Delphi

I've just been thinking that what one feels at seeing all these centuries on top of each other (that's what this trip seems to be largely about) cannot really be expressed by describing ruins and statues -- or at least, i can't. Besides, that's done in much detail elsewhere. Just a few flashes, though:

--the rock where the oracle-women sat for centuries, probably from before 2000 a.C. How much of the behavior of kings and tyrants did they determine from this squat, unremarkable thing? I imagine them like a succession of toads on a toadstool, old and blind, blindly guiding the throng of humanity that came to consult them. Did they possess any true wisdom? If not truly prescient, maybe they were able to look into people's needs, or into their society's... Did they ever get tired and simply spit forward prefabricated formulas of the future? "When the sun no longer shines on your path, remember that drachma coins are stamped on both sides". It's fun to think that maybe one of them saw me here, too, a man dressed strangely, sitting in the shade, sliding a stick accross a piece of paper; it's sad to know probably none of them did.

--a swimming pool among the ruins of the town's gymnasium. Round, 15 metres across, could still hold water. Served as a goat pen for over a thousand years, when even the name of Delphi had turned into a legend and the people who now lived here didn't even know such a place had ever existed. Walking among the monuments of their ancestors perhaps they thanked them for building such sturdy sties.

--cats basking in the winter sun, among all these fallen human glories.

--a marble statue of Antinoo, so perfect, beautiful and life-like after lieing buried in a mountainside for 100 times the duration of its model's life... Neck and parts of the body still shining, as if the sculptors's hands had just finished polishing the white stone; tiny holes among his locks, where a golden laurel crown was once anchored. Story has it Antinoo drowned in a river to save his lover, some roman emperor or other. The bereaved was so devastated that he elevated Antinoo to godhood, and had him adored throught the empire. His cult survived for four centuries: he symbolized loyalty. I can't read it on his face, his expression is too forlorn. I think that, though the face be that of the dead, the sculptor put in it the expression of the one lover left alive.

--a corner of the sea in the distance. The ancient port through which pilgrims use to arrive in waves is now a fishers's village, pilgrims turned into 5 or 6 tourists with digital cameras. The whirring lenses, extending or retracting, try to capture the present. They'll have as much success as the oracle ever did with the future, i suppose.

Martha

Martha went to the shoe shop and saw that it was closed. She started screaming. Why?

She is claustrophobic.

Hah-hah.

Gythio

It's noon of a very pleasant day here in Gythio, and i'm on a tiny island right in front of town. Well, technically, it's not an island anymore, because someone's built a road that connects it to the mainland. On the farther side stands a lighthouse and i'm sitting on the coast, a few meters from it. From here i can see the middle finger of the Mani, all the way to its tip. It is, again, a mostly mountainous peninsula, but at stretches, towards the south, the land becomes lower, and at times it sinks under the horizon, so that the parts that emerge from it look like islands. The clear skies and the long views here make obvious the curvature of the Earth: people living in this area must have wondered about this in the oldest of times, perhaps not only philosophers or 'great' thinkers, but simple fishermen and farmers.

The rocks i'm sitting on have sharp edges, corroded by the rain. They are calcareous, porous, cratered as if fruit eaten by birds and striated and puckered, like elephant skin. If this kind of rock is common around here, there should be at least some caverns in the area. Must find out about that.

Onwards to Gythio

Am in Gythio, a tiny port in Lakonia. Got here by bus a couple of hours ago. The Peloponnesus is even more mountainous than central Greece: elevations are perhaps lower, but valleys are fewer and smaller. The light cloud cover over Athens became thicker as we moved west and south, and soon it was raining. The country looks, again, too green for winter, and olive and orange trees are everywhere, accompanied by the ever-present cypresses. The sun pierced the clouds here and there, falling now on the water of Saronikós Kolpós and later on the hills, until it set behind them.

Highlights along the way were the Corinth canal which, narrow and deep and smooth-walled, separates the Peloponnesus from the rest of the continent. Then there was Sparta, which i hope to visit on my way back north.

Speaking of Sparta, as we were leaving it a small Peloponnesian war erupted on the bus, and the main contenders were the bus driver and the man sitting next to me. Having as background not one but two cultures where people complain and argue loudly, the episode wasn't so unfamiliar to me, but it did get pretty scary at one point, as the two seemed on the edge of hitting each other. What they were yelling was all greek to me (har-har!), but basically it all started because some ten passengers got on the already full bus at the terminal in Sparta. The bus driver complained loudly at the guy who was checking the tickets, but nothing doing, they got on and had to stand on the aisle. Some started smoking and then there was also a strong smell of salami, and i thought "this is like home!" Of course, if the company has no more buses to send, we'll all make room. No problem with me, particularly as it was just another 45 k to Gythio. As they kept repeating this name, by the way, i also understood most of them would get off here.

In any case, we were still on our way out of the city when the bus stopped again, and some ten more people came aboard. The bus driver grumbled and fumed again, but the eruption actually took place right next to me: my seat companion yelled very loudly at the driver, the many 'a's and 'o's and 'u's of greek rising in volume, 's's and 'z's spewing everywhere. The driver reacted: he stood up, still yelling, and came towards us. The guy next to me got to his feet, too, and turned, as if to leave his seat; i leaned casually away, against the window, trying to take some distance from the approaching battle -- and from his butt, which was almost in my face now. We were on the third row, but before the driver could get too near, thankfully those on rows one and two intervened, as did most everyone else, standing and sitting, all the way back to the bottom of the bus. We spent some five to ten minutes like this, with this guy very aggressively shouting, the bus driver angrily answering back, not less loudly, and everybody else gabbling more or less conciliatorily.

From some gestures and hand signals, i thought i understood that the man next to me wasn't really bothered by the people standing, but more by the fact that he thought it quite unsafe for people to travel standing on a long distance bus. The road here is quite sinuous, after all... It then downed on me that we ARE in the European Union after all, for nobody back home would have made such a fuss over the matter (although, to tell the truth, our long distance buses in Argentina are luxurious, compared to any i've seen in either Europe or the US).

I also felt for the poor driver, as perhaps his choices were very limited. Maybe he would have gotten in trouble with his employers if he had decided not to take on the extra passengers. But then, aren't we in the European Union? Wouldn't he be protected by law?

Anyway, back to Gythio: a row of picturesque houses, cafes and tavernas alongside the shore, and the rest of the village rising behind, on a hill that rolls down almost to sea. Clouds parting, the moon over the water together with anchored fishing boats. My hotel window looks right out at this, over a tiny balcony.

An old cemetery

This afternoon I walked around Athens, from Syntagma to Omonia and then to the Keramikos, the cemetery of ancient times, which is basically a huge open-air museum of death through 15 centuries: from pre-classical Greece, through roman times and beyond. I sat on the grass in this necropolis for a couple hours, my head resting against the ancient city walls, surrounded by ruins, stele, sculptures and un-excavated mounds. I read a novel, and beyond this green, fenced-off island of sandwiched time, the city went on, uncaring: heavy traffic, smog, even trains, to my left, rumbling in and out of the ground.

More from Athens

Today i've remained in the Plaka section of Athens, visiting the Akropolis and the Agorá and walking through the many little winding streets in the neighborhood. I suppose i couldn't have done anything more touristy, but as there are not so many tourists this time of year, i didn't feel like such a schmuck. Besides, people here are such that they don't make you feel an outsider. Everybody smiles and is helpful. Maybe it's the season.

I liked the parthenon very much, and imagined Socrates sitting on its steps, talking to his students. He might have never done this, but then again, he might. The caryatids in the erechtheion were even more eye (and imagination) catching. Later i found out they are not the originals, but casts of them; nevertheless, i thought them fascinating. They are all slightly different in their dress and accoutrements, in the way their hair falls over their shoulders, and even in their pose. I also thought they looked quite suggestive, exposing one leg forward, barely covered by the rocky folds of thin clothes that, if real, would have been transparent. The classics must have been aware of the erotic element in these sculptures, and it must have been even stronger then, since in their society women were so covered and hidden. How would they have looked at sculptures in general? There are a few in the Acropolis museum and the stoa Attalou that are seriously hypnotic, even though many of them are mere fragments of lost wholes, or severely damaged by weather, pollution, martial conflicts or, that old favorite of mine, religious fanaticism. In spite of it all, treasure survives: an enigmatic face that seems to take in air through parted lips; a portrait of a serious, bearded man who obviously never heard a 'no' in his life; the weighty, robust and essentially masculine foreleg and shins of a wrestler; the exquisitely detailed toes of a rider by the heaving barrel chest of a horse – all else gone...

Later i walked to the theater of Dionysus, where the plays of Sophocles and Aeschylus were put up for the first time... over 2500 years ago! The stone seats are still there, and i sat on one for a while, imagining the actors and their voices, and wondering whose eyes might have been looking from the position of mine when Antigone or Oedipus Rex were performed first. Who might have been by my side? Who in front and behind me?

I climbed to the Areos Pagos, where around 50 a.d. saint Paul spilled the sermon to the athenians as it appears in the new testament (it was after that, i suppose, that they started defacing the sculptures that represented the deities and the work of their ancestors).

Then, in the Agorá, i tried to visualize the people that walked through these ruins when they weren't such, or those who might do so in the future, when as much time passes as has now passed since the now scattered marble blocks were whole buildings. What did/will they think? What were/will be their daily affairs and concerns? It's sweet not to know, and makes me want never to die.

I was seriously pooped after all the walking up and down and around the hillsides, so i stopped at a cafe and ordered an epanakotyropita (the only greek word i know, apart from ‘thank you’: efharisto!), which is a delicious cheese and spinach confection that i devoured in two minutes. I ordered another, and this time i took five.

Athens

Arrived in Athens a couple of hours ago and am now at a cyber on Syntagma square. The ferry, which was supposed to drop me in Igoumenitsa at 7:30, didn't get there until around 10:30, but the advantage was that i got to see the sun dawn over Kerkira, and it was majestic.



From Igoumenitsa i took a bus to Ioannina, and from there, at 14:30, to here. Getting from the Athens bus terminal to the hotel took about 45 minutes, as there's a public transport strike and traffic is crazier than usual – or so says the hotel manager.

My first impressions of Greece have been wonderful. The landscape, to begin with, is amazing. I was trying to compare it to other Mediterranean countries, but it's not possible. In the over 500 k of this land i've covered today, mountains are visible from everywhere (i guess that explains the ragged contour of the coast) but large valleys and plains are interspersed abundantly enough that there is a sense of openness wherever you are. As for the weather, it's an incredibly mild december. At 2:30 pm in Ioannina, northern Greece, it was 20C. Many trees and bushes are bare, and crops have already been harvested, yet the mixture of species seems incompatible: mountainsides are covered with scrawny xerophytes, yet rivers run everywhere and some trees, still green and luscious looking, grow in the valleys and hillsides. Many of them are covered by mats of ivy.

Alongside the roads (there is no true highway until 50 or 60 k out of Athens) you can see tiny shrines standing on poles perhaps a meter tall, some of them with offerings of candles and flowers. A few are quite elaborate and imitate miniature orthodox churches, but others are simply square boxes with some holy image inside and a cross on top. The only other place i've seen a similar practice is Argentina.

People are very friendly. There's again that harmonious chaos i saw in Bari, but people here are much more... receiving. Anyone you ask help of will try their best to give it, even when they can't understand what you're saying. The old lady sitting next to me on the bus insisted that i eat some of her chocolate, and the taxi driver offered me a cigarette every time he was about to smoke one himself – which he did three times in 45 minutes. I'd read somewhere greeks smoke a lot, and indeed, they do.

Athens doesn't seem dirty at all, though. Maybe it's because it's night and i haven't seen much yet, but all i can see is that it's bustling with life.

Crossing over

On the trip back from Greece i'll definitely upgrade my ticket, so that i can get a cabin to sleep in. It's 2:10 in the morning and i haven't been able to go truly under for more than a few minutes, although i've been trying since around 10:00 pm. At first i was a little seasick, because in spite of it's great size, the boat rocks a lot. I soon got over that though, but then the problem is that there are no comfortable seats to at least recline on. Am sitting at a bar, early deserted, but the chair is hard under my butt and my neck feels uncomfortable, whether i lay it on my arms on the table before me or on the wall behind. Legs and arms fall asleep in some positions and, since they do, i obviously can't.

So, i've decided to wake up, breakfast on the panettone i bought yesterday, and write and read a little.

Speaking of yesterday, it was an uneventful day. Woke up late, went to Feltrinelli and bought "I.O.U.", a book on third world debt cancellation that sounds promising. Spent a few hours reading it and drinking cappucinos. There is not much in the city of Bari that can't be seen in a day and, if there is, i've missed it. What i did in the afternoon was to sit for a long while on a bench by the coast, looking at the waves smash against the breakwaters, piqued by quite a heavy wind. I noticed that seagulls floated like kites in it, responding to strong gusts with those same sudden changes in flight direction i remember from my childhood. Bari has a definitely dramatic seafront.

- - - - o - - - -

My computer is running out of batteries, so i'll finish with this final comment: the love life of sharks is a truly complicated affair. With so many teeth going around, it is hell to kiss properly, and love bites are truly something to die for.

Strolling, and a strange talk

It's 11:46 pm and today has been a really eventful day.

I woke up early and walked down to the port, where i finally arranged to get a boat ticket to Greece. Am leaving for Igoumenitsa at 7:00 pm tomorrow, and will be arriving there on Thursday at 7:30 in the morning.

From the port i entered the old city and walked around its labyrinthine streets, visiting the cathedral and the norman-swabian castle. There wasn't much to see in the latter, as most areas are closed off, either because excavations are going on or due to repairs. On the other hand, the narrow winding ways and their chaotic traffic were quite charming. I read somewhere that in centuries past, when invading hordes threatened Bari, they were wary of entering this maze, as it was famous for the ease with which men got lost in it. Once they were disoriented, neighbors easily picked them off from roofs and windows.

Under a light rain, the place was a confusion of fruit vendors, fishermen (actually saw the tiny lights of their boats out on the bay yesterday night, from the plane), christmas decorations, smells and pastries, old italian ladies dressed like my grandmothers used to, cars and people sharing the strangled, unevenly paved lanes, the ancient limestone walls of still inhabited buildings, gnawed by time... Yet there is harmony in the way everything doesn't quite fit together. Nowhere in northern Europe can one see this organized discordance.

The high point of the day was my visit to the temple of santa Claudia. Beautiful construction in apulian romanesque style, and in one of the lateral naves there's the grave of the saint herself. There you can listen to small, intimate masses.

As i was leaving the building, i saw a woman come out of the confessionary, and another one go in. There was a tiny red light on the door next to the one she'd entered, indicating that the priest was in. And mimicking that light, an unlikely idea blinked on in my crazy brain: what if i were to go in next and talked to the priest about my experience as a homosexual man raised in the catholic tradition?

You see, a few weeks ago i wrote a dialogue on this blog, imagining such a talk. I feel christianity in general and catholicism in particular have been extremely negative forces in the lives of many gay people. Religion-inspired morals constitute the main factor that keeps homosexual matrimony from being legalized in most countries, but that is only the most visible of evils the church has inflicted on gay men and women: worst of all are the self-loathing, the guilt, the low self-esteem, the depressions that many go through. Because of the anger i feel at this, my imagined dialogue was quite simplistic: in it i left the priest without words or justification, made him apologize, humbled him as i believe the church should be humbled for the pain it's caused. Of course, i realized such a dialogue was unrealistic when i wrote it, not the least because, if i were now to use the aggressive and prideful tone my character uses on the text, the priest might simply tell me to go away (pride is always bad in a religious setting; have you noticed that?).

Besides, i really didn't want to attack the priest this time. I wanted to hear about the church's position on homosexuality from the mouth of a church-man. In spite of everything i've read about it, i'd never gotten the information from the source, and this was the perfect occasion.

So, while the woman was inside, i thought about how i was gonna go about it. First, i didn't want to tell the guy any lies about my background. Second, i wanted to be sincere about the way i saw things, but without attacking his organization. Third, i intended to remain as open-minded as possible. Fourth, i didn't want to tell this man what i thought the church should do, but rather hear what the church is doing. Fifth, i was determined to stay calm.

In the end, we talked for about 10 or 15 minutes. The priest struck me as very friendly from the moment i saw him. He must be in his mid-fifties and sports a thick, blond beard that doesn't hide the openness of his expression. His voice is calm. He was able to talk in a relaxed fashion about the issues i raised, much more easily and naturally than i'd expected. I wish i'd had a tiny tape recorder tucked somewhere but, having lacked it, here's a transcription of the talk, paraphrased and translated and as near-to-reality as i can remember it:

-- Come in, come in!

-- Good morning, padre. I'm actually not in here for confession, but because i would like to talk with you about something that's very important to me, if you have the time. I'm not from this city and although i was brought up catholic, i've grown distant from the church. I haven't been inside one as a worshipper in many years. Mainly this is because i'm disillusioned with it and yes, because of it, also with catholicism, particularly because of its views on homosexuality. I can't understand how love can be a sin. Why is it bad for two men who love each other and want to commit to share their lives to also share sex? Why is it impossible for them to get married in the eyes of the church?

-- OK. First, let me ask you: how did you actually become disillusioned with the church? Was it first hand experience that pushed you away from it?

-- Well, yes and no. As a young kid, i didn't feel i knew the priest well enough to talk to him about these things. He wasn't very accessible, but of course i'm talking about 15 or 20 years ago. Nevertheless, as i grew up and had to come to terms with my sexuality, i discovered that most of my problems with accepting myself could be traced back to the morals taught to me by the church. So yes, my priest wasn't very open or inspiring, but no, nobody i knew at my church was directly nasty to me because of my sexuality. There were other issues that made me lose faith in the organization, but they are not related to this.

-- I ask you because nowadays we priests get very particular directives on how to discuss this topic. It's more common than you might think, and many come to us to talk about their homosexual feelings, not only men, but also women. We know homosexuality has always existed, and that many famous people in the past, especially artists [?!?!?], have been homosexual. These are people with a superior sensitivity (that's why so many of them are artists) [again, !?!?!?], people who have difficult lives already, because they are surrounded by a society that's hostile to them. Only a few, and later, after much suffering, decide to live their lives openly, not caring about their communities or families [huh!?!?!?]. So we are cautioned not to be harsh. Have you read any of the documents the church has published about this?

-- No, I can't say i have.

-- Well, they are not harsh at all. But to answer the questions you asked before, i have to make it clear to you that it all comes down to the scriptures. We might get into a discussion of everything else, but that is the bottom line. I don't know if you want to argue about this: i might say that homosexuality is unnatural, but you might argue that it is also found among animals, or that sex is not only used for procreation. That kind of thing.

-- No, no. I realize the scriptures are the real issue with the church. What do they say, exactly? I'm afraid i haven't read the bible since i was very young. Does Jesus say anything against homosexuality? Why can't the sacrament of matrimony unite people of the same sex? Where does it say that i'm immoral? I don't want to sound proud, but i consider myself a moral person, in that i try to be careful with my actions, so that they don't hurt others. We all make mistakes and have oversights, of course, but that is what being moral means to me.

-- Of course, i am sure you are. And part of it probably comes from having suffered and been marginalized. That is why Jesus said to the pharisees that prostitutes and thieves were closer to the kingdom of heaven [encore: ?!?!??!] than themselves, and that is why the church does accept and embrace homosexuals; only the practice of homosexuality is a sin. Jesus himself doesn't talk much about homosexuals. It's saint Paul who condemns homosexuality and effeminacy [!!!] of any kind. Jesus does say, however, that matrimony is to be between man and woman. The sacraments are seven, and they are what they are: they cannot be changed, added or subtracted from. Take people who divorce, for instance: they are breaking a promise they had made to god. In the same way, a catholic homosexual person has a compromise with god not to practice homosexual sex, or any sex outside marriage, for that matter. This is something that concerns heterosexuals too. Men come here and speak about how they love both their wives and their lovers, but that is not right in the eyes of god; you were talking about love before, but it's not love that's the problem, you see.

-- Then it all comes down to accepting scriptures, whether we find them logical or not, whether there is a reasoning behind them or not. I can't understand why love isn't enough.

-- Be careful there. We cannot be christians unless we accept the word of god as it is. We cannot question it. But here: have you ever wondered why god made you like you are? He has a purpose for us all, and he must have had a purpose in making you homosexual.

-- Yes, i used to ask myself that question all the time, but i never found a satisfactory answer.

-- Well, think about it.

-- Mm-hm. Thank you, father. I really appreciate this talk and the time you've given me.

-- I'll pray for you. You say a prayer for me, too.

-- Thank you. Have a good day.

And i left. For some reason, by the time our conversation ended, i was almost in tears. I couldn't think why: i was not sad. I hadn't heard anything new, had i? There had been some inexactitudes, generalizations and unhappy parallels drawn, but the man had tried to be as open and helpful and kind as possible. Perhaps, because i was nervous about broaching the topic of my sexuality with someone i didn't know, and because of my perhaps obvious display of emotion towards the end, he'd been led to believe that i was having a real conflict with my sexuality. Regardless: the conversation felt good, as did his treatment of me.

In any case, it took me some 20 minutes to realize that what i felt was an immense sense of... exhilaration! I mean, we had gotten to the true bottom of the issue! A church person had just told me that i could not be catholic! Indeed, i could never accept a text without questioning it, no matter who is claimed to have written it! Some might say that it's a question of faith, and that i lack it, but i would contend it is a matter of trust in individual humans, instead. The church is made up of men; it is a human institution. There have been better and worse popes and priests, but they have all been men, with human ambitions and interests. Priests have translated and interpreted scriptures, too, and in 2000 years of very turbulent history, they may have manipulated them, too. Finally, however much they believed their hands were being guided by god when they were writing the gospels, the apostles were human, too.

Anyone out there wants NOT to be catholic with me?

After midnight

Rereading yesterday's entries (which i actually finished only a few minutes ago), am noticing too many references to men and gayness. Maybe i'm getting horny, but if that were the case i'd probably be able to tell (you'd think! hah-hah). More likely, i just miss having someone to hang out and share my time with.

Am definitely open to getting to know people, though there's nothing yukkier than meeting someone you really like and then leaving after a couple of days -- or weeks, in this case. And for the time being at least, home is back in the north, so staying is out of the question. Maybe i should try to be more sociable with Lars Jon. He's this farmer who lives up there with his sister, probably the only openly gay man in a 10 k. radius, apart from me. He seems nice and all, but it might be hard to communicate, as my norwegian is nearly as good as his english, or so i hear. It's pathetic that we live so close to each other and we've never really spoken. I don't think he even knows there's another gay man living 200 meters from him! Oh, well...

La sera...

Am in Bari now, and it's almost midnight. This pension i'm staying at closes its doors at midnight which, of course, gives me the perfect excuse to have already turned in... It's only an excuse though, because we all know that unless i went to the movies, i wouldn't really have much to do out at night, particularly having arrived in this place already after dark. Yes, am a bit chickenshit, and if i haven't seen a place by daylight, i don't feel comfortable strolling around it at night!

I suppose i could go to some gay bar or other, but don't like the places much. In my experience, people mostly go there to fish for lays, and that's old. In my crazy days in Philly and MN i behaved like a real... whaler (was gonna write hook, but that's too close to hooker, and one thing i never did was to get paid for it. No sirree!).

Did go out to a café a few blocks from here though, and got a couple of sandwiches and a coke: my dinner (incidentally, the men and woman behind the counte -- gay, all three).

My room here is nice, though it smells a bit musty, or old. I don't know. It's a familiar smell, though i can't place it. The building certainly is old: ceilings two and a half times my height, floors with red and white tiles that form psychedelic rows of rhomboids, narrow double doors and a window to match, with decrepit locking mechanisms. The bathroom is at the end of the corridor and i dread having to bathe in it tomorrow, as it is dirtier than my own ever gets back home, and that's saying a mouthful, as anyone who's spent any time in my house knows well.

The place is looked after by two men, father and son, i assume. The younger guy can only be a little younger than me. He's cute in a dorky kind of way, with longish greasy hair that'd have looked better in the 70s. Unwittingly, i start making up stories about the place and the men: perhaps the house is so run down because the mother died not so long ago, or maybe the guy seems so awkward because she left years back and he had to grow alone with his dad, or maybe she didn't die or leave at all and i just haven't met her yet.

Oh, one last thing: i got screwed by the taxi driver who brought me from the airport. Not literally, fortunately (guy was bold, old, ugly, smelled bad and had a bad temper, apart from being dishonest). What happened was that i ended up taking a taxi with 3 other men who were waiting for the bus at the airport. Because we had 30 more minutes to wait, we decided to pay a taxi together instead, but the bastard ransacked us. 10€ each!

Two of the guys were a couple, i think. They kept whispering all the way, and it seemed to me i could tell they were together. Did i imagine it or were they holding hands under their coats?

Lunedì lunare

Been waiting at Stansted for a while. My flight to Bari is at 17:20, but i woke up early today, as it seems the sleeping marathon of saturday and sunday managed to pacify my internal zombie. Stayed at the german YMCA, having arrived there at around 20:30 yesterday eve. Tried to catch a movie (really want to watch Narnia!), but got off at the wrong tube station and ended up in Covent Garden, which is filled with theatres, but no movie-playing ones. Walked all the way back to the hotel (about 4 or 5 k, i suppose), hypnotized by the Xmas lights strung all over the city. They ARE beautiful, though i wonder who's footing the electricity bill.

Another thing i like about London is that its architecture makes me feel that i'm in a parallel reality in which the Roman empire never fell. So much in this city is an echo of ancient Rome! Come to think of it, i've read somewhere that the present western civilization can be traced in so many ways back to Rome --law, politics, architecture, art, costumes, food, worldview-- that for all practical purposes, we're still living in the empire. The capital simply moved from Rome to London, and later to Washington DC (i remember now who wrote this: it was Frank Herbert in one of his Dune books).

Anyways. Today i've also been reading a guide to Greece, to plan my trip there. Finally managed to reserve a room at a pension in Bari, too. "Fiorini", it's called (Via Imbriani 69).

- - - - o - - - -

Was forgetting to tell a funny incident that happened to me this morning at an internet cafe. I asked the guy in charge for the price of an hour of internet, but instead of answering he kept trying to sell me a phone card of some kind. He insisted, and i kept saying no... Politely, explaining that my stay in London would be very short, but consistently repeating: no, no, no... At one point, he must have given up and switched to telling me what i'd asked for, but by then i'd stopped paying attention to what he was saying, somehow focusing on his voice rather than his words. So i went on: "No, thank you. I just need to check my e-mail and write some messages." I only realized he wasn't talking about the card anymore (and hadn't been for who knows how long) when he half-yelled "that's what i'm telling you! The price for an hour is £2.00." I said "oh, sorry", paid, and got on the computer.

Thinking back on the whole incident, i still don't really understand what i was thinking of. Is it that, since english is not my 1st language, i turn it off more easily? Or was it that i was concentrating too much on keeping calm and polite? Or maybe he'd changed topic, but his voice kept the intensity of the sales pitch; perhaps he was a little upset for not having managed to sell me the friggin' card. Perhaps i just got distracted because he was a yummy looking guy. Boh!

Speaking of yummy guys, there's this one sitting in front of me now... Must be 35-40, thin golden earring in nostril, shaved head, smoking a cig, big and tall and strapping. Oh, just got up and left. Bummer. Dang stewardess announcing departure of flight to Cork!

First truly free Sunday! Yay!

I left Flekke yesterday morning, with Dwight and Aura. We had to catch the 8:45 bus and D. was supposed to pick me up at 8:15, but when he didn't show up by 8:17 i knew he'd overslept. Walked to his home and, indeed, he was still in Morpheus' arms. We ended up arriving at the bus stop at 8:35. I slept all the way on the bus and only woke up when we got to Rysjedalsvika. Once on the boat, i fell asleep again.

It rained all the way, and it was raining when we arrived in Bergen at around noon. I went straight to Anita's, left my luggage and went out again to rent a DVD from the DVD bank. Watched "Blade Trilogy" or something like that, with Wesley Snipe and the big sister from 7th Heaven. Silly movie, but funny takes: 70s action films with weird camera angles and lots of special effects. It passed the time.

My taste in movies horrifies all my friends, i know. Gotta live with it. Anyways, the DVD bank is a great idea: if you return the movie within 3 hours of having rented it, you pay only 10 kroner.

I seem to have been very tired, too. Slept since 4:00 pm yesterday till 8:00 this morning, right on the sofa, waking up only once, at around 2:00 am, to go to the loo. In the morning i showered, started reading "El anatomista", by Federico Andahazi (best novel i've read in a long time! Just finished it now.) and went to rent another movie. This time it was "A Dirty Shame", by John Waters, the guy who made "Pink Flamingos" back in the 70s. Anyway, it's A MUST SEE! I laughed my head off. One of the most memorable scenes comes towards the end: it features David Haselhoff (as David Haselhoff!) taking a dump in an airplane toilet. Until that moment, neither him nor planes of any kind have been part of the plot (although there was one incidental reference to the Knight Rider) so the whole thing comes totally out of the blue. Anyway, as David craps (don't worry, the camera only focuses on his face), the bottom of the plane breaks and the contents of the septic tank tumble through the air. The camera follows this mass of feces – luckily not too closely, but close enough for us to see that it freezes over as it falls (interesting bit of totally-out-of-place realism there). Finally it hits a man on the head, knocking him down, giving him a concussion and turning him into a sex addict. Neither David Haselhoff nor the plane appear again in the movie.

Four paragraphs for a day and a half of holidays, half of one referring to David Haselhoff and his crap. Can't be too good a sign.

- - - - o - - - -

As i wait to board the plane that'll take me to Stansted, i'm just remembering a thought that came to me while on the bus to the airport, earlier today. I found myself pondering that everything is all right in the world, that even suffering and the worst injustices will be redeemed or explained at some point. It shocked me that i was considering such a reactionary idea, and bordering on the religious, too! Perfect for being subverted to support the status quo. Thing is, the only way pain can be redeemed is if we do everything possible to stop it, but we're not very good at it yet. I think there are signs out there that humanity is maturing, beginning to transform all its pains and whimsies into compassion and reason. I don't know.

Anyways, they're calling us aboard, now. Gotta go.

Winter

I walked to Flakis in the dark. My nose tingled, and my ears. On the side of the road, last week's snow is by now packed into a solid mass, and on the road itself, where it hasn't been rubbed off by the passing of many wheels, it's become a slick surface that echoes the tiniest suggestion of light: the last glimmers of daylight among the clouds, farm lights in the distance, the glow of my mp3 player. At one point, in this gloom and cold, my ears where being pumped by the recorded chirps of spring birds. The contrast was jarring, and sweet.

- - - - o - - - -

Before my norwegian class, i sat at one of the tables outside Flakis shop and smoked a cigarette. The wooden surface was coated in tiny, glittering crystals condensed (how?!?) from the dry air, too brittle and crisp to support smoke. Whorls and clumps of it drifted from the tip of my cig, sank and got snagged on the itsy-bitsy irregularities of the planks, then lazily broke up, and finally dissolved.

- - - - o - - - -

Every morning, new frozen tracks appear on the walls of my house, on my door, on my windows. They are thin, curved, swirling lines that look as if some gravity-defying goblin had been ice-skating on these vertical planes. Combined, they form a fuzz that seems to grow from buildings, a white mildew-like blanket that speaks of age and time passing slowly, silently, smoothly creeping along. Which is, of course, the essence of winter.

Stayed up til 4:30

cleaning my kitchen. I slaved over dishes and pans, cleared cupboards, sponged the fridge, washed the floor... Started at 11:00 pm. The kitchen is definitely my least favorite part of the house. Except when I eat in it, of course. But that happens rarely.

Gemina

Last friday we were visited by Gemina, a Malaysian woman who has been living in Sweden for several years now. Seropositive since the early nineties, she had an amazing and heart-rending story to tell. Raped and infected as a teenager by a "friend" of her family, she had a daughter who died (of AIDS, she later found out) at six months.

Unaware of their condition, when her daughter was born Gemina began to prostitute herself in order to be able to feed the child. Soon after the death, she found out she was pregnant again, and remembered a swedish missionary who had approached her sometime earlier, offering god's forgiveness and a better life. It was at the insistence of this contact that she was given the HIV tests that confirmed she had the virus.

This swedish mission in Malaysia helped educate her, taught her english and, eventually, brought her to Sweden, where she has been working as an activist with HIV and AIDS since the late 90s. At one point, while still in Malaysia, she became very sick and had to give her daughter up for adoption, for she could not care for her. The girl was 4 or 5 years old at the time and was adopted into an American family. Gemina is in contact with the adoptive parents, but not with her daughter (she says the parents think it might upset the girl, who is now 13 years old and neutralized the virus very early on).

Finally, in 2004, Gemina married Knut, a swedish man she'd known for some time. He is seronegative, seems to love her very much and is, like her, a very religious man. They became pregnant 7 months ago after a lot of deliberation and careful thinking. Knut and Gemina explained that the amount of virus in her blood is minimal and very much under control, thanks to medicine she takes regularly (incidentally, the swedish government pays for such medicine for all patients in the country; the cost is about 10,000.00 SEK per person per trimester). Knut pointed out that, thanks to this medicine, it is very difficult for Gemina to pass the infection to anyone; "doctors don't say it's impossible for the sole reason that doctors can't say such things", he remarked, and explained that the unborn child has at most a 2% or 3% chance of becoming infected.

These are the bare facts as i was assembling them while their presentation was going on. An incredible story, particularly because the resilience of someone like Gemina is truly inspiring.

On the other hand, while Knut and Gemina were speaking, it became obvious that the source of all their strength is their idea of god. It's a christian god; Jesus was mentioned over and over, and although tolerance for other religions was mentioned frequently in their speech, i was amazed to see how some among our students (one boy, in particular) kept insisting that this god of theirs be named. He was very christian, too, and because their god was his, too, he needed everyone present to know who had worked this miracle. He said stuff like "Praise Jesus!" and "Jesus, yes!", as they do in some of those revivalist services i've only seen on TV.

Not that i have anything against individual religious believes, nor do i feel that their faith takes anything from Gemina's and Knut's stories. On the contrary, i'm glad they have something that pulled them through their worst times. It's just that the underlying message is always the same: "only my god can make such wonderful things happen, and if you don't believe in it, such a resource will never be available to you."

I just hope i'd have the strength to believe as strongly in something other than god if i ever had to face such horrors.

Gasp!

I'm gasping for breath. Will i be able to inhale enough to last me till friday?

Ha-ha. Yes, i caught that one, too. I also wonder what it is i must be inhaling in order to keep up with this crazy lifestyle, year after year. I should be on crack!!! Am not, though.

Before friday i must: clean my bathroom, my kitchen, my office, my living-room (did the bedroom already - thank goo!). Look through the final ToK essays and presentations, chase the last forms, pack, make sure the student house is cleaned, prepare some classes... I'm forgetting everything now... I've also been thinking a lot about Gemima, the pregnant, HIV positive woman who filled my head with new knowledge about the virus, plus thoughts of social inequality, religion, and i have to figure out what else. Then yesterday night we went to the theater and watched Blasted, which wasn't quite so explosive after all. Will write about all of this at some point.

From global warming to economics

On friday, in one of my classes, we started talking about environmental issues. We discussed global warming, the runaway greenhouse effect theory, the possibilities that warnings about these topics be more or less accurate or exaggerated, that human actions might or might not affect the environment in ways that are adverse to our survival. I was shocked at some of the views i heard from some of my students. Basically, these were that economical prosperity comes first and foremost, that it's useless to ask people to pay to protect the environment (with more taxes, or with less goods, choice or supply); that it is arrogant to think that us humans could damage such a huge life support system as that of Earth, and that we should care only about ourselves, so that future generations should not play any role in our present actions or plans. The two or three who expressed these ideas justified themselves by saying that "this is the way people are, anyway. This is the way things work."

Indeed, i was stunned, not the least because at first it seemed to me i'd come across one of those attitudinal and philosophical changes that are supposed to separate people who grow up at different times. A generational gap! I'd never come across such a thing, and to have discovered one when talking to people younger than me! Because, certainly, at their age, we would have been more positive and idealistic...

But no, this must be bull, my own fears about growing older getting in the way. The concept of 'generation gaps' is crap anyway, mac. People are always people, and no matter what age they are, they may always have ideas you can't identify with, the very genesis of which is hard for you to comprehend. There certainly are people my age, and older, and dead already, who would agree with these students of mine. In all époques, many have always used purported "human nature" whenever it's been necessary not to give a fuck about others in order to safeguard one's own interests. It all comes down to egoism and selfishness – traits that are natural in humans, indeed (but so is our impulse to violence, and we still have laws that try to curb it!).

When speaking about ecological issues, what is different about the present when compared with 10 or 15 years ago, is that there are many more potent voices out there that advocate for throwing away all caution. Take Michael Crichton, for instance, who with his novel "State of Fear" criticizes environmentalists and their warnings. He says that they all have agendas whose ultimate aim is to destabilize the current political, social and economical systems. I would say, rather, that their aim is to change these systems by pointing out some of their problems. But "destabilizing" suggests a will to topple things, which makes terrorists or terrorist tools out of environmental activists. With the current paranoia about terrorism, can there be a better way to discredit environmentalism?

Anyway, i haven't read Crichton's book, nor do i plan to. To go through a novelized version of an argument i can't stand would make me a masochist, and in spite of what a certain singaporian seems to think, i'm not into that kinky stuff. In a (perhaps feeble) attempt to judge fairly, i have read a couple of articles that describe this novel in a favorable light. Here is how a ends: "The slight warming of the earth that is presently occurring is a result of natural processes, not human activity. Consequently, there is no need to take radical action, like passage of the Kyoto Accords, to cut our carbon dioxide emissions, or to abandon industrial civilization."

HUH?!? Did you also catch that? The Kyoto Accords and cutting down on carbon dioxide emissions are being made to sound as equivalent to abandoning industrial civilization!!! And as for the current global warming being caused by natural processes, scientists are not at all in agreement about this. Indeed, there have been other periods in Earth's history in which temperatures have risen due to entirely non-human processes, yet some of these resulted in the extinction of species both larger and smaller than us. As for the current occurrence, there is no certain data or model either way; there are researchers that say humanity's hand is heavily involved in it, and others that disagree. It is also true that there are homeostatic mechanisms at work on our planet, functioning to keep the stability of the whole, but how far they can be pushed before they break down, nobody knows, either.

In an age when information can pull at us in such different directions, the best bet is caution. We cannot go with wishful thinking, because as much convincing evidence can be presented for one argument as for its opposite. We are used to deciding by simply embracing what our "instincts" say is right, but i suspect our instincts are merely the voice of our interests. We do have powers that can wreck our environment. We do know that there is much value in diversity, particularly because we cannot accurately foresee what the future may bring. So why not make the little extra effort?

I'll tell you why: because many of us would miss a few commodities, and a fewer of us yet (an tiny minority, indeed) would lose the possibility to make HEAPS of money. Mind you: i'm not saying they would lose the money; they would only lose the possibility to make even more of it. Yet still we have let ourselves be convinced that this is too high a price to pay for caution, if caution it be to cut on emissions, or to have better recycling, or a less impactful exploitation of resources.

Economists the world over continue to teach and praise an economical model that largely fails to take into account human and environmental costs. Eastern Europe, its people disillusioned by repressive regimes that falsely called themselves socialist, is an even easier prey to this new, irresponsible kind of fascism, where the individual is everything... as long as s/he can make his/her voice heard the loudest, or most convincingly. Forget about empathy or forethought.

I know very little about economics. I only took this one course in college, and all i remember is supply, demand, and these graphs that had some crisscrossing lines. Nevertheless, all (but one) of the economists i've ever talked to seem to picture the market as a perfect, infallible structure, the laws of which are as unmovable as those that physics has worked out for the universe. Isn't this the hubris, the arrogance? In fact, the market was created by us, people, without forethought or planning. It just sprang up, spontaneously, through our trading activities; economists themselves will tell you that. Indeed, this market to which we have given the reins of our whole planet is nothing but the expression of our needs and ambitions. And it even fails at that, because it is not capable of representing or providing a means to tend to the needs and ambitions of all. Moreover, mind is not fully a part of it, and only in as much as it can be used to serve those interests. Compassion and empathy are left out, as are forethought and caution.

We are trapped, and we don't see it.

Out of the blue

My blog is about to become one year old. I didn't use it much for several months, barely managing to plonk in a couple of paragraphs during spring and summer. Yet now i think of it often and frequently find myself wanting to set little ideas and happenings down in it. I suppose a single yearly cycle is not enough to draw conclusions on behavioral patterns, but maybe fall and winter are a more creative time of year for me. Or maybe it's just that these months are the most stressful at school, and blogging helps me cope. Or maybe minds have a yearly ovulation cycle, and mine is menstruating right now. If that's the case, then i'm blotting, not blogging.

Surreal slurry

My log titles have lately been overly aliterative, but today i simply couldn't help it: after all, it has been snowing for four days now, almost non-stop. Slushy stuff, heavy. Slanting roofs are not such a good solution for heavy snow fall, after all. Why not just build thicker, flat roofs? That way i wouldn't have been caught by the tiny avalanche that surprised me this morning as i was going into my classroom. It just --phlumped!-- right on top of me, and by the time i realized what had happened, i was standing knee deep in snow: there was some in my shoes, some under my shirt, and even some in my butt crack (i swear!). Luckily it was 7:15 a.m., so nobody saw me -- if i'd seen something like this happen to someone else, i'd have peed on myself, just laughing.

So, all in all, things weren't as bad as they could have turned out. No packed ice cracking my knuckle, just soft, slushy snow soaking it. No peeing on myself, either. I actually feel quite special. I mean, what are the chances?!? This is only my 5th winter here. The universe must think i deserve special treatment.

I realize i must be leading a very screwed up existence when my spirits are lifted by 30 kilos of snow dropping at once on my head. In fact, it's the most exhilarating thing that has happened to me in the last few weeks. All the little and big dramas that come with end of term have been, this year, particularly difficult to plod through.

Gotta run to a meeting.
Friggin meeting.
Pick-a-nitting.
Friggin meeting.
Yippeee!