my participation. And I am angry with people who demand things from me. They had got the impression that I’m some coward and that I’m crazy for shows. The showman himself talked to me on the phone. I explained him that I don’t have more time, because I work in the mornings and I am also busy with my graduate course. As soon as he listened to that, he stopped talking to me as if I was some dupe, especially when he found out that I’m one of them.

Seeing things from a different point of view, I understood that my behaviour was kind of hostile. I regretted refusing to go to that show. I get the impression that the subject with the inaccessible Cathedral will cause a great ‘storm’. Maybe that was why I wanted to avoid the direct opposition. I don’t even want to bid the priests good morning. I’m afraid of them as ‘God’s people’. Not all of them are malicious, I know. I just avoid even looking at them. I’m gripped by the same phobia every time I look at a woman who pretends to be a diva or a cat (yes, I’m speaking of the well-known animal) that attempts to blind my dog with her nails. There are some people who make me defensive against them, no doubt. That’s why I regretted that I won’t be present at the shoot of the show, because I will not be able to defend myself in case someone attempts to prove me wrong or say something bad about me when I’m not there.

FROM A PIECE OF GLASS

2006-09-15T01:31:00.000-07:00

29.10.04

It’s time to talk about things less poetic. In some way, I need the lightness of dull random things or of facts that happen just like that, for no special reason. After all, I was back to work and this is not something romantic. I even managed to find the time to argue with a colleague who kept asking me to explain him why I invited him twice instead of getting the line from the number to which he had already called us. I had to disclose for him all the details regarding the telephone in the office inside the room; this machine doesn’t have a transfer button and therefore it was not stupid of me to decide to call back and not transfer the line to my telephone. I write you all that so that you understand what keeps people busy when they have nothing better to do.There’s no room for poetry in this insane reality. And yet I am next to the door and I always get the impression that this will help me escape more easily at the right time (I am reading the text again and I can’t seem to understand why I wrote this phrase). On the pretext of my morning anger (I started screaming without really understanding so), I brought the picture of broken glasses to my mind. It was later when I remembered a sculpture made by Varotsos that I saw recently at an exhibition: A corridor is formed among sharp glasses and lets the length of a distance appear. It’s actually about the distance covered when someone walks on a dangerous pathway. It’s dangerous because it traps those who walk on it. It threatens them like a beast while they walk through its sharp teeth, hoping to escape. Lamps lit hang beyond their heads; they form a second glowing pathway. That’s something at which people can look in order not to lose their orientation, their faith or their optimism. When I looked at that piece from a far distance, I said: ‘Another post-modern stupid thing’. When I read that it was about the struggling of the immigrant or of the man who travels seeking for survival and not because he just chooses to, I started looking for the symbols immediately. As it’s perfectly normal, everybody interprets a work of art as wanted. Someone might not recognize any trace of art in such creations. In my opinion, art is everywhere, precisely because it has to do with presentations and representations most of the times. If some people can’t do art (although they claim the opposite in order to impress), this happens because they are not able to recognize (and thus create and re-create) neither presentations nor representations that comprise (usually) the most common reality. This is the sense that makes me admit that I’ve heard the greatest poems on the street and the sweetest words in quarrels.

THE KISS OF PANIC

2006-09-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

27.10.04

Yesterday I visited my department once again and had to face (academic) situations that brought me face to face with negative consequences and this is why I was very very sad. In fact, I was so sad that I wanted to smoke a whole pack of cigarettes. In the end I was just biting my nails. I rarely bite my nails but in that case I didn’t find a less self-destructive thing to do.

On returning home, the midday show of Tatiana Stefanidou came to my mind (I always think of shallow things when I feel like drowning), on which a sort of ointment against cancer was presented. In fact, it was merely a kind of tomato purée that circulates without being approved by the N.O.M..

I thought immediately of all those poor people who take advantage of people’s despair in order to get rich. I even remembered my mom, who took me to India (I was 7 years old) to receive the blessing of Sai Baba. On the pretext of that meeting I had taken my first (the real one!) kiss from a woman who had said I was a Chosen one, just because I had managed to step on the threshold of the palace of an unsolicited Messiah.

The same kiss was what I needed yesterday. It didn’t have to be an erotic kiss. I was seeking for a salvation kiss. Another breath to make it.

GOOD OLD TIMES

2006-09-15T01:07:00.000-07:00

26.10.04

Yesterday I watched Themos’ (Anastasiadis) show on television and remembered the days when I had him opposite me looking at his newspaper or walking around the corridors of the radio station with all the other editors and editors-in-chief. I remember I was going to work and had to know the news in order to do some stories; others exciting and others really boring. I hadn’t figured out that I didn’t like what I was doing back then. I was going through times of searching and everything seemed to be a part of a general testing. I was finishing with university and I had no idea how I wanted to live or what I wanted to be. The possibility of becoming a journalist raised my hair, not only because I felt that I wasn’t interested in topicality but also because being called a journalist doesn’t necessarily mean that you own some title of honour; on the contrary.

And yet I miss those times terribly; they were the times when I was in the middle of the rough ocean and had to swim alone in deep water, looking for evidence, exactly like a good researcher would do. This process helped me have courage. I could ask for information for anything from anybody and I was becoming wiser, of course, from day to day. Moreover, I found out how to break the myth of fame and stand next to people who I admired and still admire.

I was talking on the phone with my favourite artists and interviewed them (Who? Me!) and that’s how I was getting rid of my inhibitions or boosting my adrenaline. Like when I had to talk to the great Blues musician who had the nickname ‘Magic Slim’ or to Anna Vissi. I came in the sound engineer’s room. I was wearing headphones. I called my ‘victim’ on the pone and the interview started like that.

When I used the loo, I fell –almost always- on mr. Kakaounakis, as if someone told us to go to the loo at the same time. I had great fun in those times because the people involved were vibrant in every sense of the word. In this profession nobody could remain relaxed. News was running. So were we. We were especially lucky to be called for action with such creative stress. When the clock said it was 14:00, the news bulletin was on and everything was ready. People were listening to the news and so did we; we only got the news first.

Today I remember all this with the hope of experience it again some day. I’m on the other side now. I listen to the radio as a listener only and I’m paid to work as a municipal employee. Now I’m paid for the services that I offer. This is definitely something important.

TAKING THE DOG FOR A WALK

2006-09-15T01:01:00.000-07:00

23.10.04

I’m home alone. Completely alone. I usually like this kind of loneliness and I encourage my parents to go and leave me alone. Today it feels different, because for the first time I understood how inconvenient this house is for me, despite being considered an accessible house.

Let me explain you what happens: The house has three floors, inclusive of the basement, where my room and other communal spaces are. In fact, it’s a semi-basement and this means that the front door is like in the ground. That’s why there’s a ramp that leads to the street in front of the house. I can’t slide my wheelchair on this ramp because of its big slope. Whenever I want to get out from the house and use the front door, I have to use the walking device and that’s why I stand up and walk. Whenever I want to go further, I use my car and that’s why I get out of the garage, whose entrance is as low as the front door, since it’s placed on the front side of the house as well.

Today all my friends were busy and I had to take the dog for a walk alone. How would I do that since I couldn’t walk out (holding the dog’s lead in one hand) but I couldn’t use the car/garage for the same purpose either? I passed my hand through the dog’s lead and held the bars until I could take him out on the street. And then what? Absolutely nothing. I had neither my walking device nor my wheelchair. I was just grabbing a bar, with the dog on my foot pulling me on his side of the street with persistence (poor dog, he was ready to fall apart). I explained to him that things were difficult. I asked him to shit somewhere at the end of the street (at the furthest point that he could reach with me holding the lead). But the dog is a dog and he doesn’t understand. I picked him in quickly and told him: ‘I can’t do anything else. Shit on you!’. I am mad at my parents, because every time I tell them they’ve neglected a bunch of things regarding my independent living at home they pretend they don’t get it. In fact, they try to do everything they can to prove that I will always be in need of them. I want to call them where they are and cry out loud to them. It’s just one of the many times that they neglect my needs. If I ever tell them that I dared take the dog for a walk, they’ll never leave me home alone.

FROM THE DARK VILLAGE OF THE PAST TO THE DARK METROPOLES OF THE PRESENT

2006-09-15T00:44:00.000-07:00

22.10.04

I want to talk for a dark village. It’s no other than the village presented by M. Night Shyamalan in his new film. Some of you might have seen it and some others don’t intend to go see it because they told you that this film has nothing to do with his other film, the ‘6th Sense’, neither in importance nor in plot. Right. If you expect to enjoy a thriller and nothing more, you are bound to be disappointed. It’s a film full of symbols and that’s what sets it apart, in my opinion.

People’s connection to the unknown and the way they handle fear, both their own and that of their fellow humans, is not something you can easily describe, even when you talk about a daily phenomenon. The strength contained in power can be grown by feelings like fear. Speaking of power, I don’t mean just the state being imposed on its citizens or the governmental decisions. I also mean the power exercized by the powerful on the weak or by the older on the younger, intending to protect them or even marginalize them. Remember the oppression exercized by the parents to their children in the name of excessive love. Remember the way that demagogues like Bush spread panic in order to legalize their torturing actions against every possible threat.

Threats can clearly cause the birth of fear, either as facts or as situations invented by humans. ‘I’m afraid, because I feel threatened by something that I don’t know but I am also choosing consciously not to be aware of it and this is why I’m still afraid of that something’. This sequence of facts derives from watching such a great film, like the ‘Dark Village’. If you want, I can take the whole thing further. Every prejudice is based on the same thinking system. That’s what happens with the social integration of people with a disability. ‘I’m cautious with people who have a disability because I know very few things about them and vice versa. I know very few things about people with a disability, because I was never willing to meet them and, consequently, I am still cautious with them. Likewise, I am stubborn in preserving the prejudice of previous centuries, according to which disability is determined as an illness, while it’s actually nothing but the outcome of incomplete or wrong application of an international social policy.’.

That’s how fear and ignorance are related. Watch the ‘Dark Village’ and you’ll figure out more.

ONCE UPON A TIME THE SILLY BOY WOKE UP

2006-09-15T00:39:00.000-07:00

19.10.04

When I first came at work, I was in my office from 8:15, while I could be here at 9. The law says that people with a disability can work an hour less than their colleagues (without a disability) if they work for the public sector. At first, this seemed to me really unfair to the others and I had decided to come at work almost at the same time with them, not just to be the nice guy but also because I didn’t want to cause any reaction. I know well that people can envy you even for the slightest things. This is why I didn’t refer (in the beginning, at least) to my right to work an hour less than my colleagues. This didn’t last long.

As soon as they found out that I could be late but I didn’t do that, they started making fun of me: ‘Are you silly and you don’t just stay home and sleep an hour longer? Who do you think you are? Who are you to play it so cool?’ and other crap like that that made me change my mind. After all, I didn’t exactly wish to come at work at the crack of dawn. I did this for my colleagues, so that they don’t feel they are treated unfairly because of me. Since they insisted ignoring my intentions, I had every right to make good use of the legal provisions. Nowadays I come at work at 9 and everybody is happy.

Likewise, when I was studying for the Panhellenic examinations, I argued constantly with my mother, because she insisted on believing that I should be exempted from the examination procedure, since I was physically very tired with the many hours of studying. This is what she believed that should be done with all the people that had a disability, since, as she said, when you are a person with a disability you are already struggling hard enough to live and it is therefore unfair to be in trouble just to enter a university department. That’s what I was listening from her and I was surprised. I got mad like hell. I answered her: ‘Say what you want, I will sit the exams and I will even pass them. If I don’t, I’ll go study in London. So much the better for me.’.

I finally sat the exams (I just accepted to use the extra time I was given and after having done detailed work on the written test, I had an oral examination). I could just hand them my written work but my spelling mistakes were too many and this is why I preferred to speak of my thoughts. I sat the exams in the next year as well and I was admitted to the Department of Communication and Mass Media of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. At first, I thought I had entered a Technological Educational Institution, the Department of Social Work or something; then I understood I was in a University School and bet between that and the Theater Studies Department or the History & Archaeology Department. The Mass Media one was my first choice and I was really surprised when I finally understood I had done it. It was not an imaginary achievement, as many people thought. I just simply wanted to have my own radio show and eat at expensive restaurants along with rock stars. I picked the University to get rid of parental guidance. Many years had to pass before I truly appreciated what I had achieved.

Despite my achievements, though, I was officially declared as the ‘sucker of the case’, since right after my success the state issued a decree that exempted us from examinations. This decree was valid for the next (almost) 3 years, since the exams were abolished for all. I will tell you something, even if you call me silly with capital ‘S’: Even if I didn’t have to sit exams, I still would; first of all because I don’t want to be different from the others for no reason but mostly because this procedure (of the Panhellenic exams) helped me immensely be hard and mature, precisely like most of the kids of my age with whom I shared this burden.

FOR THE BLUES

2006-09-15T00:31:00.000-07:00

16.10.04

Yesterday I went to listen to the Blues again. Kostas and I were looking for a warm and cozy place with couches to get a better sense of the approaching winter. We were looking for a place with fitted carpets and couches where we would go to enjoy our drink, listening to lounge music. We didn’t find a place like that and thus we ended up at Panormou’s well-known bar. There were neither couches nor pillows but the warmth of a guitar and a husky voice.

You can’t imagine how happy I am when I listen to the Blues. Some times I wish I was born black – really black; and have that husky voice and an old story to defend, for example the setting free of my ancestors from their slavery and of my brothers from the fields that were like camps. I’d like to have just a guitar and cross the Mississipi, hoping to find a job somewhere in Chicago in the beginning of the 1900s, on the condition that I would have no disability. It’s too much being both a black man and a disabled one. It’s not something you should be ashamed of. It’s something that brings you at the forefront of double discrimination, especially when you refer to old times.

I don’t love the Blues just because the defend freedom or difference. I love them for their religious content as well. I get the impression that these songs help me discover the meaning of being religious as well as of faith, not necessarily the meaning of God. We’re dealing with faith to something higher, the kind of faith that makes the burden of your pain equal with carrying a treasure and makes you richer in strength, resilience and knowledge. There’s no better way to learn those lessons than listening to the black people sing for the simple joys of life or for hope.

The scenery is old and this is important. That’s where the opinions of people who struggled against injustice and racism are presented, way before they created their own ghettos. Things have changed today. People don’t just sing for their traditions or for what they’ve been taught from their families. They sing about hate, war and death. They hide behind gangs and this is how they become outcast citizens. Their wealth is not counted according to their cultural traditions but on the basis of gold or money.

That’s why I love those times, even if I know next to nothing about what was happening back then. At the same time, I suspect that nothing has actually changed. I figure out that the sense of living in a ghetto existed always. Noone can manage to overcome insecurities, even when music is the gun, even if one knows how to sing the Blues. I’m confused. I don’t know what I’m trying to prove. I take a sip from my drink and let out a husky voice. What I’m listening to are just great songs. Why do they have to be something more than what they are? Life in itself is fabulous, especially when you are listening to the Blues. ‘Oh Yeahhhhh!!!’.

ONE TRIP WITH DIFFERENT DESTINATIONS

2006-09-15T00:27:00.000-07:00

15.10.04

Your participation gives me strength. I wish you wrote more even if we argued (isn’t this part of our daily life as well?). I don’t want to challenge you. I want to invite you. Watching the number of your comments growing, I try to have a picture of you. I think of you more like snails. Don’t doubt me so fast. I don’t mean that you are slow and slippery. No way. You just keep walking around and inside electronic boxes every time someone utters words. You appear slowly one by one, just like snails after rain. I know there’s many of you and you are somewhere out there. It’s good to come out even when it doesn’t rain.

Some of you may not be actually familiar with this way of communication. It doesn’t matter; and no matter how strange it may seem to you, I’m a newcomer too. I carry something uncertain with me; something whose identity and quality are doubtful. Nonetheless, I’m used to it. I don’t wait for some reason to begin with my trip. I’m a snail too, there’s no doubt about that at least. When I’m tired or in a hurry, I take the tube, exactly like I did yesterday to go to university. Looking at my fellow men and women in the carriage, I found the chance to play with an idea that came to my mind. That’s about how I thought of my weblog. Like a carriage! You meet various kinds of people in there. Others look like you and others don’t. Nonetheless, all of them wish to go on a trip. They want to arrive somewhere. Most of them don’t talk but they communicate, though, with their eyes, their hands and their facial expressions.

When I reach my destination, I ask some people to help me out of the train (since the new ehite carriages have no ramps on the doors). Some of them will take me out softly and help me out. Others will push me abruptly (because they don’t know how to do it properly, not because they are mean) to the platform. The same thing happens here when some people try to express their opinions. Some are abrupt or provocative and try to throw you out violently and some just try to walk with you, thus offering you their own images regarding what they record during their trip. It’s about one trip, even when it guides you to different destinations.

LOOK AT ME EVEN IF I’M CRYIN’

2006-09-15T00:22:00.000-07:00

14.10.04

I was washing my voluminous hair, when I heard my mother cry outside the door: ‘Bonatsos died!’. I was not really emotionally connected to that specific person but I liked him enough to be surprised. While finishing such a simple thing (it doesn’t need hard work to bathe, does it?), I started making deep thoughts again and thus troubled myself. What’s life? What’s the human being? What did Vlassis took recently and made his heart stop?

You don’t find it easy to answer questions like that, especially when daily life forces you to move quicker than your thoughts. Some times you are even mad for not giving some time to other people as well, people who are anonymous, people who die without the whole country knowing and yet it’s equally devastating. Personally, anonymity fascinates me. I’m not speaking of the anonymity that protects you when you are afraid of stating your name (like when you post a comment on some blog, for instance) but of the other one that guarantees you the advantage of free movement in the crowd without anyone looking at you or expecting something from you. From that point of view, I would not put up with too much publicity. Maybe it’s because I always feel over-protected. In my opinion, too much protection is directly related to surveillance. Maybe it’s because all the looks of the world are to blame when they are directed to me with indiscretion ever since I was a baby.
To say the truth, things are a bit more complicated; firstly because, as it is the natural thing, not all the people are looking at me with indiscretion and secondly because I figure out that, with time, I am kind of used to people looking at me. When they don’t, it seems strange to me. That’s about where the game starts: Am I looking at you or are you looking at me?

Yesterday, for example, I went and listened to a speech from the Mayor. I wanted him to know that I was there for this purpose and this is why I went to greet him when he finished talking. I found him while the television journalists were interviewing him. In the beginning, I was surprised. I sat somewhere and waited for him to finish. The rest of the people were concentrated in the main area. I was still behind the Mayor though, knowing that it was highly possible to be (without wanting to) perceived by the television angle. Right then and there, I told myself: ‘You are a real dupe, bro’. Either you say you don’t dig publicity or you are next to the crew.’.

YO, MAN!

2006-09-15T00:17:00.000-07:00

13.10.04

Yesterday I tried to receive treatment again. I had my belly uncovered and some kinds of cables put on my shoulder and nape. I sat against the wall, looking at the picture that describes the human body. I have studied that picture more than a million times, since I can’t do anything else. I am between two white curtains, behind which lie the other patients. They are usually women (quite older than me). I get the impression that they are bored but suffering at the same time. Despite having a passive treatment –like I do-, it still is unbelievably boring.

I have no other way of fooling myself than talking non-stop and nonsense! I am the clown of the hospital. Some times I think that I struggle to laugh. Everybody laughs at my silly jokes but I’m sure that some times they are just trying to be polite. In the meantime, treatment goes on and on. The electrodes pass the power and the (female) hands caress my shoulders. They spread healing ointments that make my hair raise. In the end I am always relieved. I feel like a black rapper who starts in a sensual video clip. What I need to add is a golden cross and of course a whole harem. As the Goin’ Through say: ‘There are many women, very many women, but they are never enough’.

INSERT COIN

2006-09-15T00:04:00.000-07:00

12.10.04

I remember little Nicholas sitting on a high stool with the hands stuck on the control, in front of a smoked glass and behind flashing lights, agonizing and sweating. I intended to eat the balls and avoid the little ghosts. My score was quite low, although I spent tons of half-Euros to feed the machine. I let nobody take my place before I spent my very last penny. I knew that my scores were ultimately bad. Nonetheless, I wanted to stay in front of the screen. In fact, I didn’t really bother about being either a spectator or a player. I often had more fun with the others’ achievements. I was happy, as if I had passed all the stages.

If I was devoted to books and not to video games, today I might even be wise. I had excluded this possibility from my life ever since I was a child. I owned a console (Sega Master System) and I carried it with me at our country cottage in summer. I invited my friends for a group daze and exercise of the fingers. We all gaped idly at the screen, screaming or moving our hands and feet playfully. Our goals were different. We didn’t have Pac-Man or Sonic the hedgehog. We swirled in stone cylinders or passed beyond bridges that were falling apart, in order to pick the various rings flying over our heads. All of us were blue hedgehogs with sharp red shoes, forced to keep our promises and destroy the crazy scientist who tortured the animals of the forest. The whole scene was routine in our minds.

I don’t know if the hours I spent in front of the television were to blame. Nonetheless, every time that I undertake a mission, I prefer to imagine that all the difficulties I come up against are not much different from those that I would have to face in a video game. That’s how my reality is turned into a symbol. That’s the only way I can undergo hardship. Many years ago I wouldn’t even dare to imagine another dimension hidden in a stupid game. Today I am relieved when I wake up. A new week begins. It’s Monday. I have to come at work in a great mood. I open my eyes and tell myself: ‘Try to swallow all the balls by the end of the day. If you lose your strength, eat a little strawberry, but don’t you dare messing up with the little ghosts.’.On the screen glass I see myself again. Now I am 25 years old. I am not shaved and this makes me look scary. It might be because I am severe and speechless. In what way do I look like that silly kid of the video games? I don’t have the same reckless and carefree attitude. Some say that I have become mature in my way of thinking. I don’t answer, because I don’t know what to answer. I have run out of coins anyway

WE ARE ON AIR

2006-09-14T23:57:00.000-07:00

10.10.04

I gave an interview on Flash Radio this morning. I was asked to speak of the changes that have been in our city as regards accessibility and mobility of people who have a disability and move around the city. I tried not to be absolute. I admitted that the Paralympics left us with many positive changes but I stressed the fact that there are still a thousand things to be done.

My opinion is that, when you ask for 10 things, you might get 2 or 3 of them. When you ask for 1 thing, you just don’t get anything. This is why I never say that I’m completely satisfied with the changes. Anyway, I still believe that the conditions of living for us are not good but, above everything else, I ask for more because I don’t want to relax my vigilance. (By the way: the radio plays a song by Bob Dylan. Life is so pretty when you listen to Bob! I miss my harmonica!)

During the interview I was talking non-stop almost without taking a breath. I didn’t do this on purpose; to put it simply, when I talk on the radio or when I am on television I take care not to stop. Being silent while broadcasting, even for a second, seems to be a century and this puts me under stress. Anyway, if I interviewed myself I would like to slaughter myself. I suppose it’s really nerve-racking to have on the other end of the line someone who throws words like a massive gun. At times like that I wonder about many things and I remember all of you in the meantime. I really admire you guys for reading me. Blessed be your courage.

A STABBED WALK

2006-09-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

09.10.04

I was talking on the phone to my friend Giorgos a few hours ago. He told me that he was recently the victim of a clumsy attack by robbers who were holding knives and tried to steal his mobile phone and take his money. Giorgos was carrying neither technological assets nor money. Even if the robbers weren’t sought after by some guard (as it finally happened), they would have ended up with nothing in their pockets after this pointless attempt. My friend –as I do- counted carefully the Euros, and yet he would hesitate to sacrifice even his last coin had it been for his life.

As obvious, those who believe that they are in danger only if they are in New York or in Mexico are wrong. It’s now certain that all kinds of creeps are all over the place. Wherever you go, you will see two eyes giving you a bad look, as if they intend to bump you off just by looking at you. I wonder what I would do if I was the victim of a robbery on the street. All right, other than making my prayer I wouldn’t do anything else. I would not react at all; not just because I recognize my weakness but because I don’t give a damn about my fortune in cases like that. What do you want, boys? My mobile? My money? Take it all and spend it well. That’s all I needed, to be stabbed for the sake of Nokia!

In such cases, though, I wonder if there is some kind of self-defence that I could learn in order to defend myself. The more I think about it, the more impossible it seems to be. Whatever, after what happened to my friend, I understood one thing again: There are times when luck is on the side of those who don’t have it and not of those who have it.

PRODIGY 2004

2006-09-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

07.10.04

No, Prodigy are not my favourite band, neither do I worship Keith. I simply decided to go to the concert because I had heard various things about their concerts: thrashing and shows. The band started its tour with a visit to Athens. It was a good chance for me to see them perform live and if I were lucky enough I would experience the scenes of conflict with the authorities from a close distance.

I was on Lycabettus hill at the last minute and I wouldn’t manage to get up there if I didn’t show my ticket to the cops. It was the first time I saw so many cops standing there with their shields and I admit that it seemed strange to me. The atmosphere ‘smelled’ trouble and rumours had it for certain. The return of the Prodigy was expected to be eventful. So much the better for me.

Getting there, the first thing we saw was the crowd already concentrated just like the bulls before attacking their victims. Thousands of impatient creatures (including me as well) were ready to kick and be kicked. They weren’t mean but excited. I would justify almost anything if I hadn’t met that mystery ‘body-builder’ who gave a punch on my neck (luckily, I managed to avoid it) just because I asked him to move a little bit further.

He was standing right in front of me. He was huge and muscular. I was not at all interested in arguing with him. I asked him politely (and I repeated that) to move a little bit to the right because he was hiding the view from me. Without even looking at me, he made a noise that sounded like denying to do so: ‘no way – impossible – forget it’ and all that stuff. There was room for him to move to the right, as there was room for me to move to the left. I simply didn’t want to be far from the stage. Without uttering a word, I threw my hand over the bar that I had grabbed and forced him to move. It was then when he spurred like a madman and decided to hit me.

Having avoided the punch and after screaming (I didn’t swear at him, I just screamed), I gave him a very bad look. It was dark but we were close and we could see each other. I stood still for a while and then slipped to the left. I was in no mood of getting another punch in the face and, what’s more, I had started being really fed up with the concert. The cops sprinkled some sort of pepper on us and our noses were running …Some guys who were ready to cause trouble were coming down from the rocks. As soon as I saw them I changed my mind completely. Being in the eye of the storm did not seem to be a great idea any more. As for the guy who pretended to be a man’s man, I had already cursed him. I imagined I was stabbing his back or I was putting my fingers right into his eyes. And yet I didn’t loathe him to the end. For the first time in my life, somebody was really cruel with him. It will seem crazy to you but I had fun with that. Most of the times people treat me like a baby. I hate that. Someone offered to throw a punch in my face at last.

As for Keith, I found him literally disgusting. I had never seen a man sweating so much. Poor guy, he just wanted to kiss me. I hope that I will be more polite with him next time. I also hope that he will be clean and wearing perfume when I meet him again.

THE LITTLE SPOON (BEND THAT BLESSED THING!)

2006-09-14T12:41:00.000-07:00

06.10.04

I still can’t bend the little spoon. I have been trying to do that for two nights now without any result. I know what is to blame. It’s just a matter of concentration and faith. Things like that can happen. I’m pretty sure. I don’t defend the gurus with the metaphysical strengths. I defend my memories.

Many years ago, when I was still in high school, Uri Geller had visited Greece to give some seminars about the way of diffusing and making the most of human energy. He taught his audience how to ‘launch’ their brains; he wanted to prove that everything can be done when someone managed to direct his/her thoughts to anything that is desirable.

My mother did not miss out on this opportunity. She went and found him. She asked him to give me some of his energy for the purpose of helping me walk. Mister Geller accepted to do that for free. He said he wasn’t sure whether he would do it or not but he would try. Moreover, he asked my mother to bring a little spoon.
With the little spoon in her bag and a lot of optimism and faith in her heart, my mother grabbed my hand and took me with her (against my will) to meet a new magician. We had arranged for a meeting at his hotel (I think it was the Caravel), where his children welcomed us. They called their father and he came; he was a little skeptical. After introducing himself to me, he asked my mother to give him the little spoon to show me what he could do with it. He caressed the metal two or three times and it started melting right in front of our eyes. For some reason, this seemed to me absolutely normal, as if everybody who I knew until then could bend little spoons effortlessly.

I was laughing really loud. I almost made fun of him, especially when he touched his hand on my thighs (I was wearing shorts). The man was polite and patient. He kept touching me for a bit and then he stopped. I didn’t let him do much. I kept laughing like a retard until I said goodbye to him. My mother was really surprised. She found me ungrateful, since I could laugh at someone’s struggling, who just wanted to help me.

Upon coming home, we placed the bent (and signed by Uri Geller) little spoon in the cabinet. Today it’s still there and I doubt if I have ever held it in my hands, even just once. Whenever I look in the cabinet, I get the impression that the little spoon is bent more and more every day. It looks like a creature that is either alive or ready to breathe its last. I get the impression that this energy wasn’t lost. I don’t feel any difference in my body but I don’t know how I would be if I hadn’t gone to that meeting. I’ve been hearing people talk about little spoons all over Greece those last days and I wonder: ‘Do you think he helped me in the end?’.

INTRAVENOUS

2006-09-14T12:38:00.000-07:00

05.10.04

I saw things differently today. I had to have a magnetic scan (isn’t that how this method is called?) to finally discover what’s going on with my hand and I still suffer from so much pain despite the physical therapies and the treatment (the fall did not render the situation more difficult. I’m serious.) Due to the increased degree of cerebral palsy and of dystonia (See how well I’m writing? I’m something, huh?), I can’t stay still when I am lying down. Moreover, I suffer from a stupid phobia and I think that the ceiling will fall down on me (of course I’m not talking of the ceiling of my house, to which I’m used). This is why I was anaesthetized with an intravenous injection. I felt my hands numb and then I fell asleep. They had assured me that I would be in a state of intoxication. What intoxication and nonsense were they talking about? I slept deeply and I even had a dream (don’t ask me what, I don’t remember). That’s how I managed to stay still but what was more important is that I managed to have a rest, since lately I’ve been suffering from the syndrome of being a writer (that’s how I call it). I stay up almost all night and sleep only for three or fours hours in the morning. I wake up at around 7:45 to go to work. No problem. Everything runs smoothly (with or without luck). In case I have to repeat that scan (I’m speaking figuratively here, hopefully), I will ask for a little bit of that intravenous cocktail for home: ‘Once a druggy, never a druggy’.

THE FALL

2006-09-13T04:24:00.000-07:00

04.10.04

Coming back from the cinema, we ended up in Gazi (an area around central Athens). We crossed the pavement in front of the Technopolis (City of Art: it is a whole area where festivities, events and concerts etc. are organized). It is a narrow pavement with columns stuck at different points of it. My wheelchair was just fitting the paveted street and my falling apart was actually expected. I almost waited for it. I wasn’t taken by surprise when my wheelchair was turned to the sides and threw me on the street.

I ended up lying at the end of the street. Cars and motorcycles were passing right in front of me at extreme speed while I was still lying on the asphalt. A driver stopped to lift me up. Everything happened so fast; I didn’t quite understand if I was actually in danger and in what danger. I had no time to start swearing or accuse anybody of anything. I did that later. I first took care to bring Konstantina around, who was somehow shocked. Those who are familiar with the idea of the fall are not many.

Let’s face it. When you are on wheels, a lot of things can happen to you but it’s equally possible that absolutely nothing happens. I was lucky this time. I even enjoyed it. Life is exciting even when you fall. You look next to you and you see your face reflected on the rims of the cars. You become some sort of reptile. Anybody can walk on you or even spit in your face. You look like a paper bag or a run over cat, if you are seen from a distance. The lights of the cars point at your head, making the road sparkle. You take a last look on everything and then you are up. You wipe the dust from your clothes and you thank God you are still alive. I was lifted up because someone helped me. I wonder: would someone make it on one’s own if there was nobody there? But of course. Our city is much friendlier now to us. How dared I forget that?

ANOTHER MIRACLE

2006-09-13T04:06:00.000-07:00

01.10.04

I finally climbed on the Acropolis hill! What am I to say? I have started living like a tourist and I really like it. A bit of Paralympics, a bit of walking around Athens, all those things are the best for me to prolong the atmosphere of celebration. It’s a true celebration to me guys. I had never approached the Parthenon so much. Don’t think that it was easy. We had to cross the paved street of Pikionis with my front wheels remaining in the air (otherwise it would be impossible to go further). I enjoyed every single moment, even bumping on that paved street. It was the best way to have a natural lithotripsy! Who cares about gallstones?

I’ve preserved in my darkness the picture of a miracle that is enlightened by the sun itself. Nothing has left me feeling more free and independent. It’s the feeling that you have when you and time become one. Behind the ptychoses of the marbles there is only one moment to be found but you can’t place it in a specific time-span. There is no present, no past, no future. You are alone in front of an eternal secret. You want to swear that it will last forever. It’s not the greatness of the monument. It’s the voice and the breath of what remains up there. It is everything that traveled in time and kept company to history. It is not an object of love. It’s a symbol. It is a vibrant organism. You get the impression that, if you stand next to the pillars, you will listen to the Parthenon or to the Caryatids telling you stories about your country. Some times, you want to cry when you look at the colours that fade or at the faces of the human Gods who stay numb while time is passing. You want to swear again that you understood and heard every word they said with care.

There is no point in swearing; it is wise to remain silent when a small secret comes out only for you and through you.

ON LOVE AND TRAGEDY

2006-09-13T04:01:00.000-07:00

30.09.04

Something tells me that I will provoke reaction here. So much the better then. At first, I’m interested in being honest. This is why I should say that I’m not one of those whose love can be unrequited. As many other people, I am also a guy full of insecurities and this means that I hesitate to offer something without reward. On the other hand, every issue about which we are talking is a relevant one. If by the term love what we mean is good mood and offer to our neighbours, that’s fine with me. I can offer lots of love like that. But if we’re talking about love within the context of interpersonal relations and exchanges, i.e. the kind of love that comes out of daily contact and not a random meeting, then I get the impression that it’s too much to speak of love without any reward. If all this sounds strange to you, two things might be happening here: either you are very nice guys (and I am therefore very lucky to be friends with you) or you have really demystified the meaning of love. I agree with you on the fact that our acts of love set us free but I never want to pretend that I am a superman. I’d rather be loved. Am I to lie? Furthermore, if I’m loved, I must have done something good, which means that I can get away with a clear conscience.

As far as the feelings that I had for the tragic event are concerned, I say that I am sorry in general. I can’t feel more sorry for something that is not directly connected to my daily life. I think that those who abundantly express their condolences are hypocrites if the event is about people who are not known to them. Most of you will rush to judge my cruelty. But I can’t lie, not even in that case. I get the impression that my sadness and support are enough. What’s the point of saying that I’m devastated? How and why was I devastated? What do I take with me from the eternal absence of those kids? And, in the end, what’s the point of me mourning personally? Death is a part of life, whether wanting it or not. Thousands of people die every day and we don’t find out anything about them but, even when we do, we can’t do anything about it either.

In that case, the only thing we can demand is the betterment of the streets. Other than that, I get the feeling that the primary issue is not to render citizens stakeholders. This doesn’t have to do with the facts, as the war in Iraq, for instance. In such challenges of death, everybody has to express his/her opposition clearly, especially when they are responsible for the election of creeps like Bush. Nonetheless, when the unknown factor covers human mistakes, it gets to be even more difficult to find the guilty ones and say who is responsible and who isn’t, even when careless drivers are involved. Of course they are to blame but this is not the only thing that led to the tragedy. Anyway, my sadness does not correct the mistakes; neither does it turn back time. If I want to be honest, I should be sad as expected. Otherwise I look like a hypocrite.

YOU ARE OUR HOPE

2006-09-13T03:41:00.000-07:00

29.09.04

I will steal the subject from the Bear: I have hopes for as long as I live and I’ve got the look which I can always keep. What is hope? What is the human being (who hopes)?

So I had an argument with Teddy (a stupid argument, comparing it to those that I have had on this blog). So I say that, in my opinion, hope does not express anything else than man’s fear of everything that is going to happen or regarding everything that he would like (or not like) to happen.

So little boy Nicholas says to his auntie (he says nothing actually, I am just using the whole thing as an example): ‘I hope, my dear aunt, that City University of London will make an offer of admission to me’. What does little boy Nicholas say inside? He says: ‘Dear auntie, even the idea that I will be in Greece for another year in case they don’t make an offer of admission to me scares the hell out of me but, since I am an optimist, I am trying to think of the best outcome.’.

So the dreamer-mom of little boy Nicholas goes to the lottery-ticket shop and completes awkwardly a lottery-ticket of a game called LOTTO. When she comes home, she says to her kids and her hubby: ‘From next Wednesday onwards we’ll be millionaires and we will not know what to do with so much money’. What does mom say inside at this time, little boy Nicholas? She says: ‘Dear God, please wish that I have completed the right numbers so as to make my dreams come true finally, otherwise I will be dreaming for the rest of my life; and now that I come to think of it, this is what is going to happen again.’.

See what I mean? I do but the point is for you to see it.

YOUR JOYLESS LOVE IS LIKE A SPOON FULL OF SUGAR MIXED WITH A SPOON FULL OF COFFEE

Last night I slept late. You know why? Because I read Papillon’s last comment (on the eyes of hares and owls). It was impossible to stop laughing. I imagined him in front of his screen doing this and that gesture (I am too shy to describe which ones). I laughed like nuts. I burst out laughing alone in the dark so much that the dog woke up and came to see what happened. Oh Papillon, your comments sound so effortless and fun, man, when you address unknown people. There is a possibility to love you in the end (not to an extreme degree, don’t be scared!).

Serenity comes after the storm. Isn’t that what the people say? I’m sick of arguments and decided to cool down a little, just like a cool lettuce for example! The girl from the store next door came to bring me the frappe and I loved her too. Angels and demons coexist inside me (if mrs. Louka reads this, I am dead meat). You definitely won’t believe me, considering what you’ve read until now. And yet there are times when I catch myself being utterly romantic. How else could I feel tenderness for a girl who just places a glass of frappe on my desk? I adjust my thick lips (I used to play the trumpet in the Philharmonic Orchestra) to the end of my straw and let my mouth be filled with the love potion.

Nonsense. As if anybody is happy just because they bring you coffee. No matter how much money you spend, you can’t make the other happy just because you order coffee from the specific store where your waiter or your waitress works (unless of course each glass of iced coffee costs 100 Euros). No way. We are speaking of plastic glasses here. They are among those on which you can make sketches with a pen. At the end of the day I always do a sketch on my glass and then I throw it in the garbage cans. It’s a good start to learn how to stop taking myself seriously, at last.

WHATEVER I DID AND WHATEVER I DESTROYED IS A DIVE HIGH INTO A LEADEN SEA

2006-09-13T03:16:00.000-07:00

28.09.04

My mother just called to say that she saw a bathtub ad in a magazine. It’s not about any bathtub. It has equipment for 20 different kinds of water-massage and a sound-system to listen to the birds’ chirruping or to the sounds of the forest. It costs only 8,000 Euros! All right, we’ve already said that I count my little Euros with zeal but it will be long before I start counting 1,000-Euro notes. Oh, come on, mother, extraordinary things happen here and you are speaking of bubbles.

This is not a bad idea. I think of diving once anyway. It will be a dive to the top and not the opposite! On Thursday I will climb the Acropolis hill. The Athens municipality has placed there a special kind of ramp because of the Paralympics to ease the climbing of wheelchairs to the highest rock. I will definitely take advantage of this chance, since they said that they will take it (the pad) from the rock from next week. They found out, they say, that it spoils their image and ruins the beauty of the archaeological site.

I remembered Melina again, who said how ultimately happy she was every time that she climbed the Acropolis hill. Nonetheless, nobody (not even Melina) had thought of some way to make the area accessible to wheelchair users. As if culture is not for all or as if the guarantee of equal opportunities in participation has nothing to do with culture. I love Melina very much (people pass away but not the feelings we have for them. I have every right to use the Present tense here) but I want to denounce the wrongdoings of every single human being (maybe we should not bother only with the return of the Parthenon sculptures from the British Museum).

Likewise, I want to denounce the official governmental decision not to present the whole of the closing ceremony of the Games, because of the mourning for the children who died at the car accident. It is all right to mourn but we should do this by celebrating. I think that it is enough to keep schools closed on Wednesday.

WITH LOVE FROM MEXICO

2006-09-13T02:40:00.000-07:00

27.09.04

I came back to the office and some guys asked me if I have watched any Paralympic sport. All right, I have missed some but I spend my days at the stadium for the rest. I am very lucky that someone finally listens to what I want. I wanted to be present at a very special event. I wanted to be invited out of the blue to a celebration: not to a simple party, reception or dance. I wanted something more, anything in order to remember again how it is to mix with the crowd, to meet people who can understand you, even though they don’t speak your language. I will not forget the Mexican basketball players who I met in the tube. They were heading to the stadium to watch athletics. They forced me to utter my poor Spanish just to wish them good luck. Some of them were really pretty. I was tempted to follow them. It was impossible. They were running in front of me and thus passed on, as if they had placed special launching pads between their wheels. I stayed behind, hoping to meet them again in the stadium. When I came in through the gate, they were already gone.

I wish I had wings (no Red Bull here). I was holding a pin with Mexico’s flag, which was given to me as a gift by Patty (one of the athletes) and I was wondering whether this was the chance of my life, whether meeting those girls was not accidental. When I was eighteen, I read Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ and I have been in love with Mexico ever since. I have never loved a real picture. It is an idea that I have in my head and I don’t even know whether what I imagine about Mexico really exists. I can’t even describe what I have been imagining. The puzzle remains incomplete. Pictures mix with one another. And yet this is a reason to finally find myself in unknown beloved places. This is true love and in that case it is impossible to believe that the meeting with these girls was just casual.

ON THE RUN

2006-09-13T02:38:00.000-07:00

26.09.04

So, do you remember when I was writing about the boxes, the ones where I insert my desires in sizes? I don’t need them for now. I feel my body growing and my mind expanding. I haven’t pressed any magical buttons and I am not Alice in Wonderland in any case; not because it would be impossible to be Alice but because it is indeed impossible to be in a wonderland. For the moment I thought of flying to planet Happy (where the butterfly-Papillon is) but, in the end, I don’t really find it necessary. I wouldn’t do more than go to the O.A.C.A. again to drink up the bottle. The Games are going to be over in a few days and it seems that I will miss them so much. This is why I’m telling you: this is no time for boxes. I sat a lot on my desk today. I wrote much, some times without having anything special to say (like now, for example). I stand here and wait like the bloodhound (behind and not under the bar). The bell for the start will ring at any moment now and I have to be ready. I don’t know what I will be ready for but I will. Something changes inside me. I think that a life is ending and a new one is starting.

DECISION

2006-09-13T02:24:00.000-07:00

25.09.04

Today I watched basketball, tennis and athletics. I was sitting again in front of my television (counting the 10-Euro notes) and thought: ‘Since I am watching this anyway, why don’t I go see it there?’. As I wrote to you before, I had been there on the previous day as well (to the O.A.C.A.). I went crazy! You can’t even begin to think how great it is. It’s the most brilliant celebration where I’ve been in the last years. And what a great organization (at this point, I should really congratulate mrs. Angelopoulou on her achievements).

Able-bodied and disabled athletes coexist in one of the most beautiful spaces of Athens in a very harmonious way. To be precise, I didn’t see there any person with a disability. I only saw happy athletes and spectators walking around with their colourful wheelchairs. I saw the blind people see me in turn and the deaf people hear me. For the first time in my life, I fell proud of what I am.

I was gaping idly at the flashy clothes of the athletes, their super wheelchairs and their ultramodern dyed hair and I felt that I was among friends and brothers, like the wolf that comes back to his herd or like the Native American who finds his lost siblings. This might sound ultimately racist. But this is how I felt: not like when you belong to a gang but like when you discover that there is a million people like you who are neither miserable nor uneducated nor lazy. Nothing but. These are people who take care of their soul and body while they are capable of entertaining you at the same time. I was not in the least as significant as they were. Just trash! I was sorry to have missed so many years turning my back on all those people. I felt that the time to do something different had come. I made my decision. I will go for sports no matter what. Hell, it’s never too late. Never!

HERE IS WHAT ONE LEARNS FROM A BISCUIT

2006-09-13T01:46:00.000-07:00

24.09.04

Last night’s uttering doesn’t deal so much with what my readers expect from me. We have solved that issue and it would be silly to talk about it all the time. Nonetheless, on the grounds of some comments I remember behavioural patterns against which I have come up from time to time. I am not speaking of unknown people but of friends. This is not just a complaint. It is a discovery. Friends accept you but they try to change you, create you again and set you to their standards at the same time. Some time they do it consciously and some times not. I am sure I have tried to do this as well with some people, and first of all with my parents, wanting to force them to understand me, or with my friends, wanting to have them always close to me when I am doing great and demanding from them to feel equally moved as I am every time that I discover a great song or a great book, or even when I try to teach them not to renounce luxury or money.

Once I took them all to the bar ‘Galaxy’ of the ‘Hilton’ hotel. I wanted to show them how beautiful Athens is from up there. Kostas was the only one who agreed with me. All the others started complaining: ‘Why on earth did you bring us here? To pay so much for just one drink? There’s nothing to eat or what?’. We were unlucky, of course. We didn’t manage to sit on the terrace because of the crowd. We sat indoors on the couches and I confess that I didn’t like that either. Other than that, I enjoyed it as much as I could. I’m no wealthy man. I just dig luxuries and if I have to spend 20 Euros on souvlakia, drinks and ice cream at the corner shop next to my house, I’d rather spend that money for a decent mojito and admire the stunning view. Most people don’t agree with me. What am I to do? Fall down? Of course not. I’ll go to the kiosk (yes, I buy stuff from the kiosk as well, if there’s nothing better around), I’ll buy a bitter chocolate and I will eat the whole of it alone, since most people find dark chocolates unbelievably bitter. To be honest here, even my teddy bear’s biscuits seem fine to me (they are the ‘Rollers’, if I’m not wrong). All right, I should admit it, I’d rather have them filled with chocolate. If it’s bitter, so much the better.

A SUFFERING HEART THAT ASKS FOR EVERYTHING AND NOTHING AT THE SAME TIME

2006-09-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

23.09.04

I finally bought tickets for the Games. I will go watch swimming and athletics and who knows what more I’ll watch. Those tickets are open to any day, any time and any sport. You get in at mornings and you get out at nights. Other sports are performed at mornings and other at nights. I say this because extraordinary things happened in the two hours that passed. People come and people go. Phones ring like crazy. I am wrapped up in cables and swear like a trooper. It’s those old cables that are tangled up. I have to untangle them every now and then. If I don’t, I raise the receiver and the whole telephone at the same time. Then it falls down and the poor citizens wait on their receiver, screaming ‘hello, hellooooo!’. I am sure I look funny at such moments, if not stupid.

Today Nikos (a good pal) came here with his nose bleeding. He says he stumbled upon the stairs of the Prefecture and had to have stitches. Poor fellow, he looked really sweet in his state. Without doubt, pain makes people look sweeter. Those who know that can pretend that they don’t suffer and fool the others (Nikos would never do that). I tried that trick once or twice, hoping to get a biscuit or something, but I didn’t succeed. As soon as I understood that those who are always whining have no hope, I became cruel and decided to treat them with the same cruelty. The truth is that nobody has asked anything from me until now (I am not speaking of material things), at least not directly. People usually don’t tell me what they want but what they don’t want. They say: ‘Nicholas, don’t be like that, don’t believe this, don’t do that, don’t write like that, don’t hate, don’t love, don’t talk like this, don’t make mistakes, don’t be sad, don’t be weak.’. In the end, of course, they don’t forget to remind me that I must always be myself.

TO TASTE THE HEART OF A WOODEN DOLL (without ketchup or mustard)

2006-09-13T01:00:00.000-07:00

22.09.04

I am so stressed with the dissertation lately. I come back home and I don’t have time to work on it. It’s really hard for me to be devoted to writing and reading after having spent two hours with the physiotherapy. I think I have some neurosis or something. How else can I justify my disgust towards this kind of treatment, which is actually a passive one? Every time it finishes I’m almost sad. I am gripped with the desire to swallow all the chocolates of the world. I blame myself for this attitude of mine. I have no reason to feel so bad. And yet, I get the impression that I’m losing my time with those treatments. Somewhere in the back of my mind I read the answer to my question: Why do I hate all this? Because I actually am the biggest coward out there. I’ve never learned how to struggle.

When I wake up in the morning I make a programme in my mind; I am not speaking of the daily routine but of a lifetime programme. I pack my future in boxes, either small or big. This helps me not to lose it. Every box contains my desires and ambitions. As soon as I close the small box, I put it in a bigger one and so on. My goal is to concentrate all the boxes in the biggest I will find. The point is that there are always bigger boxes than the ones I have at hand. This game never ends. Some times I wonder: ‘What the hell am I doing with so many boxes?’. It is when I remember my trip to Moscow. I think I was three years old when I visited Russia. To be honest here, I remember next to nothing from that experience. The only thing proving that this trip did happen is the wooden dolls (the Babushkas) with the different sizes; the one is put in the other exactly like the boxes that I described.

There are even more days when I imagine that I am in a lush green garden. I am neither lying on the deckchair nor on the grass. I am a steak that is being baked on the barbecue. Every now and then, some guy comes and says to me: ‘You are not baked yet, boy. I will turn you from the other side so that you change colour a bit’! I see a fat woman right above me. She is ready to put her fork inside me and swallow me in one single gulp. In the meantime, her mouth is watering to her chin! I have one last wish. If she is to eat me, may she eat me as I am. Without ketchup or mustard.

SOMETHING’S UP. PEOPLE HAVE SOMETHING TO KEEP THEM BUSY

2006-09-13T00:42:00.000-07:00

21.09.04

Everything you write, Konstantina, gets me thinking about the same things for years and years. I am sitting in front of my television like a monkey and I am acting like one, both out of joy and out of embarrassment. I want to celebrate but something is holding me. I see our girls (and what great girls!) winning the medals of running (without vision) and I am kind of jealous, because I didn’t manage to break on through to the other side, i.e. become an athlete and be rewarded with distinction, and thus become one with those people who celebrate. All of them together as well as separately.

I get the impression that our athletes have fun even without the spectators, precisely because the bet for the best scores is something that has to do with them and only them. Of course it is important to support athletes. Of course we have to move our legs or our wheelchairs and rush to the stadiums. But those people don’t really need us. This is what I think, at least. By the same token, they don’t need this institution in order to make a name for themselves. It would be much different to watch only the Paralympic Games. In my opinion, they are much more interesting than the other Olympics and they involve the element of competition more directly than them. On the other hand, if they are organized with much less care than the Olympics, they actually indicate the differences much more and they don’t bridge the gap between able-bodied athletes and athletes with a disability.

On a smaller scale, they could represent the 3rd December institution, which is the World Day for people with a disability. Shall I tell you my opinion? Nothing is going to change for as long as days like this one exist. We stab ourselves in our own backs by accepting celebrations and feasts that are actually organized by the majority of people so as to show our differences with them and not our similarities. Moreover, those who organize such celebrations for us can sleep soundly and say: ‘we did this feast for them, we admired their psychological strength, we told them a fairy tale so as not to make them feel neglected. After the 4th of December, to hell with the goddamn disabled ones!’.

This is what will happen with the Paralympics. As soon as the last lights are turned off, we will all be forgotten. As for me, I couldn’t care less. I can play it more than double and I don’t feel disabled, although I am. But what will happen with those who belong in the same ‘category’ as I do? Those who have to fight for a decent life, who definitely have to find a job or study without any help whatsoever? Oh my, they are always condemned to stay indoors and suffer. How will the journalists have issues for the news otherwise?

CARRYING A BOMB-BAG AND PLAYING TRUANT

2006-09-13T00:01:00.000-07:00

17.09.04

I am wasted today. I bent down to tie my shoelaces and my blood was up. Actually, it was down, since I was sitting almost upside down. Before I got up, I wished that the phone would ring. If only someone told me that I wouldn’t have to go to work. I imagined that something terrible could have happened; so terrible, in fact, that we would all be sent back home. As if! To say the truth, we would not have to mourn for casualties. A bad joke would do the work, like one of those done at my school by some troublemakers constantly, when I had started high school. Every time we had to sit an exam in Italian, somebody called and warned us against a bomb inside the building – allegedly.

It was great fun, really. Nobody believed those guys but the teachers had to take us away from them. If there was even the slightest possibility of carrying out those threats, then everybody would be responsible from their sides, in case they had decided to continue the class in spite of the events. They set a whole venture. They called the cops with their trained dogs. They were looking for about an hour and then they were telling us it was a joke or something. In the meantime, we had already lost more than one hour of classes. Things like that were keeping us busy at least twice a month. Ever since, I’ve got the habit of saying this every time that I find things hard: ‘I’ll call and send a warning against a bomb and everything will be alright’. Of course I’ve never done that, neither do I intend to. I have to make this clear. If something wrong happens, I’m the one who is going to be accused at work of having done it just because I dare to write that crap.

LONDON CALLING

I just came back from a great party with great music. We were upstairs, sitting on the terrace and listening to Bob Marley, the Beatles and the Clash, while watching at the same time some videos from their concerts. You have the chance to listen to such good music at parties on very rare occasions in the latest years. This was a very special occasion and called for the good music.
I wonder why I don’t go to bed, since I’m so sleepy (I know, -sleepy- is the right spelling and not –slippy- but, if you ask me, I think that –slippy- looks nicer) that I can’t really see in front of my eyes. I want so much to describe those moments, and yet it seems to me a little funny at the same time. I didn’t have a unique experience anyway, I just had a great time and this is what matters. I leave you now with two songs from the Clash, songs that are still inside my head.

WHEN YOU WENT TO SCHOOL TOGETHER

2006-09-12T02:44:00.000-07:00

14.09.04

Poor kids, school started. The sprinkling of holy water is over and they will be getting their books from today. They bought their backpacks weeks before (those who won’t use last year’s backpack). School stuff is expensive, dear all, even if the ‘Jumbo’ stores advertise the opposite. They still sell bags with Phoivos and Athena; so as not to forget them.

Every year there are tons of ads with Paxos and Niki and every other brand of backpacks at this time. They all have stamps of painted creatures that are real monsters! We didn’t have such crap. Only some turtle-ninjas and only the good ones with the round eyes, not like those of the next generation (by the way, did anybody notice that difference?). The new ones are mean and wild. They go along with Yu Gee O and the mean Pokemons. Only Pikatsu is a sweetheart.

Nonetheless, the kids buy those horrible backpacks passionately. I remember I had Niels Holgerson on my first one. What a cool guy Niels was, who had the company of Akka the goose. Anyway, every time I see those ads I become mean. I think: ‘Time for school, my dear heroes. Go through this torture like we all did. I’ll be coming home and posting messages on my weblog and you’ll be doing your homework for the next day.’.

TO THE TEDDY BEAR WITH LOVE

My teddy bear reminded me of extraordinary things. First of all, my primary school’s library, which had a ton of comic besides children’s books. Issues of Asterix and Lucky Luke were in and out of the school backpacks in nanoseconds. I couldn’t figure out how it was possible to read those stories with the teachers’ consent, while magazines like ‘Mickey Mouse’ were forbidden at my house. This was precisely the issue here. I was not old enough to separate true claims to trash from true claims to greatness. They were all the same to me. Until I met Lucky Luke, this poor and lonesome cowboy.

I borrowed five issues at a time and, since I always was vain and too proud of myself, reading was not enough for me. I wanted to sketch Lucky on my own and thus make my own stories. Only one schoolmate dared to compete with me. Until I die, I will believe that my cowboy was the best. My desk as covered in sketches of him made with pencil. This is why I was poor at spelling or dumb at mathematics. I didn’t pay much attention to any of my courses. While the teachers were talking, I was sketching and if somebody happened to ask me something I used to catch the last phrase and invent an answer right then and there. I kept doing this until university, where nobody asks you who you are, what you do or why you are not paying attention. The course has to be really fantastic in order not to be distracted.

In fact, it has to be as fantastic as walking through landscapes of the Wild Wild West, rambling in camps of Native Americans or hunting the Daltons outside the prison. There was noone to tell me that Lucky Luke was also a cop. He was the good guy of the West, always wanting to impose the law, punish the bad guys and contribute to the extermination of Native Americans; he did all this while on the back of poor Dolly (there have been disagreements regarding Dolly’s gender, mare or horse). True, nobody ever explained to me why I shouldn’t admire so much that cowboy with the dirty (wash-‘n’-wear or just wear) blue jeans. What could I do? I loved him like crazy. I asked my mother to buy all the issues for me as a present for my birthday. I even got a gun with plastic bullets. I was pointing at the whole house; I even told my sister to stand on the wall. She was eating a little piece of chocolate and I wanted to break it in two exactly as Lucky was breaking the bottles of beer. I finally ‘shot’ her on Adam’s apple and cut her breath for a few seconds. Not too bad. (Dearest Jenny, I wonder if you remember that: or am I making this up?)

I had a second gun too, the one with the caps that we used to blow on Resurrection and Carnival. I was fed up with it soon. I crawled on the balcony. When nobody was looking at me, I threw it down from the 6th floor and saw it breaking into a thousand pieces. I hadn’t even thought that this fake gun could really kill if it fell on somebody’s head. Luckily there was noone down there and we didn’t mourn for casualties. This was unbelievable to my eyes: an iron thing turn to dust. For some strange reason, the idols died at the same time. No more gun, no more Lucky Luke, no nothing. Even my magazines disappeared as if by magic. I lent them all to my schoolmates and they never returned them to me. This was a good lesson to take care with those who I trust my favourite things. I believed I would never lend anything to I had a second gun too, the one with the caps that we used to blow on Resurrection and Carnival. I was fed up with it soon. I crawled on the balcony. When nobody was looking at me, I threw it down from the 6th floor and saw it breaking into a thousand pieces. I hadn’t even thought that this fake gun could really kill if it fell on somebody’s head. Luckily there was noone down there and we didn’t mourn for casualties. This was unbelievable to my eyes: an iron thing turn to dust. For some strange reason, the idols died at the same time. No more gun, no more Lucky Luke, no nothing. Even my magazines disappeared as if by magic. I lent them all to my schoolmates and they never returned them to me. This was a good lesson to take care with those who I trust my favourite things. I believed I would never lend anything to anyone again and it never even crossed my mind that I could be holding others’ stuff at my house. And yet I lend almost everything, including things that belong to them and I happen to possess and preserve them as if they belong to me.

WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING?

2006-09-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

13.09.04

Another week begins under the best circumstances. A lot of work (for my dissertation, I mean; not for any other reason). We have an employee with hearing problems at the enterprise. She can’t hear absolutely anything and when she decides to talk she just screams. Those who know her well can understand her. Those who don’t have to try very hard; in fact, so hard, that most of the times they just prefer to lift their arm for a hasty gesture (a greeting one, of course) and nothing more.

Today I laughed hard. I saw her get in the director’s office (she doesn’t come often, since she works for another authority). She was trying to talk to her for long and the director was screaming so loud as if the other one would stop being deaf, as if the problem was the volume of her voice. I enjoyed that scene wholeheartedly. I remembered some times when people yelled at me as if I was deaf, let alone being possibly mentally retarded: ‘HOW ARE YOU DOING, LITTLE NICHOLAS? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?’. ‘I’m all right, damnit, but I’m not deaf. I just can’t walk like you!)

A SLIGHT CRASH, WITHOUT THE BOSS. LET THE DOGS RUN !

2006-09-12T01:57:00.000-07:00

13.09.04

The bus driver who carries the citizens from the Doukissis Plakentias tube station violated a Stop sign. I don’t know exactly what happened. When I came at work, I heard of some car crash. Everybody was kind of upset, apart from me, because I came at work bleary-eyed. That’s how I am. I don’t worry about anything at mornings. If I haven’t had one or two sips from my coffee, so much the worse. So I order a good frappé (instant ice coffee of Greek origin I drink ice coffee throughout the year) and I moaned with pleasure, thinking that there are people who drive worse than I do, even if they are considered professionals.

There are no bosses at work today. Neither the President (please look at the capital ‘P’ carefully!) nor the director are here. Although this doesn’t affect my mandatory duties at all and my bosses don’t insult me, don’t hit me and don’t whip me, I feel much better when I think that I can be my own boss even just for one day. The truth is that I would love to do something crazy. I wonder what would happen if I unleashed my dog in the office. I bet everybody would run away and would leave us alone, me and my pet. I’d like to see that. I laugh at those who are afraid of dogs. I used to believe that those who are afraid of a dog are narrow-minded beyond doubt. But with time I decided to cool down a bit and admitted (to myself of course, who else?) that I’m afraid of cats. I skipped the theory of ‘narrow-mindedness’ right on the spot, since it wasn’t in my interest.

DOG DAYS

2006-09-12T01:33:00.000-07:00

12.09.04

When I was old enough and while still at school, I had hired a cow as a bodyguard. She was not a real cow. She was Simba, a fat stray dog I had picked from the street. She came with me wherever I walked (without a lead) and knew how to take care of me even better than a paid companion. She barked on the crossroads to make cars stop until I could pass (back then I used to drive a tricycle that functioned on batteries). When I went to parties and classes she was waiting for me to come back and once, when I collapsed on the road, she tried to lift me up. Some times she couldn’t be bothered to follow me. I had to bribe her. I was buying her a bag of chips and everything was all right. One day, some lady overtook me with her car. She saw me feeding the dog and stopped to talk to me: ‘Good for you, my dear boy. God will never forget what you’re doing!’. ‘He already has’, I replied, but she gave me no answer. She was already too far. Now I don’t know if I would utter the same words; not out of fear of God (what God?) but because I know that I have no reason to feel neither forgotten nor wronged (I write this now that I am doing fine.).

The one who should feel wronged is Simba. Not only was she not taking the care that she deserved but she was unlucky enough to get sick too. She passed away (I don’t even want to use the word ‘died’) because of Kalazar while she was already exhausted. All the tenants of the block (she had become the neighbourhood’s dog) raised money for euthanasia. I asked to be present on the day of her ‘execution’. My parents didn’t allow me to be there. They did it one day while I was at school. They buried her at a cemetery for dogs afterwards.

For some strange reason, I accepted all this with great patience. Four years had to pass before I could say goodbye to her the way I wanted. That was when I cried for the first time. This seemed to be really strange to me. Every time I was taking a walk I got the impression that I was hearing her little feet’s steps. I used to turn to look, because I was used to doing that, forgetting that my cow was not there. I was a poor and lonesome cowboy. It was enough for me to be a cowboy.

THE QUIZ OF THE DAY

2006-09-12T01:17:00.000-07:00

08.09.04

I would like to describe you an event and I expect your comment afterwards. Last week, when I went to sit the test for the driver’s licence, my colleague Angeliki told me: ‘Drive carefully. Look at your mirror and don’t pull the handbrakes all the time.’. I replied: ‘I’ll drive carefully and I won’t be pulling the handbrakes all the time, since I can’t leave my hands anyway, neither from the accelerator nor from the wheel.’. This answer took Angeliki by surprise, who then said: ‘You are so dull. Normally, you should have laughed, because nobody pulls the handbrakes at the time of the test but you are probably stuck on the problem.’.

Regardless of the truth of that idea, I think it’s absolutely natural to think directly of the practical problems of a procedure, even if the possibility of exceeding the limits is referred to as a joke. It’s like saying to a fat woman: ‘Take care not to pass through the bars, because you’ll fall from the balcony.’. What will she reply? ‘Are you kidding me? I can’t even pass from the door.’. That’s what she’ll say and she won’t be dull. Anyway, I passed the test without pulling the handbrakes all the time.

COME ON, BABY, LIGHT MY FIRE

2006-09-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

06.09.04

I don’t know why but today I am very tense and nervous. I am not angry with anyone. I just want to be busy all the time. Luckily, I have a lot of things to do. I will start physiotherapies in the afternoon too. If it wasn’t for my hand, I would hate the whole of it. I like that these exercises are not going to look like those that I had to do in the past. Since it’s something different, I will undergo the procedure with much more willingness. Moreover, I feel hot-blooded. I get the impression that I can light a fire with every breath I take. I am stressed enough over the graduate course I currently attend but this is a creative form of stress. I find no reason to sleep a lot those days. I will take advantage of that in order to be really productive. It’s inspiration time again. Someone turned on suddenly the light of my mind. Everything is glowing inside me.

I’ve got a freak taking care of my roses

2006-09-12T00:49:00.000-07:00

05.09.04

There are tons of pictures inside my head. I want to record some of them. Let’s start with the freak and the roses. There is a beast in front of my window. A human beast. It’s a fat creature, dark-skinned, with an unshaved face and blond, dyed hair (the roots are black because the colour has faded. He has a name; it’s George. He is wearing a dirty white T-shirt and lets his arms just hang heavy while he is shoveling the ground and covers it with compost. My mother asked him to take care of our roses, with some money and a broken-down black-and-white (or white-and-black) television.

George had nowhere to go. His parish undertook the building of a little house close to the church. He refused to accept it (in the beginning, at least). He regretted that afterwards and said ‘all right’. He pronounced this ‘all right’ in broken Greek, because he is not from our country. He was working for a long time at the building site opposite our house. He woke up in the middle of the night and was stumbling on the cement he was carrying. Once he lost his balance and fell. The noise he made was so terrible that my father jumped up from the couch half-asleep and went to see what happened.

‘Stop working at night. You’ll kill yourself.’, said my dad. He got no answer. He also said that he would call the police if George did not stop working. My dad had taken up the surveillance of the building site and he would be in trouble (and so would the contractor himself), if any worker was injured while working in hours that work was not allowed on the site. And yet George would stop at nothing. ‘Do whatever you want’, he said to my dad and continued to carry the cement. George was not just a freak. He was a freak with psychological problems. The neighbours had assured us of that. He had the relevant papers in his pocket.

From a far distance, he looked like a middle-aged housewife. From a close distance, he looked like a detainee. His long blond hair was almost flashing like neon lights in the dark night. At dawn you could understand that he was no other than the ‘crazy’ George. This was not his real name. People from the neighbourhood had named him as thus, just as they name the strays that go around their houses and beg for a little bone. If they’re lucky, they get what they want and then they disappear for days or months, until they come back again. That’s how George had come back. He was standing outside my window shoveling the ground without even understanding that I was watching him. I looked at him like a jerk. He seemed to be awfully different from the whole scene. I looked at him once again and thought, ‘Man, I’ve got a freak taking care of my roses’.

LET’S ALL GO TO A BEACH. A REAL VIDEOGAME.

2006-09-12T00:44:00.000-07:00

02.09.04

There is still something I haven’t told you. When I went to the country cottage to celebrate Christina’s birthday and after having had an almighty fight with my parents who wanted to sit over my head until all my friends came there, I decided to do a really dirty trick; out of reaction maybe, out of madness maybe, but more out of a dire need. I wasn’t alone on that one. I was with Sophocles and we decided to go to the beach and walk a distance of 200 metres on foot. It doesn’t sound difficult at all. And yet it was a real videogame for me (not for Sophocles, though):

1st stage:

To get out of the house, climb the stairs without holding on to any handrail, slowly so as not to break the branch of the tree that was used as a prop, always turning to the right in order not to fall in the gap to the left. I managed to do all this only in one way. I climbed the stairs on both hands and feet. Afterwards, I sort of slipped and grabbed the walking device. Standing on my feet, I walked through the garden amidst stones and grass that literally immobilized the device’s wheels. I was already bathed in sweat and fully ready to go on to the next stage.

2nd stage:

We climb another six stairs, stuck on the wall next to us (like Spiderman), while we take care not to walk on the fallen figs. Having crushed only one fig under the sole of my shoe, we cross the narrow side street covered in stones, passing through rusty barbed wires and plants that touch our heads. Refusing to accept the offers of help from neighbours, we reach the exit that leads to the large street down.

3rd stage:

Holding the back part of my walking device from the other side in order to use it as a protective barrier for the downhill slope, with the fig always stuck under my shoe, I start walking down. Sophocles is in front of me and claps his hands to encourage me. I am full in sweats and my glasses slip from my nose. Since we have just got out of the house, this is only the beginning.

4th stage:

Walking always by the end of the street so as to avoid being run over by the cars and stopping often to have some rest, we continue to head off in order to pass the next street and cross it and thus reach the second downhill slope that leads to the beach. Throughout this entire journey, people look at us as if we’re aliens. Their intentions are pure. They offer us help all the time and we refuse to take it. In fact, we look like lunatics. A guy with crooked legs who walks like a turtle (literally), pulling an iron thing in front of him and another madman who stumbles upon everything, claps his hands and yells ‘let’s go / pick it up’ and so on.

5th stage:

Having reached the second downhill slope, we have to go down the large stairs that lead to the beach! The slope is now much larger but, thanks to my luck, there are barbed wires on my right side again, which I can grab while making sidesteps. I am worn out but the view of the sea gives me unbelievable strength. Every now and then I take a look behind to see the distance that I’ve covered. Reaching the end of the cement, where the sand begins, I see that there is a difference in height from the ground. I have to make a big jump so as to put my foot on the ground. I decide to hang from the barbed wire and slowly lower my body. Sophocles is standing right in front of me and tries to hold me as I stretch out and touch the ground softly. I feel my hands being drawn out like the hands of the policeman Sainis. I finally step on the sand. Sophocles, who was carrying my walking device all this time on my behalf, places it in front of me. I stand still, looking at the sea like Christopher Colombus who has just discovered America.

6th stage:

I lift my walking device, since it’s impossible to walk around with it on the sand. With my mouth dry and my heart missing a beat, I see the waves approaching me. Or am I the one to be approaching them? The people are looking at us in curiosity again. And yet I couldn’t care less. I love them all, because, regardless of what they believe for me, I’m sure that I will be looking to their eyes neither miserable nor tired. I’ve done something that seemed to be impossible. I can finally rest my arse on the sand, just a few metres away from the sea, and let out this cry of relief or triumph that I had kept inside for an hour. This was how much time we needed to cover the distance of the 200 metres that separated us from the sea. We did it.

Game Over!

Mission accomplished!

All accounted for after that whole dirty trick was: a great accomplishment, my left shoulder almost fallen apart and the pain reaching my nape. The doctor diagnosed some kind of tendon problem because of the burden on the shoulder. The problem existed a long time ago when I was moving my wheelchair alone, walking on the tube’s corridors and crossing the Syntagma square and then Stadiou street in order to go to the university buildings where I took my courses. Those days I can’t sleep because of the pain; plus I find no place to suit me. I barely use the walking device because it is a burden to my whole bad condition and intensifies my pain. I will start psysiotherapy again with special exercises in the coming week.
I didn’t say anything to my parents those days about the adventure I just told you. Later, a full of pride Nicholas confessed everything. Do you know what their answer was? ‘You are stupid, because you exhaust your body and worsen your situation. If you hurt, so much the better.’. They are neither wrong nor right. If only they knew how satisfied I feel when I prove to myself that I am capable of living the way I want. I wanted to go to the sea and I did it. I didn’t think of the consequences and this might make me seem to be immature to your eyes but noone of you can offer me any greater pleasure than whenever I am beyond myself. Bring me the gold (medal) and we’ll see to it. I swear. I wasn’t doped at all.

GHOSTS

2006-09-12T00:40:00.000-07:00

31.08.04

I have nothing special to add. There were shadows behind me following me today. No, this is not some poetic line. Some times I think that there is someone beside me. And yet there’s nobody. This doesn’t happen often. If it did, I could say that I need a doctor. Nonetheless, with things like that I remembered the old times when I wanted to believe that those who pass away are never really lost. I don’t know if it was good from my side to have posted this message. I’m afraid that you’ll think I am a lunatic or something. But no. It has been long since I last watched ‘The 6th Sense’.

THE NEXT DAYS

2006-09-12T00:27:00.000-07:00

30.08.04

I am sitting in my office again and it doesn’t seem to me strange at all that I have to be here. It’s as if I pressed a button of automatic adjustment to daily life. The difference is that now I feel much more proud of myself. Before the holidays, I thought that it was pointless to work at an office just picking up phonecalls or completing application forms. My duties haven’t changed and my work hasn’t become more exciting. What has changed is that I am less ashamed of myself. How can I put this? I don’t feel like the laziest guy on earth, precisely because I now know how it is to wake up at 12 and not at 7:30, how it is not to answer the phonecalls if you don’t want to, how it is to be able to work on your dissertation for your degree in the mornings, how it is to spread your papers all over the room, the one on the other, and how it is to write a few little stories while listening again and again to the ‘Stupid Dream’ of the ‘Porcupine Tree’.

There is no doubt. I am a working young man, even if I do nothing great. If I weren’t, what I would earn is just a lot of boredom along with my freedom. Moreover, I would find zillions of causes to fight with my parents. Things are different now. Time passes away from the house in such a way that at the end of the day I feel really happy. Under better circumstances I would love my job so much, that I would not even want to come back home. There are people who can’t imagine themselves far away from their working space. I hope that will happen to me too. In fact, this is the easiest way to make easy money. In my opinion, easy money is not won on the basis of laziness or cheating but on the basis of hard work on what you love. When you love your work, each of its procedures seems to be as simple as a toy.

If I take the decisions I made during the holidays into consideration, then I can certainly hope for a more exciting future. And yet I will not say anything to anybody. I will be making my plans silently, until I finally have the expected results. I’m not precautionary or something; I have simply understood that the only thing which counts is being committed to oneself. Anybody else is able to express his or her opinion upon hearing our promise but is unable (and wouldn’t have to) to help us or deter us from making our wishes come true.

It might seem irrelevant to you but the atmosphere of the Olympic Games has deeply influenced the way I think of my obligations towards life in general. In a few words, it seems exciting to live like a champion. I think that I am already too old for sports, let alone championships. Nonetheless I can always be taught what it means to fight not for the medal or the flag but much more for self-reward and self-verification.

Well, I am at home now and read those postings again. The unclear things that come out from time to time in those postings are directly related to how many times the phone rings at the time I was posting. While I was writing the present text, I was quite lucky. It rang only 8 times. How can I not write crap if I am interrupted every two minutes? Show some understanding please.

AND DANCING GOES ON

Guys, I’m back and I’m going to work again tomorrow. I am sorry for the end of the Olympics. The flame was put out but, in my opinion, it should have been put out at the end of the Paralympics. Consequently, this closing ceremony should have taken place a month from now, when the Paralympics would be over as well. We’ll have to decide whether we talk of equal handling of things (and institutions) or admit that the world is divided in a thousand pieces.

This is all for now. I’m going to get some sleep. I will wake up early tomorrow morning. Somebody, please put me in a jar and let me sleep. Wake me up again in the year 2008.

SLIGHT OVERTHROW

2006-09-11T23:48:00.000-07:00

24.08.04

I called at work this morning with my tail between my legs (how do dogs that have their tails between their legs call, I wonder?), asking about the rest of my licence. Of course I should know when I come back but things got a little bit confused when they decided to fire some of us out of the blue. The enterprise had to remain closed or almost closed for a long time.

To my great surprise, I was told that I wouldn’t have to go to work on Thursday, as I thought, but on Monday. So I decided to sell my tickets for athletics and go meet my brother Makis, who owns a tourism enterprise (I don’t like that word but how can I say it otherwise?) in Skopelos and in Alonissos. I post the link for anyone who might be interested.
I will watch the Canoe/Kayak Games tomorrow and I will thus finish participating in the Olympic Games of 2004 as a spectator.

WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW. Summertime and the living makes my head ache.

2006-09-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

08.08.04

I would like to clarify a few things regarding the history of the Native Australians, so as to make sure that I’m not writing nonsense. It is obvious that the fight about land and submission started in the previous centuries with the landing and attacks of the English people – and not only of them. The part of the exhibition that I visited dealt simply with the modern history of Native Australians and with fact that determined (and still do) their fortune until recently.

I came back from our country cottage (which is located at Daskaleio, outside Keratea), where I had a great time with friends. Christina (who had her birthday) did not have such a good time. She is probably going through some phase of inner conflict; but I’m not doing better either. Everything that happened last week, as I described it here, has turned me upside down regarding the way I think about my own self when I read again what I have posted. I don’t feel like regretting. I just wonder if I have really found the balance that I believed to have found. It’s like giving up with every single thing that I have accomplished. It’s as if all the pictures I used to describe faces and facts have been fading. I need new pictures in order to maintain again points of reference to who I am and to what I want to do.

Dada, your effort to understand me is enough reason to thank you. I don’t know if you are really trying to do this or if I’m the one who has that impression. Something tells me that you don’t forget what it is to be 25 years old and want to take just one sip and thus drink the whole world. (Damn, I’m crying again. I wish I could really cry. And yet my tears are stuck on the ends of my eyes and somehow refuse to come out.)

I want to believe that everything is all right. I want to close my eyes for a while and not allow the present to remind me who I am and where. I want to leave the keyboard, having put a final end to this whole monologue. I feel that you are tired and confused because of me. I want to be polite and yet I am abrupt.
At such moments I understand why Melina hated summers. At such moment I envy my dog who can live without expecting anything in return (just a plate of dog’s food and a little bit of water).

Did I persuade you that I had great fun in the weekend? I didn’t persuade myself. And yet I did have great fun, guys. Maybe my return home is to blame, right?

PTYCHOSES-PSYCHOSES

2006-09-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

07.08.04

I kept everything at a distance for many long hours, precisely because I don’t like being apologetic in the diary and because I’m sick of giving explanations for my behaviour. I would not like to continue with this same old song, which makes me analyze motives and causes to a disgusting degree. I don’t wait for anyone of you to understand me and I definitely don’t demand that. If you have a disability similar to mine or even different, this means absolutely nothing to me as regards our compatibility or difference, both mine from yours as well as yours from mine. I look at all of you as human beings and not as disabled creatures.

Moreover, I am telling you now that if something happens to the driver of that train, who I cursed, I don’t intend to celebrate it with a cake. I will eat it all by myself and you’ll never even know. (You couldn’t care less, I know. I’m just saying that so that you can appreciate a little bit more my willingness to share with you everything that happens to me and understand that it is much easier to appear as the cool and nice Nicholas than publicly admit my negative features. I often think that some of you forget that.).

Today my sister Jenny, our friend Dimosthenes and I visited an exhibition at the Benaki Museum, entitled ‘Ptychoses’. We had the chance to see a variety of dresses from the classical antiquity to this day. You might think that no ‘real’ man would have any reason to visit an exhibition like that. In that case, you couldn’t be more wrong. At an exhibition under this title (‘Ptychoses’), everybody can see how vibrant every single piece of cloth can be, as this is ‘revealed’ with the ingenuity of experienced designers and tailors. We are talking about the real thing here, no kidding.

On the second floor of the museum, we visited an exhibition about the Native Australians, against whom the whites fought about fifty years ago in order to make them desert their own cultural identity and thus become submissive to the whites’ superiority. I don’t know much about history. This is why I bought the relevant booklet (actually it was Dimosthenes who paid for it, since I only had 5 Euros in my pocket) from the museum’s store.

On the last floor we saw a photography exhibition from both Greek and foreign photographers; their subject was to depict Greece from antiquity (monuments etc.) to our times (photographs of the cities and their daily life). The visit to the museum was great as a whole. No misery, no patchwork. I forgot myself and thought that I was somewhere abroad.

For your information: I will not post anything this weekend. I’ll go celebrate Christina’s birthday at our country cottage. We’ll be together from Monday onwards.

I WILL MAKE IT, YOU PIGS, EVEN IF ONLY FOR YOUR STUBBORNNESS

2006-09-11T04:01:00.000-07:00

04.08.04

Today my life was in danger again. I entered again the new subway carriages, which have no ramps by the way, and the driver literally stuck me between the sliding doors and was ready to head off twice, first when I was getting in and then when I was getting out. I went to talk to him and he pretended that he didn’t listen. He was looking elsewhere purposefully and then he vanished into thin air.

They aren’t interested in our lives, my friends. They really don’t give a damn about us. They couldn’t care less if we die accidentally on the rails of some ultra-modern train. So much the better for them. They think that we are something like dogs but they forget that dogs can also bite and land deadly blows if needed. I hate all those wankers (I had sworn that I wouldn’t have a foul mouth on the weblog but it’s impossible) and I wish them to die today, if possible.

I would like to say more on that but I’m afraid I will turn into some other kind of human being and I don’t want to. So I let you read some lyrics from the Katsimiha brothers; although I don’t like those two very much, I have to admit that the following lyrics are just great (is it possible that they didn’t write them?).

The following ‘song’ is wholeheartedly dedicated to those who insist on treating us like melons (poor melons, what are you to blame?)

Red moon, seas of tequila,
Leaves thrown on the corner here,
Red moon, red port,
What have you done to me, what have you done to me.

I saw many people who lived for fun,
I also saw others who took it seriously,
And they were in trouble, and they remain in serious trouble,
And they took the rap.

Dressed in black, friends smoke
Silently, and dream of going away in the night.
The friends who found nothing to love,
Who believe in nothing, nobody, nowhere in sight.
There are a thousand ways to go crazy,
There are as many ways as well to remain patient,
But it’s too late for me to go crazy,
And it’s even later to remain patient.

I’ll stay here and I’ll exist as I can,
And I’ll make it, you pigs, even if only for your stubbornness.
I’ll wait for other days.
I’ll wait for other days.
I’ll wait for other days.

WHAT AN EXPENSIVE HOBBY DISABILITY IS

2006-09-11T03:54:00.000-07:00

03.08.04

My car is not officially lisenced for a disabled user. We have one like that but my parents drive it for the last 10 years – that is way before I learn how to drive. Consequently, it is neither automatic nor does it have accelerator and brakes at hand. We could declassify it and declare my car as, the one, officially lisenced for a disabled user but I didn’t want my first car to be a huge one. I wanted a small car so as to experiment until I could say that I am cool with driving. So would it seem smart to exercise the right of owning such a car and buy a Yaris? I don’t think so. Let’s just say that I will do this with my next car, which will be a polymorphous one like the Renault Scenic or the Renault Megane. Now here are the most important reasons: I will buy a car on the condition that my parents will drive it as well (they gave the previous one as a deposit to buy the new one). This means that any changes I will do in the car will have to serve me but not deter my parents from driving; so, even if I bought a polymorphous one (which is way more expensive than a Yaris but I would have to pay for it all by myself since there would be no money from mom and dad), I would not be able to take out the driver’s seat completely (assuming that I would enter the car from the back opening, let’s say, on the wheelchair, by use of some kind of board), because my parents would have to sit as well on the wheelchair in order to drive it (!!!!).

Furthermore, when I asked for the prices of electric and not manually operating boards, I was told that I would have to pay about 2940 Euros! (I asked at a lot of places and not just one).

Conclusion? Apart from virtue and daring, disability needs money. Money that you don’t have when you are about 24 years old. I have the daring. I can acquire the virtue. Nonetheless, I think that it’s absolutely normal to be frightened, since I was growing up under my parents’ guidance until ‘yesterday’.

WE LOVE YOU BUSTER

2006-09-11T03:23:00.000-07:00

02.08.04

Yesterday Anna and I went to see the ‘General’ of Buster Keaton. What a great movie. It was like an apocalypse for me, since I haven’t seen many movies from the good oldies’. It’s pure joy to watch the idols of old times dance in front of you, reminding you that if it hadn’t been for them, some of the later actors would have never existed, like Benigni, to whom I referred recently. And something else: The old movies can really make you burst out laughing, even when they deal with dramatic situations, precisely because laughter isn’t something that derives from specific situations but it’s a spontaneous reaction even in unhappy moments, not only in happy ones. The people of the generations before mine knew well that a situation can be both funny and dramatic at the same time. This is why they did not constrain laughter; neither was it enough for them to have a cheap sense of humour. All right, all times have trash but, mutatis mutandis, the crap we swallow today is definitely much more.

Knowing that people who pass away never come back makes me always melancholic, especially every time that I watch great black-and-white films or listen to the songs of people who are not here any more and whose memoirs are preserved only by posters and badly printed stamps on T-shirts. These are not the idols that I cherish. These are the dreams and the times that I didn’t manage to experience. These are the smells that I’ve never sensed through my nostrils, the pictures that were never before my eyes. My only consolation is the joy I feel every time an old secret is indeed revealed right in front of my eyes. It’s the pleasure of the Peeping Tom who manages to ‘steal’ a few pics by looking through the tear of a cloth covered in dust. For some people it is just a useless cloth. For others it is a symbol – a flag.

HOLY SMOKE

2006-09-11T03:10:00.000-07:00

01.08.04

A friend of my father brought some small Cuban cigars at home. He brought them from the beloved America and handed them to us in the way that your uncle and aunt hand you a special Easter egg. For some strange reason, when I hear about cigars, my mouth is watering. You can say that I’m ‘wasted’ or ‘mister nowhere’ (mister nowhere, mister nowhere’s and so on) but I think that the cigar and all that stuff is not something you just smoke. It’s something you can have in your pocket for days. Untouched and carefully preserved. Like a rocket that will explode at the right time.

So I was waiting for the right time and told mom: ‘I’ll try one’. She thought I was joking and when I finally told her that I was serious she crossed her fingers, as if I told her that I have been shooting up with heroin for the last two years. Both my parents are smokers. My father smokes like a chimney. Nonetheless, when it has to do with me, smoking equals murder, robbery, and thus punishment. Is there any bigger punishment than listen to mom crying and trying to talk you out of smoking? When my friends come, they even offer them an ashtray. It doesn’t matter that they are 25 years old. I’m still a baby to my parents’ eyes. I’m asking: till when?

I KNOW THE ANSWER. THE REASON? DEPENDENCE

All right, yes, I knew the answer. They’ll never stop seeing me as a baby but I have to do something as well if I want to change things a bit. All right, some times I ask them to do things for me while I’m not supposed to do so and this encourages them to see me the way they do. This is another reason why I want to go far away from them, even if this simply means to move in the next block (I’ll be neither the one nor the only!). Dependence is mutual. So do you understand why I long so much for living in countries far away? Very far away, where the lunchbox will reach me only by post and if I don’t want it, I won’t even go pick it up. (I know that I will definitely want it no matter what I’m saying right now but that’s a whole other story.)Somebody has to help me break the chain that has bound my parents and me for Somebody has to help me break the chain that has bound my parents and me for good. Nobody will. I will do this on my own.

I PARK; SO I EXIST!

2006-09-11T02:46:00.000-07:00

31.07.04

I visited IKEA with my parents in the morning. We had wanted to look through the various things and prices in that temple of shopping and of course have the chance to see the changes on the landscape within the framework of the Olympics. Athens changes. There’s no doubt about that. We have a lot to win from that story and not just lose. This whole area around the airport reminded me of every contemporary European metropolis, which is precisely what Athens should be for a long time now. Nonetheless, there is something that will never change, in my opinion. This is the mentality of the Greek indifferent superman, who persistently refuses to adjust his behavioural style to know environments.

We were looking for hours to park the car somewhere, since all the places for people with a disability in the parking lot were caught from fake disabled people. When I finally saw a chick come out of a place like that without having the slightest (visible, at least) disability, I decided to make her have regrets for good. I just told her that she was not allowed to park in a place like that and she answered that she had a reason to do that. I did not see that reason. I saw the girl escape without even apologizing. Do you want me to tell you what I understand every time I come up against such situations? That it’s not the absence of infrastructure and of services that creates the problem. This comprises only 30 per cent of the problem. The rest 70 per cent is due to people’s indifference. One can say: ‘Who am I to be interested in the disabled people?’. ‘As if they even go shopping.’. But if we got out of our houses more often, even the least educated among us would take our participation in daily life for granted and they would therefore not ignore our needs. This is why I am telling you: Get out of your houses and signal your presence, as everybody can.

WHO ARE WE (?)

2006-09-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

28.07.04

I am sick of writing it but I will. Oh, Dada, of course I can’t get rid of my disability, man. We’ve said that, I’ve resigned myself to that fact. Indeed, it’s an integral part of myself but this constitutes another reason why I should not bother with that issue all the time.

Can you imagine me talking incessantly about my eyes, my hair or my whole body? These are parts of myself as well but I don’t need to make a big deal out of them. Of course, there is something else that I always have in mind and I will remind you to the point of boredom: ‘FIRST WE ARE HUMANS AND THEN EVERYTHING ELSE’. Consequently, when I meet someone, I don’t introduce myself as the ‘disabled Nicholas’. I say: ‘Hi, I’m Nicholas’. What the hell, my disability is out-and-out obvious. Do I really have to say it? Only some blind bloke wouldn’t see it but in that case he is also ‘one of us’ and we would therefore have more interesting things to say than figuring out each other’s disability.

Some people used to tell me: ‘Nicholas, you have to find a girl who will have a similar problem with yours so as to understand and love you.’. I replied: ‘All right, but I have to like this girl as a whole. Being in a similar position is not enough. I have to enjoy my time with her, whatever that may mean.’. Conclusion: In my opinion, disability is an attribute of us but not the main one. if some people don’t manage to make even one step forward, it’s because they think and act first as disabled guys and then as free and creative human beings.

ATHENS 2004

2006-09-11T02:07:00.000-07:00

28.07.04

Did I tell you? I got tickets for weightlifting and athletics. I don’t remember for which days, though, because we got them at the very last minute. Do you know that I will have to sit on the seats there, since my wheelchair is considered by the security guards as a way to pass arms for a possible terrorist attack within the Olympic facilities? Do you want me to tell you the real truth? I am flattered by the fact that someone regards me as a potentially dangerous person. Until now, I thought that I couldn’t do any harm to anyone, even if I wanted to.

Nonetheless, if you ask me, despite all rumours I think that we’ll organize great Olympics. They better do so. We pay for this celebration and we’ll be paying for years and years. We’re dead if something goes wrong.

All right, the British creeps revealed our secrets regarding the opening ceremony. How harmful can that be? It’s one thing to watch it and a completely other thing to have expectations about what you’ll watch. They said that Bjork will sing at the ceremony. Someone had spread the rumour a long time ago. I still don’t get it why that specific artist was chosen but this doesn’t bother me, to say the truth. Of course I like her songs but I can’t understand how she ‘fits’ in the whole thing.

WE’LL SEE, WHAT WILL WE SEE?

I could really work on disability studies but I don’t like sticking that much to the issue of disability. What I do with my weblog is already TOO MUCH to me. As soon as I feel that I have nothing else to say, I will start posting a lot of other things. I will stop talking about myself and everything that happens to me.

I have already started worrying about how the weblog influences (it took me 15 years to learn that this verb is spelled with two –ff- and not just one) my way of thinking regarding who I am.
On the other hand, if we don’t work on disability, who will? What am I to say? We’ll see.

YOU CAN SMOKE A MOUNT OF CIGARETTES IF YOU WANT TO. I’LL GO ON HOLIDAYS WITH A BIG GUITAR IN MY HANDS.

I saw yesterday ‘Once upon a time in Mexico’, Robert Rodriguez’s movie that followed ‘Desperado’. Both movies seem to be really stupid and I would have absolutely no reason to see them if I didn’t long for a bit of Mexico and good Spanish guitar. Moreover, if I was a woman, I suppose I would go crazy over Antonio Banderas or Johnny Depp. Personally, I had some other reason to watch it.

I remembered again my holidays in Serifos with Alexandros, Antonis, Christina and Betty. We, the little boys, sat at evenings on the beach and took a look at the deep end of the ocean. We were dead drunk and sang everything that came to our mind. Antonis remembered that song of Mariachi-desperado, who sung proudly ‘Me gusta tocar a quitara’ (= I like playing the guitar). And yet we were far too drunk to think of what he was singing.

What we heard was ‘caraquitara’. So we started singing a bunch of lines related to this great new instrument that nobody had discovered. But I discovered one of my secret talents that night. When someone asks me if I know how to play music, I answer: ‘Yes, of course. You’ll be stunned if I play some pieces with my caraquitara.’

TO HELL WITH LITTLE PAINS! LET’S BECOME LITTLE AMERICANS

Today I woke up with terrible pains on my knee (various doctors and physiotherapists have told me that I have to live with that pain whether I like it or not). Every time it’s about to rain I can feel it almost from the day before because of those little pains of mine. Don’t wait for a storm. The times when I’m out in my reckoning are not few.

I think my pains are over, just because I started thinking seriously of a possible future trip to the USA. All right! I wouldn’t go there without being organized first. All right, I can be a real guy-good-for-nothing from time to time but I actually always want to find a reason why I do everything I do. Right, I wouldn’t mind at all if my only ambition would be to go to the next concert of the Fun Lovin’ Criminals. In my opinion, they are the coolest band on earth.

I WILL BE HAVING A NICE TIME AND I WILL BE GETTING HIGHER AND HIGHER

2006-09-11T01:38:00.000-07:00

26.07.04

To be honest, since I would not want to be considered naïve, I am not one of those who would not change a thing in their lives. I always want the best, even if I am being really neurotic some times. As for grandiloquent words like ‘I love my disability and I can’t live without it’, I never understood them. What do you happen to love, man? A thing that smothers you and makes you depend on others?

On the other hand, when I see some guys who have it all crying over spilt milk, I say: ‘You should be deprived of a few things in order to appreciate what you’ve got’. ‘You should get out of bed and go to work, stop shooting up, move in your own home and desist from expecting everything from your parents.’. ‘When you go to clubs and concerts, jump up and dance like crazy, as if it’s the last day you are having fun.’.

There are a few types of people who take everything for granted and this is why they are indifferent towards everything that has to do with disability. As if they’ve signed some kind of contract that will protect them from every impediment. As if they were born as the lucky ones of the human species. There are some other types of people as well; those are the ones who think they star in the world’s most tragic drama. When they experience moments of happiness, they insist on destroying them, watching the world through their own distorting glasses. They find everything horrendous and they think that everyone is to blame. They envy those who are happy with their lives, and they especially loathe their wealth, whether material or mental. They are fed up with the idea that there people who make money by doing what they dig. They are not thinking of how they will attach greater importance to the value of their personality so as to have what they want. On the contrary, they like underestimating the achievements of those who they envy. The worst part is that they do all this without understanding it, unconsciously that is, pretending that they are indifferent to the best result. Well, I don’t. I am not indifferent to the best result and I would certainly be happy to become an able-bodied person or the richest guy on earth or even ‘the star of stars’. Nonetheless, since things like that don’t happen from one day to the other or since they might never happen at all, I try to have fun with myself as I am now and not as I would like to be in the future. Furthermore, I say it again: nobody asks me whether I would like to be ‘this’ or ‘that’. I try, no matter what.

ON OPINIONS AND ATTITUDES

2006-09-11T01:10:00.000-07:00

26.07.04

All right, so we are not the only ones who are in a ‘bad’ mood because of the summer and the heat. My dog is stuck on the pavement and is hanging out his tongue as if he could lick the ground till the front door. Of course I have him right beside me now that I’m writing to you and if he could, he would write as well and he would say how boring his life as a dog is.

I woke up in the morning, watching a part of the concert that took place the day before yesterday. I listened to the complaints of a man who had been waiting for something better. All right, everybody has a personal point of view but when you are a journalist you have to be objective in the way you pass the news, whether they are dealing with the coverage of the 7th March elections or with a commentary on a cultural event. Am I asking too much? No, I am not asking too much when –in this case- I am trying to persuade people that there are thousands of reasons to be happy with their lives.

I’ve been nagging all my life. For what? You are going to say: ‘Look who’s talking’, Nicholas, the guy who judges everything. Yes, I am in such a mood, it’s true, but I am very pleased with my life in general and with the moments I experience. Of course I would like to enjoy a much more exciting life. What am I to do? It’s in my genes to ask for the strange and the diffucult stuff: not to become wiser; when you become wiser, nobody asks you if you really need the wisdom you acquire. What I want is to know that I have lived, I have seized every opportunity and, most important, I have freely expressed my feelings without keeping any bitterness and inhibitions inside.

Some times I think that I can show people how to be happy. What a big mistake. And who am I to know what pleases everyone? Even if I knew, why should I spend my years in order to show some people what they refuse to see, namely that life is indeed beautiful? A few of us knew that way before Benigni told us. No matter how strange it may sound, some times I think that I would not fully appreciate my own existence if I did not have this disability to teach me how to fight and win things that were given to others freely. Of course, I believe in those ideas only in the good days. In the bad days, I swear all the time.

STEPS

2006-09-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

23.07.04

Regarding what I said yesterday: Do you know how many times I happen to be lying in bed and think that if I get up I will be walking normally without any kind of help? I’ll tell you something else too. Every time I feel like that I am never disappointed, because, in spite of the fact that the circumstances prove me wrong, what I feel is so strong that it really looks like it is happening.
I used to make up to eight steps on my own, wearing casts. After that, I had problems with my kneecaps, which came out of place at every movement and I should ‘push’ them again inside with my hand. I have never felt such pain before. The first time I suffered like that was when I was bumping alone into my basket’s rim, listening to ‘The Doors’. I have told you that before. It had been a year since I had my first operations and everything was going pretty well, until I had the problem with my knees.

The stupid surgeon had stretched some muscles more than he should have done, thus resulting in pulling out my kneecaps upwards and detaching them from the mould of the cartilage.

Four new operations followed. Again in Boston but why am I telling you all this? What I mean is that ever since I had the problem with my knees I could never walk alone again. Some times (like yesterday) I feel again capable of being on a roll and starting to walk.

STORIES FOR SEA HORSES

Yesterday I happened to watch some TV ads with Phoivos and Athena. I never accepted those ‘bumps’ (if not something else), guys. I know that they are somehow symbols or antiquity but who cares. I don’t like them, am I to lie? Proteas is definitely more fun but he is a little cartoon for kids. And may I ask why should a sea horse represent us? Did you ever wonder? All right, I am grumpy. I know. Oh my, I don’t like at all a sea horse in baby style, no matter how cute it may be. There was no creature like that even on my baby bib, if it ever had a stamp like that. And if they wanted to demonstrate the difference with able-bodied athletes, they could have at least symbolized it in the shape of a mermaid with huge tits (sorry to say): an unrivalled symbol for every gender. Sophocles, who wonders, must know something about it.

SO WHAT IF I AM A SUPERMAN AND A SUPERSTAR, THEY ARE THE BEAUTIES AND I AM THE UGLY MAN

I have been looking for hours to provide you with a link regarding the athlete who reached our country with his manually operated sports wheelchair. If I am not mistaken, he rode it around the Balkans. I can’t find anything about him on the web. At first, I would like to learn his name. If you find something, please give me the appropriate URL.
Maybe I locate some information about him on http://www.disabled.gr/.
You know something? I got really mad at my parents, who, when they saw him (without legs), they said: ‘Poor fellow!’. Some times I think that they forget they have a son with mobility problems; consequently, if they feel sorry for anybody in a position like mine, it’s like feeling sorry for me as well. All right, the guy doesn’t have legs but mine, even though they are in place, are of no use either. Useless and expensive! That’s why I say that I’m no Superman. Someone else is.

THE CRASH

2006-09-08T04:28:00.000-07:00

19.07.04

I would like to confess my inability to find my bearings. One and a half year ago I had a really bad car crash precisely because I was lost. I was heading to Penteli and found myself in Gerakas, among old ladies, Albanians and Rottweilers. I didn’t know where I was and there was nobody out there to say a word. I was panic-stricken, because, apart from other things, it was getting dark and my parents had no idea of my intention to go far (I was actually scared of mom. She can make me regret even for my breath. If she reads this, she will laugh. She thinks I don’t give a damn about her because I dare to retaliate against her.).

Anyway, I was so panic-stricken, as I said, that I went back without actually looking back and that’s how I crashed the front of some other old car. (The guy who owned the car appeared in nanoseconds. I’m not exaggerating.)
He says: ‘Get out of the car’.
I am like: ‘No I don’t’.

Get out/No I don’t, Get out/No I don’t, Get out/No I don’t, And may I know why?/Because I am disabled./Oh, all right then, where is your licence and the rest? In the little drawer. I did what I had to do. Try to find them yourself (my nails had turned blue out of my fear). Instead of swearing at me, this guy started giving me consolation. So I took up the courage and asked: ‘Do you happen to know where the area of Vrilissia is?’.

In the end, my mother reacted normally. She told me: ‘If every time you lose yourself you crash someone’s car in order to find your way here, we’re dead!’. I relate this inability of mine to my poor spelling. I keep forgetting places and words I’ve seen a thousand times. Sophocles says that this happens to everybody who has cerebral palsy. I don’t know what to believe. I’m not used to blaming the ‘problem’ for everything. (Isn’t it somewhat ingenuous to name your disability a ‘problem’? Consequently, you are not defined as a person with a disability but as a person who is problematic, since you admit that you carry a problem, right?).

LABELS-LABELS (Leave the labels and get the girlies)

Good morning,

Oh Dada you make it hard for me so early in the morning. It doesn’t matter. I am really glad that you referred to the issue of the label and thus revealed that even me, a person who detests every sort of discrimination, can talk nonsense about people who I like (like you). Can I tell you what labels are? In my opinion, labels are inventions of those who comprise the majority or are beyond others or think that they do comprise the majority and also are beyond those who (allegedly) are the few and the weak or those whose part as regards the evolution of things is smaller anyway.

In fact, labels are ‘placed’ to remind some people that they are far from the main pattern of existing and behaving and therefore they have to feel subordinate to those who fulfil the standards of fully representing the human tribe (But what am I writing at the crack of dawn? Hopefully some people will desist from accusing me of my literary writing. I can write about almost anything.). On the other hand, when there are people who don’t care about labels, nothing from everything mentioned above is valid (is the spelling correct here? I am really poor at spelling and I’m not using a dictionary right now). But, since some of the people who hate labels might label others without really thinking about it (like I did in Dada’s case), everything is possible and expected to a certain degree.

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF OUR LOVE?

2006-09-08T04:14:00.000-07:00

18.07.04

I didn’t talk to you about the most exciting part. Last night, a man and a woman were sitting next to our table. Young people, don’t think that they were old creeps (sorry, Dada, I forgot that you are not 25). So when they left –much earlier than we did-, Kostas revealed me that the girl was constantly looking at his side every time that she lifted her glass.

In general, it seemed very cool to me that my friend had ‘grabbed the look’ of a very nice young girl and I laughed out loud thinking that if we starred in an American romantic movie, the whole thing could have been completely different. The girl would leave with Kostas and I would eat burritos with her (ex) companion.

I turned back time and imagined when a few years ago I was invited to a party along with lots of couples. I let my friends make out and grab each other right in front of me and I was just sitting there looking at the ceiling or at the ashtray full of cigarette stubs or at the dress of another girl who would certainly be making out with the guy next to her soon. I was ‘pathetic’, however you want to interpret this. One day I became suddenly aware of the situation and decided to take measures. My friends told me: ‘Will you come with the two of us?’ and I replied ‘No guys. There is something wrong with the gooseberry today and I won’t be able to play it for you’. Since then, I got rid of the role of the Peeping Tom for good.

IN THE HOUSE OF INDEPENDENCE

I have been arguing a lot with my mother lately. I believe that this is the result of the fact that we have been spending lots of hours together, since she takes me to work every morning. I can’t take it with mom’s lectures any more. She doesn’t like a thing, including the way I drive, the way I express myself, the way I object to things she says and so on. All right. All moms act like this but that doesn’t bother me. I really want to be independent and I know that this is not going to happen as long as I am in Greece; not because I am actually accustomed to the comfort of the house but because wherever I move, if it’s going to be in the same city, my mom is going to call me 15 times a day to see if I’m all right or she’ll be running behind me with a small lunchbox, in case I lose a calorie or something.

I am mad at myself: I keep saying that I’ll be independent and I do nothing about it. (Where are you, Penelope, who told me all those things?) I know, Papillon, you’ll say again that the responsibility is entirely my own and you will be right. I’ve organized a programme: As soon as I pay for the car, I will rent a studio somewhere near here and I will be having fun with myself. I will face my parents’ insecurities whether wanting it or not. I think that, if I make the first steps towards my independence, they will start figuring out themselves that I will definitely not die without them (biologically, at least).

I wish I had LOTS AND LOTS OF MONEY and could build a luxurious center of independent living for people with a disability in Greece. Anybody who would want to go there, obtaining education on independent living would be offered for as long as it would be wanted, on the basis of reasonable fees of course (and not on extravagant prices). People would therefore spend their days in a communal space, being thus able to meet lots of people (this would not be obligatory) and live independently. Of course, this ‘house’ would be open to every visitor (not necessarily a guest). Otherwise, it would end up being a ghetto.

What do you think of the whole idea here? What are our chances of achieving something like that? Do you think it would be worth it?

IT ALL STARTED LIKE THIS

2006-09-08T03:49:00.000-07:00

15.07.04

A slap would make the difference. The dizzy mosquito, stuck on the white tile, was looking at me. As if it was challenging me to melt it under my thumb. As if it was found right in front of me only to sacrifice itself for the sake of my anger. I didn’t lose that chance. I approached it slowly, trying to hide my shadow, so as to avoid being understood by that bloodthirsty insect. I stretched out my fingers and punched the wall. The mosquito, dead meat! The stain is still there.

Without really understanding that, I took the CD of TRYPES (=’Holes’: Greek Rock band) from the shelf; I hadn’t listened to that for years (I’m not exaggerating). ‘Life is too small to be sad, baby!’. All right, I got the message. Enough with doubts (for this week, at least). I was healed. I remembered so much; like when I had my hair long to the shoulders, and yet I didn’t even know who were the ‘Who’ or the ‘Jam’. There was so much that I had to discover.

I had really faced a true apocalypse and although I consciously avoided the use of the word ‘revolution’, since all those guys of the same age as mine used to come out with it all the time, I felt that I was treading a tightrope for no reason, just for fun. I thought that daily life was hiding in things that were obscure and deep. I was looking for meaning in everything I did, even in my breathing.

I have never read poetry. I’m not ashamed of saying so. I was just listening to a lot of music. Even in my sleep! (I was sleeping with the radio on.) I delved with pleasure into the melancholy of the thought-provoking lyrics and didn’t even dare to imagine a life without pain (whether physical or mental). I always had a notebook under my pillow. I woke up in the middle of the night and started writing, so as not to miss any word or thought or picture.

I was in the first year of high school (lyceum) back then. My schoolmates asked me to write love lyrics for them, so that they hand those to their girlfriends. I couldn’t refuse to do that, of course. And yet those were the last times I used my talent for a witty reason (I’m speaking of conscious use, at least). Later I woke up to my friends grabbing butterfly kisses and hugs and me looking at them, not because I didn’t have the self-confidence needed to approach the girls but because they all seemed to me kind of goofy. They weren’t. I simply judged them all strictly and if they were just happy they seemed immature to my eyes. This is how inflexible I was.

I was putting on my beloved melancholic songs at full blast and thought that I was coming close to a kind of truth that nobody had discovered before me. I was talking in a vulgar way to my parents when they threatened me that they would throw away all my tapes or that they would send me to the psychiatrist. They even gave me money to have my hair cut. I accepted. You can make your hair grow longer again but you take money once. A year later, I had my beautiful long hair again protect the ideas inside my head. I was ready to fall in love but I didn’t know with whom.

Hiding from my parents, I read Melina’s autobiography, where Melina spoke of love and passion. I was so jealous of that feeling that I wished I could fall head over heels in love one day. Nobody forbade me to love Melina as much as I wanted. And yet I wanted this feeling only for myself. I never spoke to anybody of what I saw happen, whether inside me or in my environment. One day I just couldn’t make it any more. I asked my mother to make photocopies of some of my lyrics. Before that, she decided to give them to a friend of hers, a poetess, to read them, Without asking me.

She hurried to announce me that, according to her friend, I would be a great poet. I was furious with my mother, who showed my poems to everybody. I set a fire and burnt the notebook. I almost burnt down the whole house. Later I wrote a few lines and a song about Melina. I asked Tina (yes, the well-known one) to compose a tune on that. This is how I started looking for a band. I was handing out my poems to every ‘musician’ in the hope that they would help me give life to my songs. What I dreamed of looked a lot like what I accomplished. I looked for people who didn’t know each other and invited them to perform music for me. I sang and played my harmonica. My singing was awful; and so was my playing. That didn’t matter at all. I was pushing my life to the limit. I was living my life the way I wanted. To hell with anybody who would dare say that I was a person with a disability. I didn’t even know what that meant at the time. Maybe I could never have the guts to know, if I hadn’t saved so much strength inside me. I used to let it be, as if I had lurked in the belly of some cetacean, waiting for it to wash me up on the beach. Until then I was just having fun. I jumped in a huge bubble and I would still be jumping if the wave hadn’t thrown me on sharp rocks.

I climbed on the rocks like a goat and started screaming. I apologize if my screams cause you headache. I will soon relax. I wait to meet the next beast that will accept to host me in its belly. In the meantime, I will have plenty of time at my disposal in order to think and write.

LIKE THE GENIE IN A BOTTLE

2006-09-07T04:34:00.000-07:00

13.07.04

Today I would like to drink coffee out on a shiny terrace. To see Athens in front of me and feel my hair in a mess because of the wind. There will be no sea under my eyes. At least not the sea that I know. It won’t be blue. It will be colourful like the mirror that scans every colour and body, human or not.

The heat will fall over every single space on the ground, rendering the asphalt unbearably hot. In an effort to feel relieved, people and animals will be gaping idly at the sky, thus examining every prospect of elevation. Some of them –including me- will already be up there; not because we are better or smarter but because we never landed. We never put our feet on the earth.

I don’t know if what I’m saying is of any interest to you but it’s hard for me to describe what is happening to me every time that I’m blinded by this desire to escape and be elevated to the sky without thinking of any specific destination. You would help me a lot if you told me your opinion on this thing that intrigues me. I’m not sure if what I am looking for is the reason why I suffer from the syndrome of the great escape. As a matter of fact, I just want to share this feeling with you, since, even if you remain silent, I get to feel that you follow what I say; I hope that you do this out of interest.

Ever since I was a child, I was scared of ‘moulds’. I consciously wanted to steer clear from every route to specific places and things. I always wanted to have the time or the advantage to evolve and be transformed. For instance, I was told: ‘You, man, are going to be a great poet or a great designer or a great scientist’. I was very scared of such anticipations, even when they were auspicious. Today I face them with the same cautiousness. I don’t want to be anything specific. I want to be everything without poking my nose into the others’ business.

Some times I give the impression of a man who is pleased by nothing. This is incorrect. On the contrary, I enjoy many things. In fact, those things are so many indeed that my thrill is spread everywhere, resulting in not knowing what I want (to be or to do) in the end, where my mind is always stuck on the idea of being everywhere and ending up nowhere, precisely because I can’t be devoted to the present. This is when I am disappointed, because I understand how difficult it is for me to be constantly on the go and I feel like the ‘genie in the bottle’ (title of a song of Christina Aguilera): even silly songs can express our feelings some times; in full power but stuck.

I don’t like backing down. I want to go to New York (again), to Mexico, to Peru and in general to go to the back of beyond, if possible. As a matter of fact, I have neither lack of time nor of money. Both can be found when you are up to it. What I don’t find is the way to put up with the least of help. These ‘requirements’ under which I put myself seem to be completely insane. Apart from that, I don’t like living in lies. If I have to live in a specific way, then I’d better get used to it from now on. But then again, who can tell me what is going to happen in one or two or ten years?

It’s unfair to be deprived of the possibility to know places and cultures. Is there any wish more innocent than your wish to live and get to know everything around you? I don’t think so. How powerful is a body, enough to determine your way of living? This is why I say this. I definitely have to evaporate without even stopping my breath. No matter how strange it may seem to you, writing develops the techniques of a disembodied presence. If I can’t experience a situation, I write about it and it’s like experiencing it. In the end I forget whether what I describe is fact of fiction.

AND MY LIFE IS YOURS

2006-09-07T04:30:00.000-07:00

13.07.04

I left the door slightly open so as to welcome the light of the day. Electricity was cut five minutes ago and I couldn’t find anything in the dark. Ten minutes later, we were told that we could leave earlier, since the computers were not operating and we had no reason to remain in the offices.

I called my mother as quickly as possible to ask her to come and fetch me from the stairs so as not to have to ask for the help of my colleagues again. She didn’t make it on time. When she arrived, I was already down. I could have felt really badly if I thought that I had put everyone in trouble. As a matter of fact, I was happy that we had achieved truce on the pretext of that incident. I told them: ‘You go and I will wait for my mother to come and get me’. They were like ‘Don’t even think about it’. All right, this is not so emotional but the important thing is that in a difficult situation like this my colleagues did not leave me alone. I would take this for granted in older times. I am thinking differently today.

You are absolutely right when you remind me that nobody is obliged to undergo the consequences of our problems, no matter what they are. And yet I am now certain that it’s not enough to stand next to someone in order to be (or to be considered) his or her fellow citizen. What you offer to the others –if possible without expecting anything in return- is what will make you a real human being. If you have no ideals to defend, if you don’t intend to give something from yourself to the others, you are just an intelligent (?) animal on the top of their kingdom, in my humble opinion. We don’t examine the incentives of the offer. You might offer something in order to be praised to the skies or to gain recognition from people, but this doesn’t bother us. The important thing is that you decide to see beyond the end of your nose.

WHO KILLED THE KING OF THE SUBWAY?

2006-09-07T04:12:00.000-07:00

08.07.04

Have you been in the new carriages of the subway? They are white, pure white. They remind of moving airport halls. Bright signs that are going to be very useful to those with hearing problems hang from their ceiling. Among other things, there is an innovation in all new trains as regards the prospect. Every carriage is connected to the other exactly as in the past, with the difference that there are no dividing doors between carriages. You can just take a look along the line of the corridor and thus see even the last passenger sitting there calmly precisely because he/she didn’t come to realize that he is being watched by a worrier like me.

Upon every turn, the metal creaks and the train is suddenly shaken. It could be said that this train is another great technological accomplishment in the service of the citizens. It is ultra-modern, faster and definitely more flashy. Or not? This whole whiteness gets on your nerves. It forces you to remember something from the room of a hospital, making you suspicious of the form of the new aesthetics as they are evident in every corner of the city, either in internal or in external spaces.

The whole scene brought something from London’s subway to my mind, with the difference that everything here is squeaky clean. This is definitely pleasant. What upsets me is everything impersonal and colourless that accompanies me down there. And it’s something else as well. Those ultra-modern trains don’t have any ramps, neither in the front nor in the back exits. I tried to get out on the platform and I suddenly stuck on the gap. Someone pushed me out at the last minute before doors could smash me for good. Do you understand how I felt? Until now, I was feeling (and I really was) autonomous when moving there.

I was the king of the subway. People came to ask me for directions. They waited for me to show them the routes and send them to their destination. It felt great to be able to be useful to those people, even when I expressed my curses every time I saw them (and I still do, unfortunately) rush to the lift in a mob, while they are perfectly able to drag their feet and use the escalators.

There is no doubt that someone threw the crown from my head and made me feel like a beggar. In my opinion, it is not that tragic to ask for help but it’s a thousand times better to do everything by yourself when you can (this reminds me of yesterday’s posts). So how dare they deprive me from the joy of independence? In the shape of what sort of innovation did they decide to destroy those ramps that cost nothing in the end?

My friends, I am ashamed of confessing that but I didn’t manage to resist the temptation: I turned my head to the camera, smiled ironically and slowly stretched out my middle finger. I whispered this new popular tune from ‘Archive’. Fabulous. Without words.

THAT’S HOW THINGS ARE

I am so glad that I don’t end up speaking all by myself. Yes, you are absolutely right, and mostly you, Papillon, to say what you say. What I decided is something that I should have decided a long time ago but I disagree with you, Dada. I never took advantage of any kind of mercy. I don’t give any right to the others to feel sorry for me and I am really a hundred percent sure that they have understood this completely. What I didn’t take into account –this was my mistake and I admit that- is that this procedure might tire them out.
I made this judgment based on the example of myself, knowing that I would give this help to anybody who would expect it from me.

I am letting you know that one of my colleagues misunderstood this and stopped talking to me, because I don’t ask her to accompany me to the loo any more.
As for transfering the wheelchair from the car and vice versa, what we came up with was no kind of solution whatsoever. My mother takes me, a 25-year-old grown man, to work, do you call this a solution? To put it simply, given birth to me and won a draw that I wish she hadn’t won; neither her nor anybody else. I look for a more creative job anyway, because I’m not fond of being secretary, but I haven’t had any chance yet. If you know any ads company, any radio station or any newspaper whose offices are close to my place and who ask for young employees that are going to be paid of course, let me know, because I haven’t come across anything like that.
Good night. I will try to sleep. I have to go to work tomorrow.
Thanks for the contribution.

AND WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR, WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR? A CHANCE TO GO TO MY LOVELY WORK

2006-09-07T04:08:00.000-07:00

11.07.04

My friend Haris,

When the moment that I will expect absolutely nothing from people comes, it will certainly be a big moment for me, since I will have thus accomplished something really great. For now, I can just say that I took the right direction. Anyway, when I am looking for something, I don’t take it for granted that I will get it anyway. What we give and what we get is a big issue and it can concern us on many levels.

Previously, I used to ask constantly for the appreciation of those around me. I suppose that my mom had just spoiled me rotten to the degree of expecting from the others everything that she offered me; on a practical level but not only that.

I’ve got something very recent in my mind, probably related directly to what we are talking about. When I park the car at work every morning, I need someone’s help to unload my wheelchair from the car and then help me reach the entrance and take the lift. This was done by my colleagues until a few days ago, when they put Evangelia (the girl who helped me more than anyone) in charge of announcing me something very bad (despite the meaning of her name ) Evangelia means someone who spreads good news). So she had to find a way to let me know that she would not be able to help me in the future any longer; neither she nor anybody else. She wasn’t that blatantly clear of course; instead of that, she said: ‘Tomorrow tell your mom to come take you out because I won’t be here – I don’t think that she’ll be in serious trouble if she wakes up early for once’. All this seemed to be said from the lips of all my colleagues, since nobody offered to replace Evangelia that day.

I’ve never asked them for even the slightest help ever since and I decided to use my wheelchair more often, even in my office, since I used to ‘borrow’ their arms even to go to the loo. My mother used to forbid me to use the wheelchair in the house, because she thought that I would stick to it and thus avoid walking with or my walking sticks. I couldn’t use the device at work, since the office is really narrow. On the other hand, I thought it would be really bad to use the wheelchair when I could do a few steps and thus stretch out a bit with a little help from my colleagues. So I was always in need of them, and they even forgot about me once or twice until I exploded.

This is why I decided to become autonomous. I am proud. I don’t expect almost anything from anybody at work. This independence is great and I feel that everything happened for a good reason in the end. At first, I was angry at the reluctance of those people to help me in something as important. Later, I remembered something that I forget from time to time: Nobody is obliged to offer me anything. This might sound harsh but it can console at the same time, when you know that you don’t owe anything to anybody other than the people who are truly close to you and yourself.

ON WOMEN

2006-09-07T03:51:00.000-07:00

08.07.04

I was talking to my sister. She thinks that I speak very badly of women in general. I disagree. I don’t believe at all that stupidity has a sex. Neither would I speak of feminist movements if I believed that all people end up in the same ‘sack’. I love women very much, because, apart from everything else, they are also a source of inspiration for me. Maybe I expect too much from a woman every time I want to see her powerful and assertive. As a matter of fact, though, I expect the same from all the others – friends of mine or not (men or women). If I happen to be cruel with those around me, I’m equally cruel with myself.
Don’t think of the present text as an excuse. It’s just a clarification.

FROM HIGH TO LOW

Yesterday I went for a walk to the northern part of the town with my father. We hadn’t discussed just the two of us for a long time and, even though I avoid the ‘upfront’ meetings with my parents, I really wanted to spend some time with him, mostly to assert my suspicions regarding the influence of time on people’s lives. Yes, parents do grow up; both of them together or each one separately. The important thing is that they grow up too much (how polite of me!) and it is evident.

Nagging brings my father to the surface. He is not wrong at all. And yet he irritates me. He doesn’t find a single good reason to live. Some times, I get to think that he would have already committed suicide, had he been in my shoes. What am I to say since I have to face things from a seated position all the time? Everything seems to be tremendous when you look at things from my place. Tremendous and threatening. Is it that hard for someone to be in our shoes for a while? Literally and figuratively. I think I should teach my father one or two things about survival.

DUM SPIRO DISCO!

I’m thrilled today, because I managed to give you links on texts that exist inside the blog and not outside of it. It’s exciting to discover the ‘spirit’ of computers. When I understand it and follow it faithfully, I receive the expected results. On the contrary, when I write crap I receive crap.

Until today, I thought that I was a complete idiot as regards the way I handled computers. All right, there is hope for my case too!

LIVE THE WAY YOU WANT TO LIVE BUT DON’T BE A CREEP

2006-09-07T03:27:00.000-07:00

06.07.04

Throughout the last years I’ve been trying to justify the behaviour of people all the time, not for the purpose of pretending to be a saint or something but because I figured out how difficult it is, in the end, to be based on your senses in order to be something more than just a survivor. I had to overcome tons of difficulties in order to be the guy who you ‘read’ now. No matter how much I longed for it, no fairy was found in front of me to touch me with her magic little stick and make me a strong and compassionate person.

There were times when I spoke very badly of those who believe in God. I thought that they were stupid and intend to drag more people to their stupidity. Although I haven’t changed my opinion regarding God, I have an honestly deep respect for those who are religious, because I regard this as their way to pull through. Consequently, I have no right to tell them how to come up against difficulties and so on. If their faith helps them become better people, that’s fine. If, despite their faith in God, they are creeps, then nobody and nothing are to blame than more than their bloody mind.

Likewise, if Stelios draws power from being exposed on television, that’s fine as well. He and anyone else. I can’t accuse anybody of such things. This is not me. After all, I reckon that the whole issue starts from the family once again. This specific person might not have been as much loved and appreciated from his parents as he was worth or he might have received those feelings in the wrong way. Maybe many parents find that television is a way to evaluate their intelligence and their skills or the intelligence and the skills of their children. They might think, for example: ‘If you are on television, you are worth a lot; if you’re not, then you’re worth of nothing.’.

YOU WILL HAVE TO SEE OUR IMAGE WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT!

I had a short conversation with my colleague, Angeliki. She says: ‘Who was that kid sitting last night with the National Team players?’. I answer: ‘He’s not a kid, he is Stelios Kybouropoulos, a big brute who has received distinctions for his record in mathematics’. She goes on saying: ‘I felt sorry for him sitting like that in his weakness with the huge guys of our National Team. Why on earth did they put him there! It looks as if they were doing him a favour or something.’. I tell her: ‘I don’t know about that but if you fell sorry for him, then it’s your problem, because he is definitely not a guy to feel sorry for’. All right, we all know that many Greeks are narrow-minded when they think of people with a disability like heroes, as if we have other choices of living; as if everything that we manage to do is the result of the so-called ‘problem’; as if someone with less mobility must definitely have less mental strength.

This is why I am irritated, ladies and gentlemen, when someone admits that he/she admires me. To me, this sounds like feeling sorry. Whoever wants to admire me should refer only to my education, my urge of creativity and all that without relating those things to my disability. I am the only one who has the right to do that, because I am the only one who knows how I cope with it. Some times I take advantage of people’s admiration, since I can really be a creep myself. Likewise, Stelios might have asked himself to sit with the players, knowing that everybody would do him the favour. Good for him! Nothing was wrong anyway.

On the other hand, if someone feels sorry for people like Kybouropoulos or even like me, should we probably re-examine the case of who is finally the disabled one? Probably, right? Okay, most people are not used to seeing the different person. We’ve had enough of excuses. It’s time to get used to the truth. From that point of view, congratulations to Stelios who intentionally comes out exactly as he is. As for those who judge him, who knows? They might be even jealous for him.

My friend Dada, since you defend the right to express our anger, beware of the possibility that if I let myself free I will beat the living daylights out of all of them and you would see me on the evening news behind bars. Get this: she felt sorry for him! Anyway, I declare this officially: one day I’ll get rid of this body (if I’m not already gone now), no matter what that means. But I’ll first seize life with those hands of mine, I’ll think with this mind of mine, I’ll stand on the street with these legs of mine, I’ll swear at the idiots with this voice of mine! I’ve got so much to do!

I EXERCISE POLITICS

2006-09-07T03:18:00.000-07:00

08.07.04

Using Dada’s comment as an opportunity, (to be found in the text I wrote on 5/7/2004), I would like to write the following: I wish I could say the opposite but the women who quit their husbands for the purpose of carrying the can are too many. Those women are destined –in my opinion- to keep their mouth shut and open everything else, simply because their participation in any conversation would presuppose the use of their brain, which they sadly don’t find in place, especially when they need it.

Not all women are like that of course! How can we forget, for instance, the movement of the Suffragettes in the last century in England? They managed to remind us of the fact that we don’t claim rights because we represent a minority but precisely because we believe that the aforementioned term (=minority) often underestimates our human characteristics. First of all we are humans and then everything else.
This is exactly why we, having to think a bit more, believe that it’s necessary to represent ourselves in everything that is of our business, whether this has to do with the measures taken up to ease our mobility in the city or with what kind of clothes we’ll be wearing when we decide to go out.

I enter the store with a companion. I want to buy summer pants and a ‘Hawaiian-flower’ shirt. I look at the saleswoman’s eyes and get ready to say: ‘I’d like a…’. She looks at my companion and says: ‘What would the young man like, what’s his size?’. The answer that comes to my mind is ‘what about the size of your mind, you sicko!’. What are you looking at, you idiot? What do you expect? That I light fireworks until you lower your sluggard-look and address me? I came in your store (where I would come even without help if you had at least one ramp by its entrance). I’m interested in your bloody clothes. I’ll give you my dear money. Isn’t it tragic to have to explain the evident every time? Is it normal to go out for a walk and yet be frustrated with everyone?

Don’t ask me what I would do to all those people if I didn’t have to consider the rules of criminal law. In case I decided to let them live, I’d definitely want to torture them. I’d tie them hand and foot on remote-control wheelchairs, I’d gag them and I’d send them far away. We’re talking about very far here; as far as this figurative suitcase can go every time we decide to refer to such issues.

The essence of the problem lies elsewhere: in the state’s arbitrary power of finding solutions for us without us. Is it possible to plan an environment friendly to people with a disability without asking them to participate? Is it possible that the accessibility secured for people with mobility –and even more- problems is determined from able-bodied people who know next to nothing about our needs? The answer is obvious. What I need to underline regarding all this is that we bear most of the responsibility for what happens when we refuse to take part in procedures that deal with us. I refuse that as well many times but at least I have the willingness to give information, to stress issues and to suggest solutions. Even if I do this by virtue of a weblog.

EVERYTHING I KEEP AFTER THE PARTY

2006-09-07T02:47:00.000-07:00

05.07.04

A walk downtown brought us to a party. That night was definitely white, not because of the lights on the streets but because of the wrinkles of every blue-white flag covering the dark sky with its colours, thus colouring even the faces of passers-by, who actually weren’t just passers-by.

They intended to reach Omonoia and stay there until dawn. I don’t even know if they finally reached their destination or if what they experienced was enough to remember it until the history can be repeated one day (but is this possible to happen?).
What am I to keep inside my head from the images that not even my camera could catch? First of all, the girls. Pretty and ugly. All of them very sweet in their paranoia, hanging outside the open windows with their hair fluttering like flags. Dressed, or almost dressed, they let you take a sneak peek under their short little skirt and their transparent little tight shirt, without any intention to torture you or punish you for your indiscretion.

Young boys test you. They come to talk to you, move you, drench you with their sweat, give you a cigarette or light you a fire that can’t be put out that easily. Not just because it comes from a feeling of national pride but because it is part of an international celebration. In such celebrations everything is forgiven. You can smile to the person next to you and say: ‘Could I borrow your car and your girlfriend for tonight?’. He will reply with a ‘Definitely, man!’.

In all likelihood, you’ll be wrapped in burning sheets the next morning, lying next to a girl whose name you don’t even remember. Under the balcony, some huge guerilla will be infuriated with you because you dared to take advantage of his having been drunk and to grab what he loves best. You think that it’s time for him to beat you up. You are relieved with the idea that things might have been much worse. You could, for instance, have no other choice than go to work despite not having slept at all and stick to your desk, waiting for the next outburst.

WHERE IS THE BALL?

2006-09-07T02:42:00.000-07:00

02.07.04

Goal! I would be a sicko if I didn’t mention anything about yesterday, right? And yet this is a bit unprecedented for me. I was never interested neither in football nor in basketball, even in the most important times, like yesterday.

I remember little Maro who made me be a sports-fan almost by force, just like all the 11- and 13-year olds. It was unjustifiable for her to remain indifferent to big sports events and she was worried that there would be no subject of conversation between my classmates and me. She used to tell my father: ‘Teach him how to be a fan of football at last! He is a boy!’. My poor father replied: ‘But he doesn’t want to. Can he do it against his will?’.

He took me to the pitch once to see Olympiakos. What a drag this was, with the red-and-whites! ‘What team do you support, son?’. ‘None. My dad wants me to be a fan of Olympiakos!’. I opened my mouth widely and held out cries of boredom. I couldn’t wait to go back home and work on my painting.

As I was graduating from the classes of primary school and later of high school, I did exactly the same thing. When the kids were playing outside during breaks, I didn’t even want to watch them. I was sitting all alone in the empty classroom and made whole stories on the notebooks of mathematics or physics. The others were used to it and didn’t even dare to engage in any conversation about teams or players with me. Even my mother was accustomed to my tendency to steer clear of such issues. [She even prompted me often to work on designing comics. I wanted to be a vet since I couldn’t find any other way of having a dog (we’re talking about persistence here, this is no joke!)].

CHOICE OR COMPULSORY CONDITION?

Do you want to know what I have come to understand as years pass by? I understood that we are not the ones to choose our interests but they choose us, and this is something that happens quite often. In other words, I believe that I would really love football or basketball if I could play myself, even with my school’s team. My abstention from things like that seems to be my choice but it’s not (at least not to the extent I initially believed).

Depending on the circumstances of your life, your activities choose you way before you choose them. You can simply make this whole thing a little less painful, if you manage to persuade yourself that nothing happens without you and that your life is exactly as you think it is. Something like that seems to be impossible to me, since none of us is so stupid as to believe that he/she has everything under control. From that point of view, our friend Dada is right when he says that disability is what makes you what you are if you have it, whether wanting it or not.

Someone else could reckon that it isn’t necessary to partake of activities that attract you anyway by simply watching them happening. This is true and under that condition what I’m doing now is writing pure crap.
Oh, we would be in such big trouble if we all had to be players of the National Football Team of Greece (how much money would we possibly earn?) just to watch last night’s game.

BALL OR FUSE-BOMB?

I am really happy that you are getting on well with each other when I leave you alone for a while. Personally, I agree with most things posted and I end up like this: If football is to keep our nationalistic instincts in check by acting as a way of defusing the ostensibly well hidden barbarity (as if such instincts can be judged), then I wish we could have championships every day.

On the other hand, if football or the view of modern mediated sports (this reminds me of Thompson or something) is just a trick to relax the vigilance of masses (and I honestly think that this is what it is), then we may as well take a look on our back from time to time.

WHERE IS THE BALL?

2006-09-07T02:27:00.000-07:00

02.07.04

There is a branch of the Emporiki (Commercial) Bank under our offices. About half a year ago, some guy arrived on his motorcycle. He got in the bank still wearing his helmet and told everybody that this was a robbery. Afterwards, he got the money and left like a gentleman. I didn’t find out if they finally managed to arrest him.
Since then, the bank is protected by young guards, who walk on the pavement in front of the main entrance. They carry a weapon on their belt and a club but they don’t seem wild at all. They’re all rather plumpy and have the sight of oxes. God knows how bored they are. Probably that’s the reason why they are always overjoyed with every passer-by they see; and they smile at him/her. For the same reason, they always welcome me as if I’m one of their friends or one of ‘theirs’ every time I’m ready to park my Yaris. You can’t even begin to think how they open up to me those so-called ‘hard’ guys. We’ve even exchanged phone numbers.

I was getting ready today to get in the garage when I saw a new guard from my window approaching my car: ‘Let it be, man, and wait till you see what I’ve got to tell you. I just lost my card, my salary and my identity card. How can I make it now, can you tell me?’. And so I reply: ‘Get ready for a robbery!’. The guy lost it: ‘Hey, not like that! What are you talking about! I shouldn’t be so open with you!’ was his remark.

What’s up with some people and they have no sense of humour at all – can you explain this to me? Can you imagine what is going to happen if the bank is robbed again? They’ll all turn and say: ‘This disabled guy is to blame! He was speaking of robberies a few days ago and he is not even disabled. He is just a liar!’. There are going to be roars of laughter!

LIVE IN FREEDOM (NOT IN ISOLATION)

2006-09-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

29.06.04

Your resilience and your patience are tested in many other situations as well, when you decide to abandon the comfort of your house, which has been adjusted to your needs, and have your holidays elsewhere. Whether your holidays are going to be relaxing depends to a great extent on what you’re going to come across at your final destination, because even if you have secured comfortable accommodation there are always surprises that might prove you wrong. In that case, you have to face things with optimism, in order to manage, wherever needed, to be inventive and find the ways to guarantee the independence you need; and this is how your independence equals your dignity.

Somebody comes and says: ‘Don’t worry, man, I’ll help you out’. You answer: ‘Thanks a lot for your help but I’d rather have everything else I need in order not to depend on you.’. This constitutes one more reason why we should address those who are –supposedly- entitled, either as officials or as simple fellow citizens, to undertake our social integration, although they wrongly believe that help is the solution to the problem of autonomous living or cohabitation.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

My friends and I at noon on Saturday. Vassilis, Pete or Panayiotis, Fani, Anders (Swedish) and I. We started our trip to Nafpaktos around 12 o’clock. If you ask me what I want to record, I will give you this answer: absolutely nothing. Some times, it’s enough to just say that you have a good time. On the other hand, I reckon that this recent trip is a good pretext to talk about the worries that wear me down every time that I am to travel.
When I say that they wear me down, I don’t mean at all that they dominate over my desire for action-escape but they definitely beset my little mind in the way that thunders strike a tree in the middle of nowhere during a rainy summer night. Trees don’t give in that easily. Neither do I. From that point of view, I can still get by with the beast I was talking about a few days ago. If I were to be scared to death every time a tiger screamed, I would now be lying on my bed, deprived not only of the ability but also of the desire to go out there and live. Of course, things are not exactly as I would like them to be. If they were, I would have no reason to be talking about my life. I wouldn’t even have the time to do that. I would be somewhere else. Not sitting on a desk.
Whatever happens, I pass on all those things, because those of you who just follow my way of thinking, as well as those of you who have been in a position similar to mine, know them already.

TRIP OR TROUBLE?

Those three days were really relaxing. We needed three hours to reach our destination and another three hours to go back. This was a short trip, comparing it to other trips I’ve done. I trusted my beloved car on this trip for the very first time.

I didn’t drive of course. I’m still scared of long distances and I get very tired when I have to make them. It’s this stupid nuisance (yes, from that point of view I’m really a nuisance) that tightens my legs like ironworks in every movement I make. [This happens even when I press the keys on the computer but what can I do? When I was little, I had the same difficulty when I played the piano, until my mother decided that I should stop the lessons.]
Anyway, Panayiotis and Vassilis were the ones to drive my car. I was relaxing in the seat next to the driver. Well, sort of relaxing. The loo is always a problem for travellers. I had to train myself enough to solve that problem. I used to need a regular toilet no matter what. Now I just need a tree or a prop and I feel really lucky that I’m a man.

We travelled once to Galaxidi (Natasha remembers that). Well, I had to contain myself for, like, 9 hours, since we were driving back and forth before we found a place to stay for the night. I was about to explode. I was thinking of a million other things in order to forget about this or even console myself. Among other things, I was thinking of the poor puppies that might have the same problem every time that their owner forgets to take them out and they know that they must never do ‘it’ at home. It’s a bit sad to think that your life might be similar to that of a dog. Personally, I have no problem with that. I love puppies so much that I could even suffer for them.

Many people wonder about my patience regarding such issues. Some times I wonder with myself. But I also wonder with some people’s stupidity, since they refuse to put themselves in your shoes. My so-called ‘friend’ Yiannis was also travelling with us then. ‘Shit yourself then!’, he was answering. And I’m asking you here: Were I to blame if I peed on his face? That’s what I’m trained for: not to be in need of any such idiot. Of course I had to pay the price for this ‘test’ to which I put myself. Throughout the years and because of the urine retention, I had kidney stones. Last year, I had a lithotripsy and some of them were destroyed. Very painful procedure, not only when you have to undergo it but later as well, when you go home and lie down on your couch, ready to watch some TV or to take your time and sip some coffee. The pains that come start to hurt very much and they are unbearable for your resilience; you come at the end of your tether. The only thing you can do is smile.

AND THE SHOW GOES ON

2006-09-05T04:24:00.000-07:00

25.06.04

I really want to talk to you about my experience from my participation in the theatrical group of our municipality. It has been long since I got my first acting classes. I think that they were life lessons in the end.

When I found out about the group, I was (or so I think) 19 years old. I didn’t really love theatre but I was rather sad about feeling like this. I wanted to find a way to come closer to that kind of art and I felt that participating in a theatrical group was the best I could do, if I wanted to convince myself that all those who work on theatre share something very precious. This precious thing was what I wanted to discover.

As happens with everything that I’ve done in my life, this new activity was another true challenge for me. At first, I thought that there was no place for me in the group. I thought that I would just have to play the grandpa on his wheelchair or the ice-cream man (unbelievable!), because of my situation. The truth is that I had guessed right. I had just been wrong regarding the importance of participation even through such parts. Now that I come to think of it again, I just believe that I felt uncomfortable, knowing that I would be the only one with a disability among others. Consequently, I gave negative responses to all their invitations.

When I refused to admit even the least important fact, in my stubbornness to prove that I was born for great achievements, I was indifferent to the efforts of amateurs to be devoted to what they love. I was really ridiculous from that point of view. While I kept an ever-larger distance from such things, I remembered Melina’s passion for the theatre (I’ve driven you nuts with that woman, I know. And yet I owe her a lot even if I didn’t get to meet her.). I was listening to her voice in my head, telling me to go. You can’t ignore a voice like that, no matter who you are: ‘If you don’t go, you’ll be a real idiot!’. In fact, she told me even worse things that I wouldn’t dare say.I lifted my head up and went to meet the gang. I was particularly impressed by the freedom we were given in terms of improvisation and creation. Although we were there to get to know things, we had every right to adjust teaching to our abilities and preferences. There’s no point in mentioning how easily I joined the group and . how cordially everybody admitted me. From the very first moment, I felt that every sort of insecurity within me didn’t exist any longer. I am sure things would be truly different if Vivi was not our teacher. If we loved theater to the fullest, we owe it to her as well, even when her professionalism made us often doubt this love.

A whole year had to pass in order to put on our first performance (‘The Dining Room’ by A. R. Gerny). When we called it quits with improvising, we had to call it quits with all the ideas that we had in the beginning regarding the role of the actor as the person who incarnates characters. Personally, I figured out in surprise that, when you put on a performance, you really have to overlook your tendency to build your part as you like it. At this stage, your ability to intervene –doubting your director’s instructions probably- is strictly limited.

This thing made me really mad, and it also made me doubt the importance of the theatrical act at first. Later on I understood that I was wrong. When your leader-director is remarkable (as Vivi was), what you have to do is trust him/her fully. This is the person who sees things that are invisible to you; not only because you are part of a performance but because you’re not always able to imagine the final result that comes out when you do follow the instructions given to you.
As a whole, I participated in two performances, playing two parts in the first and one in the second. Once a psychiatrist and twice a grandpa. Always on my wheelchair. At the end of every performance I felt what I described yesterday: the fact that I was being congratulated for no reason. I tried very hard indeed, since the rehearsals were killing us. We weren’t amateurs. We had become some sort of professionals and I don’t overdo it by saying so.

Nonetheless, I was always worried about something. As soon as clapping stopped, I started blaming myself, because, as I thought back then, I was unable to offer what the others did. I was still comparing between people and I always came last of course. I couldn’t understand that what I did was already a lot. I turned at the wall and kept myself at a distance from all those people who insisted on congratulating me. I heard everyone else celebrating the success of the performances and I felt that this enormously great feeling belonged only to them. As if all this was none of my business. I was the one to marginalize myself and this was becoming evident. I never shared those feelings with my friends; not because I thought that they weren’t able to understand me but because I didn’t understand myself either.

At one of the performances, my part had to be ‘chopped’ a little, since my wheelchair could not slide on the ground. I was asked just to scream my words and not appear at all. I preferred to quit. Luckily, I didn’t do that. A solution was found for me, thanks to everybody’s love. Someone else would push my wheelchair on the ground. I was a grandpa again and every sort of weakness would look justified because of my part. That specific grandpa was grumpy and had to beat the kids black and blue. Am I allowed to confess my sin? I was really happy to throw punches and slaps all over the place.

This was the last performance in which I participated. Locked doors that I had to unlock kept appearing in front of me. I faced my inner self for the first time ever through this procedure. I was tormented by the fact that I was kind of different from the others, since I couldn’t respond like them to the activities that were equally compulsory for me. It was unfair to compare myself to the others. It was also unfair to be jealous of the people who I loved. This is why I decided to go on a trip. This was no other than the trip of self-knowledge. If you ask me, this is a route that never ends.

A BEAST IS BY MY SIDE

Dada, my friend,
I don’t expect that my disability will make me a better person. You don’t have to be blind, deaf or paraplegic in order to feel things. You might even feel more than those who never had to fight for something. But then again, this is not something to be taken for granted.
Disability, my friend, is a beast. You can’t expect from a beast to domesticate you. You are the one to domesticate the beast and not the opposite. When I say that I don’t care about disability, I mean that I’ve found the way to stop regarding the condition of the disability as the worst condition of all, especially in my case. I was lucky in my bad luck and I do have to recognize that. How restrictive can cerebral palsy be, when compared to the threats of death or absolute poverty?
As for your idea on turning something bad into something good, I would perfectly agree with you if I believed in saints.
Thanks indeed for the counter-arguments. Keep writing.

WHEN I LAUGH YOU WILL LISTEN TO MY LAUGHTER AND WHEN I CRY YOU WILL LISTEN TO MY CRYING

2006-09-05T04:04:00.000-07:00

24.06.04

I was thinking of my confession the day before yesterday. All right, I am very satisfied now that I’ve admitted my selfish behaviour regarding everything that happens around the globe. I was impressed by the lightness with which I told you I was crying. When I thought about it again, the picture of a person came to my mind, a person who lives on a block of flats in Kypseli (as I used to, god bless me); this guy took his head out of the window that sees the skylight and decided to yell: ‘I’M CRYING, DAMNIT. DOES ANYONE HEAR ME?’.

I lived for many years on the 6th floor of a 10-floor (11 with the terrace) block of flats and I know very well how easily the whispers, the voices and the moans of those who live next to you, above or under your room, are spread. In that case, it might sound too much to speak of a community but it would be interesting to observe the ways with which anything collective mixes with anything personal and vice versa. From one point of view, even being exposed like that happens only with people’s consent. If they didn’t want to be heard, they would speak more slowly. If they didn’t want to be visible, they would pull their curtains. Likewise, if I didn’t want my feelings to be publicized, I would write to you only what’s necessary. This seems to be impossible for now. The strange thing is that I was being less honest than I am now when I was writing my personal diary in a notebook. It was easy for me to cheat myself, keeping everything that I wanted to ignore very well hidden. As for disability, no comment. This word isn’t written at all in my little notebook.

Your presence (even if virtual) makes me commit to confessing, yet without repressing me. It is impossible for me to tell you even a little lie or present things not the way they truly are. This doesn’t mean that I have to divulge everything, I just tell the truth when I decide to speak. Some people told me that what I write is too personal and doesn’t raise people’s interest. I’m sure that if they read my texts more carefully, they would find many similarities with their life. What on earth, I come from the same planet as well. We all live in the same world.
It’s natural not to give the same importance to their daily life. Those who let simple things pass by are those who never wrote a diary. I am often asked how I can remember my life in so many details. I live my life, I don’t just record it; this is why I remember. Furthermore, I am not afraid of memories. Sometimes one must have the guts to dig in your soul and bring things out. Let alone telling those things.

As I’ve told you, I always got the impression that everything I’ve lived is really worth of mentioning. If you ask me, this is a ‘virus’ that you can contract very easily when, especially because of the disability, you are used to the idea that everybody will have to do with you, even if this means that people will be looking at you on the street strangely. The only way to survive under those gazes of passers-by is to think of them as signs of attention that might help you when you need some reassurance. The same happens when your mother’s friends congratulate you because they happened to hear you play, some way or another, a tune on your guitar, or because they saw you speak on television or because they learned that you are attending postgraduate courses. It is then right to try not to take anyone seriously. Distinguishing someone even with positive attributes is still a kind of discrimination and the only way not to feel inferior when you undergo that is to suddenly get too big for your boots, knowing though that this is nothing more than a game to feel well.

You might assume that what I tell you is just a pile of simple words that try to justify my narcissist behaviour without success. Maybe it’s true. Nonetheless, I’m not used to blaming disability for all the bad things in my life. No matter what, the consequences of my decision to expose myself are rather positive. Being exposed like that would be truly unbearable for me if I hadn’t participated in the shows of the theatrical group of our municipality some years ago. The people who came to our performance were many (around 1,200 people). This experience taught me a lot, especially the way to keep focused on what I do without breaking myself into a thousand pieces amidst applause and whispers.

WORDS-IMAGES

2006-09-05T03:46:00.000-07:00

23.06.04

At first, I thought of posting the lyrics to an anti-war song. But when I turned the radio on, I listened to this great song of Don Mc Lean destroyed by Madonna. Maybe it doesn’t have much to do with what I want to describe but no other song could describe my bittersweet feelings better. Afterwards, I thought of posting a poem that I wrote a few months ago. I post here both. We can’t be miserly now, can we?

AMERICAN PIE

A long, long time ago I can still remember how that music used to make me smile and I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance and maybe they’d be happy for a while but February made me shiver with every paper I delivered, bad news on the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step, I can’t remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride but something touched me deep inside, the day, the music, died. So… Bye bye, Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry an then good ol’ boys were drinkin whiskey and rye singin this will be the day that I die, this will be the day that I die. Did you write the book of love and do you have faith in God above, if the Bible tells you so, and do you believe in rock ‘n’ roll, can music save your mortal soul and can you teach me how to dance real slow? Well I know that you’re in love with him cuz I saw you dancing in the gym you both kicked off your shoes and I dig those rhythm and blues. I was a lonely teenage bronkin buck with a pink carnation and a pick up truck but I knew I was out of luck, the day, they music, died. I started singin… Now for ten years we’ve been on our own and moss grows fat on a rollin stone but that’s not how it used to be, when the jester sang for the king and queen in a coat he borrowed from James Dean and a voice that came from you and me, oh and while the king was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown the courtroom was adjourned, no verict was returned, and while Lenin read a book on Marx, the quartet practiced in the park and we sang dirges in the dark, the day, the music, died. We were singin… Helter Skelter in a summer swelter the birds flew off with a fallout shelter, eight miles high and fallin fast, it’s the land that fell on the grass the players tried for a forward pass with the jester on the sidelines in a cast, now the half-time air was sweet perfume while the sergeants played a marching tune we all got up to dance oh but we never got the chance oh as the players tried to take the field the marching band refused to yield do you recall what was revealed, the day, the music, died. We started singin… Oh and there we were all in once place, a generation lost in space with no time left to start again, so come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack Flash sat on a candle stick because fire is the devil’s only friend, oh and as I watched him on the stage, my hands were clinched in fists of rage, no angel born in hell could break that satan’s spell and as the planes climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial right I saw satan laughing with delight, the day, the music, died. He was singin… I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news but she just smiled and turned away, I went down to the sacred store where I’d heard the music years before but the man there said the music wouldn’t play and in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed but not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken and the three men I admire most, the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day, the music, died, and they were singin… They were singin… Bye bye, Miss American Pie drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry an them good ol’ boys were drinkin whiskey and rye singin this will be the day that I die.

Red

Love has no red.
Red is the war on the roofs of the houses.
Peace has no blue.
Agreements are signed at night.
But the soldiers do not fall down.
Life and death in the same dish.
Television at full blast.
Love has no red,
It is the blood on the eight o’ clock news.
Ladies and Gentlemen, good night.

Nikolas Perdikares
October 2003

Pain can be turned into a song or poem. But anger becomes anger again. I was talking to a friend one day. He told me something very wise: ‘You have to let your anger go. You are furious.’.
I answered him: ‘Yes, I am, and I am very happy about that, because I know that I will do something great one day with this anger.’. He smiled and said: ‘You fool, don’t you know that we can never turn something bad into something good?’.
For some reason, people’s anger cannot be ‘evaporated’. It spreads like smog over the skies of the cities. When the whole thing is blurred, then there’s only music to direct us.

GOOD THINGS vs BAD THINGS

No matter how strange it might seem to you, I was really happy that Alexandra disagreed with me. Someone disagrees at last! Forgive me for the paradoxical way of bidding you good morning but I wanted to be more understandable, not to persuade Alexandra that I’m right but simply because I wanted to initiate discussion.
All right, I will use an example which is a little disgusting. Trying to turn something bad into something good is like trying to make the most of your excrement by spreading it on bread instead of praline-spread. You get rid of useless shopping by doing this but your excrement will always taste horrible, no matter what you do to persuade yourself for the opposite. Isn’t it then better to let excrement end up in the drain? You can buy a jar of orange jam or of true praline-spread for your slice of bread. Now there is also an example according to which dung can be turned into compost. But this can be of use to you only if you are (if you decide to be) a plant. Right?
I apologize for the disgusting thing but I really wanted to say that crap.

THE POWER OF THE WRITER IS ON THE STICK OF A MAGICIAN

2006-09-05T03:33:00.000-07:00

21.06.04

Konstantina, may all be well with you, I burst out laughing. I came at work bleary-eyed and you made my day! You might have been kidding but you’re absolutely right. This is the power of the writer, my dear. For instance, you never wondered what happened to all those people who were with me at various trips of mine? If I truly wanted to be fair, I should be describing their presents with such details as well, since they played their role in my stories. I would never do that. As if it’s not enough that I stick my fingers to the keyboard for hours, do I have to give them an equal slice from my narrative’s cake? If they want, let them start their own blog. We might be kidding now but there is always somebody wronged in the end of a story. We could write a whole essay for all that stuff.

As far as the hot issue is concerned, here is what I have to say: I accept that you become the Princess and I become the little rose, on the condition that you’ll water me regularly (some times, pour a little tequila too). There are responsibilities in power, do you know that? (You definitely know that.) I learned this very early and this was the reason why I kind of withdrew from associations and societies, not really out of fear for all kinds of responsibilities but more because of my being used to deny wasting my creative rush in procedures that require only the use of sense, and this mostly because of attachment to political ideologies related to specific ways of handling power and not practices of weakening power (since we can’t abolish it for good).Do I sound very academic? This is what happens to those who work on postgraduate studies. The conclusion is one anyway: If you want to be a Prince or a Princess (this second one is what I don’t want at all), there are good and bad sides as well within you. As for the comment on magic, what am I to say? I kneel! For now: I put a spell on you!

I WILL LIVE AS A FREE BIRD AND NOT AS A SUCKER IN THE CAGE

2006-09-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

21.06.04

It’s fun to figure out that every comment of yours can lead me to unbelievable associations of ideas. It’s really exciting to talk for canaries and end up being challenged by issues of freedom. I didn’t have to be a canary myself in order to feel awkward. As a human being, many were the times when I had to choose (like all of us, I presume) between the safety of the cage and the enchantment of the dangerous sky. I wish I could answer that I always chose the second but I know well that great insecurity is hidden behind the vision of every dreamer. I’d like to tell you that I am always ready to defy danger for the sake of challenge but if I said something like that I would be a liar.

It’s true that some times I surpassed myself by doing things that nobody else would neither dare nor imagine. And yet, when hard times come, I am a wreck. I let things go on in the best-case scenario. I close my eyes and start falling until I come up against the first obstacle that will send me back home to my favourite corner. I cover my head with the pillow until everything becomes dark. I sit there, covered up to the point of suffocation. Some times I am tempted to never breathe again. I feel free from the need of breathing. Of course, I am laughing at myself. I throw the pillow away from my face and take a deep breath. I turn around and face the light. A fiery sphere is in front of my eyes. I close them and see the various imaginary colourful shapes. Little red, yellow and blue signs, like those that tired travelers imagine at the end of the day.

‘There will be a day when I’ll get out of here. I’ll take with me only the things that are indispensable, i.e. my laptop and a few books, as well as the autographs of Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull and Manu Chao. I’ll hang Melina’s portrait off the wall. I’ll pack my little disco ball in a box and I will cover my out-of-tune guitar forever. I’ll give it to Antonis to take care of it and I’ll ask him to take me to the airport. I don’t know what to do with my dog, since I won’t be able to take him with me. I’ll ask my father to take care of him and not give in to my mother’s suggestions, who will rush to get rid of the dog, undoubtedly. I will not say goodbye neither to my brother nor to my sister. I’ll call them later from the place where I’ll be. I don’t like crying.’
Is this the sound of the airplane’s turbines that comes to my ears or not? It’s my mother who keeps on reminding me that I’m stuck with her care. ‘You’ll never manage to live on your own’, she tells me. I sulk; not because of indifference but because she is right when she says what she says and I can only recognize that every time I let her do things for me for no reason. When you grow up knowing that (because of your disability) there are things you can’t do, there is high probability that you’ll get used to the idea that such things are going to be done by others for you, even things that you can do yourself. To be honest, this happens to me quite often and, no matter how I hate admitting that, the responsibility is purely my own.It is then when I decide to do something that scares me, just to face the challenge. Take the car for a long ride and whatever comes may come. Take a trip to Lapland (I will talk to you about this experience at some point. When I make a mistake, I look at people in the eyes and smile. I’ve decided to play their game. I take the courage and say: ‘Forgive me, I didn’t want that. I am disabled.’. Isn’t this what they want me to be? That’s what I become. It’s great fun. Do you know that I had a hard time being able to utter that word without feeling absolutely anything? All right, I take advantage of that as much as I can.

Problems start when I engage myself in conversation with myself. In that case, I can’t laugh at anybody. I look at my pretty little cage and promise that I will always be finding the door that leads to the sky. I bet that I will live far from the parental safety. Some times, I am stuck with the repeated cancellation of my plans. I come close to the end of the rock. I look downwards to the new life that is waiting for me and turn around. I promise you that I will do this one day, I’ll touch everything that seems to be far or unreachable and I will not even turn and look behind me (another song written for my case). Anyway, when this time comes, I hope you’ll forgive me if I stop writing to you. It will definitely be for a good reason.