URBANIZED STRUGGLES FOR CULTURAL ENLIGHTENMENT

I must say that I never pay attention to the zodiac pages when I riffle through a magazine…Or maybe the times I do, I don’t actually, really take by heart what they say/suggest/forbid etc, I’m just killing time… The reason is that I outspokenly doubt for their precision… Then again, I can say that my conviction is that maybe in some level, the position the stars and the planets have the exact moment we get borne can influence, more or less, our lives… But just that… Because you know, people say that everything and everybody in the universe is in one way or the other connected… Don’t they? Well, that’s where I console my “theory”….
So, I’m not aware of what signs had foreseen about the last few days but I guess that if I had read last Friday what an “Aquarius” should do and moreover that prescription was being right, I should be warned that… the next seven days focus on spiritual activities and try to enrich your brains as much as possible…you will be given a first class opportunity to fulfill your intellectual pursuits... You see, because really, the last few days were full of those kinds of craps…
Last weekend, as yesterday as well, I visited Thessalonica and despite the good food, the clubbing and seeing friends I also attended some great events… Along with a friend, I although was going to attend a documentary festival, I found myself in the photography museum staring at some great pictures in a photo festival in which I’m by far more interested… Additionally, this same friend of mine won two tickets for a concert in which the female artist who sang, claimed in one of her songs that “her life without her lover is like fat-free ham…”
In the middle of the week I went to the movies also, to watch Woody Allen’s “Match point” and you could say that this is not such a spiritual activity, but along with all the others I consume that it indeed is… As for the cinema which is worth-mentioning, it was not so crowed and the building is an old fashioned one, vintage, and that made it an out of the regular movies outing….
The activities list goes on since I’m reading a book and I just bought a couple of cds, too… Who says that reaching cultural nirvana nowadays is a plain thing to do?
Not to be misunderstood, I’m not bragging or anything; neither I’m saying that these are of the kinds of achievements no one dares to accomplish... Nothing near of those… All I’m saying is that man, do I really need this? If stars have arranged that, I think that I’d be the same satisfied or maybe more with just a good lay…

GOOD DEEDS / PART TWO

A short story

Joseph, the good peasant, was named after his grandfather, who was the first informal “mayor” of the region and his remembrance was still vivid, despite all those years that had passed since his death. He was most remembered for his inborn trait of discerning right from wrong, while his whole life attitude was kind of exemplary, as well.
Young Joseph was righteous too, but now he was facing a big perplexity. He had inherited a book from his father which, as he understood, was written by his grandfather. It was supposed to create him no problem and it only meant to be a tool of guidance. The book was entitled “SON” and it was referring to the Story Of Noland.
The first Joseph had written how he had found himself there, how smoothly his family had integrated in the local community and how unexpectedly soon everybody had forgotten that they weren’t autochthons.
The book revealed to the youngest Joseph his true origin and the reason his forefathers had come to the Noland. He was overwhelmed by surprise to find out so suddenly all that information and the thing that shocked him the most and couldn’t comprehend the purpose of it, was why his grandfather had written down all that and why he, as well as his father had never mentioned the truth.
The “SON” was kind of a journal about the first days of the Hill by the arrival of old Joseph. He had written that this place was as usual as every other place in this planet but he had the vision to turn it into something special. This wasn’t because of a selfish aspiration of creating something big but he was thinking of that place before even getting there. He had heard of it and he had discerned its potentiality of getting improved.
He had chosen that specific Hill maybe because of the fact that it was so close to the big Cities but simultaneously so distant in a different way. It was an isolated region with few residents and despite it’s prosperity in natural resources, people who leaved around it, always considered it as an indifferent, neutral place where it must be really boring to live in. The first Joseph had saw it from the other way around, I mean, he thought of it as a safe place to stay in difficult times, and when time demanded it, there were no second thoughts but moving there.
Joseph read in the book that his grandfather had gone to the Hill when a strange pandemic had burst out all over the place. That time of course, weren’t disposable the appropriate means to specify its cause, so this was making even more difficult to find the suitable treatment. Some said that this which was killing people within a day from their infection was a primitive virus that was preserved all those years in the vast expanse of Antarctic, beneath the ices, and that after that enormously long time it had “woken up”. Others said that it had passed to people from the sick sheep and others more outrageous believed that it was the evil. Until nowadays no one can say for sure what was that, which claimed so many lives.
As death was around in every corner and people were inexplicably dying one after the other, bedlam prevailed. Everyone was feeling helpless and was trying to face it as possibly could. Some immoral even took advantage of this situation and found the occasion to speculate, by selling fake drugs as effective to desperate people, who could buy anything in their hopelessness. They were swearing that they were giving them the miraculous cure.
That time and as Joseph was feeling that danger was getting closer and closer, he took his family and decided to go to Noland before something bad happen to them. When he got there he found more shocking than the disease itself that no other foreigners had looked for shelter in that Hill. He hoped that maybe because of its social and geographical segregation from the rest of the world, that space could still be intact. And he was right. The lack of transactions with foreigners kept Noland clean. Of course Joseph was quite worried that the fortified shelter he had chosen to emigrate could get vanished, as had happened with some Cities. There were, indeed, a couple of deaths that startled Nolands, but because of their ignorance of what was really going on outside their little paradise they never got mad and things never got out of hand. Joseph had believed that the deaths had probably nothing to do with the pandemic but he surrealistically thought that if there was an antidote, it could possibly be…coolness.
Back to young Joseph, he was feeling awkwardly as a result of what he was reading and he felt obliged to tell the whole truth to the rest. They deserved to know about his true origin, the pandemic which destroyed tones of population and chiefly about Noland, which used to be as common as any other place before the arrival of his ancestors and that after that, it went under differentiation. Maybe it had become better but they had to have the knowledge that years ago it used to be different.
He went to the central square of Noland which was a bit far from his farm and when he got there he stroke the bell twice. Nolands in their first meeting in that exact square two generations ago had decided that one stroke would mean gathering for “decision making congregation” but two strokes would mean “emergency congregation”. The double sound had never been heard before and even though it was just two plain ring bells it echoed terrifying. He bet that everybody should be in great wonder that moment and it didn’t take much to see that all of them, one by one or in groups, started showing up after a minute or two…

PENNY LETTERS YOU LOOK GREAT TODAY

It’s terribly freezing outside and rainy as well, although we are officially and for ten days now in March! Not to mention that we’re talking about a Mediterranean country… Weather has definitely gone insane…
Anyway, that’s not the point; here I am sitting in front of the PC adding a couple more “creations” I did today. Penny Letters is this ugly creature in the first pic and of course his name comes from his body parts… He is almost entirely constructed with Latin alphabet letters… If I was to draw him with a pen or something it could be one thousand times uglier -if that’s ever humanly possible…

COLORS AND WORDS

This week I borrowed a couple of books from the faculty's library which I found really interesting. They were about marketing and advertising and product design and illustration and campaigns and cards and posters and all the related issues together... Well, influenced by those, I attempted to transform some of the photographs I’ve taken in the past into something different… The real formation of the ones below I suppose that could be cards or posters or something like that anyway… In truth, I just got a little bit experimented with few colors and some words…

MIXED UP GALLERY

Lately I have found myself being interested in photography... Though I'm just an amateur in the field I enjoy myself excessively by this new "obsession" of mine... I like photoshooting almost anything but I'm most intrigued by people than sights...Thankfully my friends are the same crazy as me and they don't think it's extraordinary taking pictures all the time even without being an photographer... The day I took those I was alone and bored so in a way I...got fotoshooted by my own self...Anyway, this may not is the most professionalistic work ever made but I assume... they're great...

SOME PICTURES

GOOD DEEDS / PART ONE

A Short Story

There was a guy, not so young but not too old either. He used to live in a wonderful hill. He and his family were pretty much self-sufficient and they never had to take the steep path to get to the City for any reason. So, for as long as he was remembering his past, he had spent all of his life right there, along with his beautiful wife, his look-alike descendants and all the animals in the farm who provided him with plenty of food and enough of jackets.
He was a really well-respected man by all the other inhabitants and he was kind of what we would call the “mayor” of that region; although no administration was ever formally structured. While the others had placed him –even unofficially - in such a high position, he never enforced anyone do anything. He was for dialogue and against of any kind of peremptoriness. People had discerned that and that’s why they were always taking his estimations seriously and they were complying with his suggestions. Despite all, he never deemed himself as more special than the others but he had the needed perception to be aware of the fact that people thought of him with great admiration and they were counting to his decency and his altruism.
The place itself was an out and out fertile region and it would definitely seem an ideal destination and kind of utopian to all of us who live in the contemporary world. But that hill, which name was Noland Hill, wasn’t always this way. It used to be like all the other places of this universe. Its people used to making it seem beautiful and ugly and quiet and paranoid and chaotic and everything; all at the same time together, as we do ourselves, as long as we breathe.
But one day they decided to go on differently. As simple as that and –as later proved- as effectively as that.
Despite the easy anastrophe of their minds, it took too much effort to reach the high quality-life level they did. It took them several years to learn caring foremost about their Hill and later on about their homes and their personal interests.
Years had passed and generations had followed one another and this closed society was just getting better and better. They had got to a point where all possessed the same amount of goods, they were co-living peacefully and they didn’t have a special name for their different metaphysical worries. Their condition of living was nice and not boring.
But all the methodology that leaded in such progression doesn’t matter for us to know now because it was created solely by them and they only knew how to apply it precisely. If we were ever to do something like what they did, we should figure our own way out on our own.
Years went by and when it was his time to go, “mayor” had already been sure that he had handed down his ethic qualities to his sons and they did also when it was their turn to. Of course, after all that time, more and more progenies from other families had managed to obtain those qualities too, as an outcome of observation and mimicry of their “superiors”. But this fact didn’t lead them to antagonism. Everyone was very cooperative with the rest and no problem had occurred about, for example, which direction should be followed in one case or another, which, as it was natural, was arising once and again. Either way, when they didn’t know what to do about something, they were using as a solution the institution of voting. The population had increased but only slightly, so they were still in position to do it by the show of hands. Everyone could take part in this procedure and no one was excluded but the juveniles...

WHEN DID YOU GET THIS FRENCH NOSE?

Do people ever change or they never do? Really controversial issue... If I’d say -it depends- I would place myself right in the middle and I wouldn’t like that...
So, let me express my syllogism about the matter and cite the incident which provoked this contemplation…
I saw a friend of mine after a great deal long time in the local bar the other night... and we had our awkward moment.... Not the sexually intense awkward kind of moment but the one when you don’t know what to talk about and you just stare at your drink, as if it could possibly change formation, and you gulp extremely big drains of it just to earn yourself some time....
The awkard talking went almost like this:
-so nice to see you, where you’ve been all this time?
-so, how are you doin’ in general...
-that means you’re great...great...
…long pause...
-so, I see you look...renewed...what...? how?
-long pause again...
-maybe i should go....you got me on my way out....let’s arrange to go for a coffee or something...you know...to catch up....
Finally, I didn’t have to go cause a few more gulps later we found our old selves and we talked like we hadn’t spent all those months apart...
But, as you understand it took us several minutes to identify each other... You could say it, almost like dogs do, but with human-ier ways... That means that I didn’t have to smell some parts of her body... Some jokes and some teasings were just enough to break the ice....
But I guess that this has happened to everyone... and not just once.... I guess I believe that situations make people change. Some events make you grow and some others make you grey...That’s life! When you haven’t seen a friend for a big time and you meet each other again, you can more easily perceive, that he/she has changed... And that’s not extraordinary cause probably you’ve changed too. It’s just that more often people change in different ways and they loose their “spot of contact”...In marketing terms it is called the “field of shared experiences” or that’s the way we transalate it in Greek marketing terms...
On the other hand, if you have recently found yourself in the 84’ class reunion and you have found out that the former classmate plus chess club president remains a geek, the cheerleader captain is still as hot as hell and have married the football striker and you, although have lost the excessive kilos, still are the lonely guy who stands in the corner, but who’s walkman has been turned into an mp3 then all right, you‘ve got a point... But again, who said that people change... utterly, anyway... Maybe their main characteristics remain the same after years of outside transformation, but some parts of them do change... For most of the times...

RIPPED SHIRTS AND DIRTY PANTS

Hello to everyone... I haven't post for a while, mostly because i couldn't figure out something...postable worthy... but also cause this week was way too busy...
Along some others, all these days I've been searching for a decent company to excerise my practise-semester but as I figured out this whole searching wasn't as an easy thing as I was expecting it...
Not to boarden any further, I haven't took any desicions yet about which company suits me better... So, now that I'm writing this, I was supposed to be with a professor of mine who is supposed to be in charge of training-semester issues and who is also supposed to be a helpfull guy for students like me(who don't know what to do with their lives)...
So I woke up today, which by the way is a brilliant sunny day, and instead of going for a coffee or something with my friends, I preffered to come in the faculty... Such a fool! I'm sacrifising a few hours of hanging around, doing something so profound as drinking coffee and gossiping the passers-by, for coming to find a teacher who I keep forgetting his name...
Anyway, the teacher wasn't where he was supposed to(that means his office)and here I am in the library writing this post...
Well, I think I'm gonna take off now, cause I just took a look around and I'm the the only guy here... Everyone left... They all probably went to enjoy their cool coffees somewhere better-decorated than here... Even the three Erasmus students who where sitting two sits beside me left... What language were they talking? It could equally be Turkish or French...

PS The title above is absolutely irrelevant but yesterday that i was thinking about a story or something to blog-post these words came in my mind... I consider it as a... catchy title but I couldn't make out a story adjacent to this... Of course, I could write that I've been torured by a gang or something or that someone hit me so hard or that they stole me on the street ouTside my house last night and things like that... but as you can see I'm a pathetic liar... I think I am in the ones who just can't help it but tell the truth and only the truth...