GOOD DEEDS / PART FIVE

Jonathan closed the door behind him and headed to the house besides, where the rest of his family was sleeping. He took a big breath and he realized that he was felling as if he hadn’t been breathing for as long as he was inside that room.
Into his family’s house was dark too and the quietness that had been spread all over indicted that nobody was awake. At least that’s what he deemed as a fact until the moment he invaded into his father’s room. Old Joseph was awake, sitting in an imposing chair behind his desk, having an unmoved look in his face like he was expecting that sudden visit.
They talked a lot though Jonathan couldn’t precisely define for how long his father and he were having the bizarre conversation they did. While he was expecting that his father would calm him down as he did many times before, he was now feeling more and more upset and frustrated.
What had Jonathan confronted in his sister’s house was shocking. The sound that made him get into her house was actually coming from a baby- girl, whereas he knew that she was childless after a long time of her being married. In that room he found the two spouses being desperate about not being in position to offer any kind of help to the strange infant who was strolling on the small bed. They explained the unexpected spectacle to him by saying that they had adopted that newborn from a destitute family from the City few weeks before. They also said that the man who made the transaction between them and the poor family told them that if it wasn’t for them, the infant would be sentenced to die because of its family bad condition. Of course, that could be easily regarded as disputed, since they had never met the family and they couldn’t know have known their condition of living for sure.
Apart from that, as they didn’t want their co- peasants to know that they had gone there and that they couldn’t bring to the world a child who would have their own blood, they had planned to keep it as secret between them for as long as Jonathan’s sister would have to pretend that she was pregnant and of course a little time more until no one would have a suspicion that this girl was actually bigger than she was supposed to. However, contrarily to their well-ordered plan that small girl was shaking with ague and it was in desperate need of a specialist’s intervention.
Old Joseph didn’t seem surprised in the hearing of the incidents and he said to his son that he was fully aware of the situation but he thought that the best way to act was to respect their will and stay uninvolved. As he discerned his son’s aversion to his apathy, he tried to make clear to him that it was some time ago since everyone’s manners and customs had started to deviate from the old ones. He referred to the small secrets and some abhorrent behaviors which the ones who were practicing them, were not in position to perceive their harmful effects.
Jonathan heard different stories that night but the one that shook him the most was about his friend Frederick, the man he had the conversation previously that night. Surprised, Jonathan heard his father saying that his old friend had recently judged that his wife needed to be punished because according to his new beliefs she had fell in a great sin and her soul wouldn’t be able to find rest after her death. So, for her own good as Frederick believed, he flagellated her until she lost her senses and all that because she dared to feed their children with pork meat the day it was forbidden by his newly embraced sect.
Despite his father told him many reasons for not to, Jonathan was now in the central square watching the Nolands being gathered in front of him after the hearing of the “double stroke”.
He started talking by saying “I used to think that I know you, but now that I know you’re acts I hardly recognize you.” He talked straight from the shoulder and revealed everyone’s concealed deeds. He said about his sister having secretly adopted a baby- girl in order to save it from poverty, while even the most imbecile man could understand that her true purpose was to fulfill her will to fell like all the other women who had became mothers.
He also said about Frederick exercising slashing upon his wife in order to punish and save her from her sins and about an other man too, who was keeping his children locked inside their house, based ridiculously in his fears and his insecurities that they would get harmed if they would go to play outside as all the other kids did.
He even referred to the man who every winter beginning was rooting up his old neighbor’s exceptional plant, after he had made her believe that it was poisonous, when only it was just that it was a one of its kind and he was only jealous and scared by its beauty and rareness.
In the end Jonathan said that above all he was most disappointed by his father and the way his family had found to slyly dominate in a place such Noland. He then took out of his pocket and showed them the book his grandfather had wrote. The book which when Joseph was still young and idealist, thought that should be disclosed and condemned, but as later years past changed his mind. In the current gathering, Jonathan put the book back in his pocket again and said about it that it was holding the answers to every man’s who wanted to dominate, questions. He declared that having a whole place under your control, maybe it’s for the very best the people who reside there, if you able to control them right of course. And maybe sometimes that’s a vital need for order to go on existing. But no matter what he said, nobody could have the right to do such thing without people be fully aware and agreed with that deed.
Jonathan’s family desire was to maintain Noland in a utopian compared to rest of the world state, so they had chosen to govern the place in an innovative way. They were letting Nolands believe that they were living in vast freedom, which in actual fact they by far didn’t.
Jonathan walked through the crowd but everyone was feeling so lost and so awake in the same time that they were feeling very stood to respond to his presence in any way.
He walked until he reached the Noland borders as he did some time before but now he was facing the outside direction, as the first time he found his self there. His father voice calling him got him out of his thoughts and made him stand for a while and try to see where exactly he was standing.
They both weren’t able to say much. Old Joseph grabbed his son’s arm when the latter tried to step away and cross the border. Joseph’s voice tone sounded stately when he told him that what he was doing was wrong. He told him that there was only one option and this was not to leave. He said that he should go back and start living again with his own name. He almost obliged him to go back and act like being the man with the name Joseph. In truth, he was asking for his own son to become a different person, to become him, as if this was possible for a human to do.
Jonathan was appalled by what he was hearing. His father then said that the Nolands could accept him as being Joseph because they had nothing else to do. They were feeling helpless now and they had no other choice but to force themselves to believe a tremendous lie in order to feel secure again. They needed to forget about the man named Jonathan and they could. Nolands were born under the wings of protection and guidance and weren’t able to go on existing differently.

Joseph was now in the central square looking concerned and submerged in his own thoughts. When the first man who discerned him between the crowd moved near to him and asked him whether to stop rooting his neighbor’s plant up or not, he replied that he was not in position to give answers in any of his questions but he said that he could promise to him and to everybody else that he would try his hardest to make them have more..





End of story

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

Sometimes you feel enthused by different things.
So, yesterday I felt really stirred and moved by a song of Alanis Morissette. I had bought the CD single “Hands Clean” I guess four and a half years ago and along with three other songs there was one named “Symptoms”. This was released after the 9/11 so this song talks about relevant matters, thought I was ignoring it. You see, I was missing some of the main lines and I was thinking that it was talking about a different matter.
Despite the time has past since I had first heard the song, it still moves me with its music, the way it is singed and now that I have obtained through internet the exact lyrics, with its words.
So in brief, as I got it, the song says in a way that we don’t feel the influence of a war if it is taking place far away from our homes, the pretences in order the ones who cause a war to get what they want, the excuses people use to justify their inadmissible acts and mainly about people falsely not believing that we all are united and interrelated in this universe.

WE CAN GUILTLESSLY EXCHANGE WISHES AGAIN

Its Holy Tuesday today for the Christians Orthodox and this day has always been one of my favorites. Generally, I like the atmosphere of the whole Holy Week because even if you are not the most devoted adherent of Christianism, this week’s meaning is universal and beyond religious beliefs.
This week represents people’s struggles and predicaments and the hope that in the end you can overcome what’s troubling you. Represents good prevailing bad, the hope and the light after the walk in the dark. The salvation after a difficulty.
Except those I like the Easter time because the weather is usually good and that alone forces you to do outdoor activities and its good that usually relatives and friends visit you over and the house is full of laughters and motion.
I have only good memories from Easter and in Greece we do really traditional things these days which let you have immediate contact with nature; I am not referring to the fact that everybody skewers lamps and goats on the Easter Sunday.

A MOMENT BEFORE THEY WERE PLAYING WITH THE SWING

My old school has been upgraded! My sister and I go there regularly the last two weeks because there have been constructed two tennis courts in the front yard now and playing tennis is an absolutely great evening- way- out thing! So after the game we went to have a five minute rest in the place where we used to “chill” with our former classmates during the breaks while we were still students...
But disappointingly, I didn’t get the feeling of that time as I was expecting… I may was “chilling” for once more in a spot that I had spend so much time in my school years but nothing of what I was seeing was a part of an old memory… Maybe it is that in the old days I wasn’t viewing 5x5 soccer fields and tennis courts as now…
But anyway this is not my point! I’m probably trying to say here that even if you try to live something from the past again, it’s unworthy… The changes that occur to everyone and to everything make it impossible to revive a single moment twice… I guess is really confusing what I’m trying to say, or it’s so plain and I make it seem confusing…
To wind up, I guess that since we are not in place to have a second taste of an old pleasing experience we should always try to make the ones we live in the time being, seem like really unrepeatable ones…

AND THE POETRY NOBEL THIS YEAR GOES TO...

Two summers before I had became almost a maniac about writing lyrics… I was feeling an urge to write about different things… Although I can’t evaluate their objective importance, I mean if they are truly good or just a bunch of crap, they really are a part of me… at least the way I was thinking and judging -and and and- life, relationships, situations at that period…
There are times I read the stuff from that time and although then I was thinking that they had nothing to do with me and my experiences, now that I have the distance I truly see how strongly connected I was with the things I was writing…
So, I haven’t written anything for almost two years but of course two or three word combinations were crossing my mind from time to time but I didn’t bother to put those in the paper…
These four verses insisted a little more so they found their place in my computer’s hard disc and now they have this space in my blog too. Some persuasive lyrics you are! I didn’t add more cause I guess their meaning is complete and the truth is that I can’t think of anything to attach with those…

I dreamed of you last night
And we were acting in a corny lovefoolish way
But nobody gave a damn
Cause we were true
yes we were true

I dreamed of you last night
And we were communicating in an awkward funny way
But nobody gave a damn
Cause we were real
yes in our own realm

VILLAGE MAN

I grew up in this lovely Greek province somewhere near a tall mountain! So since my coming of age, I used to go out regularly in the same three or four -let’s call them- cafes and clubs which were available in the strict region…
My most recent experience which reminded me the whole “ceremonious ritual” was last night when I was in my home little town and I thought why not to call a couple of friends and go out and see what’s going on…you know generally… who is with who, who got fat, who got short, things like that…
If you have never found yourself in a provincial nightclub let me transfer you there cause it’s really worth knowing what’s going on in such a place…
First of all, you get into the place and you get stuck in the entrance not because it’s so overcrowded but because you have already seen and in a way have to deal with familiar faces who either by their will or by an informal unspoken provincial law which makes them feel almost obliged to, say hello and ask you about your whereabouts between “nice to see you” eye look expressions… fiou, you see how long it takes to get inside?
The second impression is that although you see the same old faces with the same old clothes and the same old breathtaking haircuts you still have a deep surprise in your eyes, thinking probably two things: “everybody is here again” and “I’m back in the 90’s”…
When you decide to order a drink, feeling thirsty and exhausted by the procedures you see that the barman has already served you “the regular” having no questions whether or not you wanted something irregular for a change…
While you drink you don’t dare to throw sideway flirty looks around, letting in this way interesting never seen before people know that you’re in demand of…you know what… simply because there are no any interesting never seen before people anywhere around you…
Meanwhile, the ritual says that if known from the past silhouettes stop for a small talk as they pass you by, it’s preferred and suggested for the purpose a verbal revival of a common old-time experience…
Music. Music is indescribable! Always the same! Always anachronistic with some moments of pure brilliancy just to get you out the “I’m becoming suicidal; I’m feeling it- state”
Finally, when you decide to go, you waste fifteen more minutes on “I see you tomorrow” with everybody and in the end you miss your footing in the doorway just because all that distasteful way of seeing the provincial clubs as a way of chosen entertainment brought you such bad karma…
More or less that’s what happening… Everybody knows everybody there and the way the night is going to evolve is the most times predestinated… Some people have fun this way and some people have sometimes fun in this way … Like the times when there’s a slight difference, like for example when your friend who you hadn’t met for a month because you both live in different cities says a hilarious joke or the times you pass successfully the god damn doorway and so on…

HOMO- TELEVISIONUS

Oh this generation of mine! Ready to conquer things! Just give us a couch and a TV screen and you can get the best out of us!
In a high scale, I guess that this is a prevailed truth… We feel so damn comforted… I think that is not that the current youngsters are ideal-free, idle-lovers and boredom fascinated… It’s just that if you taste flabbiness at least for once, it’s hard to go on differently afterwards…
Here is the situation: now, people of my age have tons of amusement in front of a TV screen watching other people’s lives in reality shows, organizing DVD marathons during weekends or playing video games for a change… In the old days as I hear, they used to go out socializing, having actual- and not virtual as nowadays- activities; and reacting in things they were opposed to in obvious- and not passive- ways…
A lot may disagree and I’ll say that of course not everybody acts this way, but one- if I can’t say the only- common thesis about this generation is that we are indifferent about what’s taking place around us!
The good news is that as it seems we are in a turning point! It seems like it’s the end of the homo- televisionus anthropoids but the bad news is that we are heading to the birth of the homo-internetius… Internet may is a useful tool and a source of knowledge but if you are all day long busy in front of a computer then where are you going to apply all this information?
Everybody has to make his own decisions and his own searching in the matter but I don’t think that the future is as terrifying as it seems sometimes… All it takes is to press the “off”’ button…

NAME IT AS YOU WISH

The truth is that lately, my posting frequency battles as equal to equal the amount of the times an eight year bored married couple has sex. Once in a week that it is! In my defense this last period was busy without question and the times I had the chance to post a… post I was out of ideas… Today is also the same but I feel like I need to write something. Anything… Maybe I should start writing without thinking what I’m actually writing because I’ve heard that this reveals derelict thoughts of the one who is practicing it… Tempting! Maybe some other time…

I started jogging the other day and even though I know that “pilates”… rock lately, I prefer to remain a traditional, old-fashioned and a so 80’s chap in this field! It was so so exhilarating! And my only chance to get rid off the jkdfs pounds I gained this winter… But apart from that it felt like… a meditation activity! My mind pushed away stress and everyday contemplations the moment I started running… The place was a bucolic one, ideal for the purpose. Plenty of trees, a river creek and bird tweets. And all this in 10 minute walk distance from my downtown apartment…

IT'S JUST ABOUT NOT STAYING STILL

If someone tells me you have the “x” project and you need to depict it or to give it in any kind of form you want, so that the result of it will represent the initial idea, I think that I wouldn’t got it done so easily… Contrarily, there are times that I take a bunch of random pictures or a plethora of them with the same subject and in the end while I gaze them all concentrated on the PC, I unhurriedly come up with an idea about a project or a meaning and etc… I have to add that nature provided me with uncontrolled imagination, so that sort of helps as well…
Like this time that I was watching these picture that I took of a cloud and the notion that crossed my mind was the “mobility”….
I always deem that instability is the force that brought humans in the level we are today… I’m not referring to the stupidities we are going in for, but only about the fact that millions of years ago we used to reside on the trees and now in concerted societies…
The key of the individual's and humanity’s evolution is on not staying still and always trying to find out the undiscovered… The only certain phenomenon which repeats itself all these millions of years is that the one’s who don’t move, evolve and most of all adjust, get vanished… They don’t belong… That’s a cruel commandment but its probably a fair one and definitely the stimulus of all things…

GOOD DEEDS / PART FOUR

A short story

The first familiar figure Jonathan faced was his sister’s. She was holding a bucket filled with water which was predestinating for the goats but when she faced him back, she forgot all about it and as a result it landed to her feet. That didn’t seem to bother her much and when she reached him she hugged him with all her strength. They seemed like they wanted to say so many things about all the years they lived apart but all they managed to do was to observe each other’s face as if they could scrutiny every event of their separated lives by the changes of their face characteristics.
The same night Jonathan’s family gave a big supper to celebrate his return but his father unfortunately couldn’t participate. He was pretty old now and his health was in bad condition. After the supper Jonathan went to see him in his room. He found him resting in his bed and although he knew that his father was sick he found it difficult to believe it because he was looking almost as the day he had left him.
Old Joseph said to his son all about he wanted to know. He told him that only few months after the “big flee” things went unexpectedly well. The most of the men who had left came back quickly because as they said they couldn’t adjust to the new conditions of the outside world. Despite that, they brought along some “habits” that were pretty new for the Nolands who had never left the place. Jonathan said back that he had already discerned some changes in everybody’s behavior but when he mentioned it during the supper everybody refused it.

Only within a week after his arrival, Jonathan started feeling kind of disappointed by what he was seeing going on around and he wanted to talk about it with his father again, because as he believed, besides his bad physical condition he still was the healthiest “thinker” in the Hill. However he had second thoughts of that conversation for the reason that he didn’t want to trouble and upset his father any further, he knew that he had no alternative way to act.

It was a bright night, of the ones that are usual in Noland, and Jonathan decided to take a small walk. He was sure that he had to consult his father about if there was anything he should do for bringing back Nolands in their old condition and he thought of it as a chance to think about what he should mention to his father and what he should not.
Things weren’t as he had left them. The place was as before but people were by far different. He had the perception that in the past all his fellow peasants were united and caring. Now he thought that they had become more self-interested. The old days when they didn’t know what decision to take for any matter, they would vote and the minority would comply with the majority’s will. Now they would do the same of course, but afterwards you could see that the “opponents” of the decision would be disappointed and they would still talk about how things could be better and why the neglected decision should be chosen instead.

Jonathan looked at the bright sky of Noland like he may was able to find the solution there. Nothing seemed to work for him that night so he took the way back but then he saw an old friend of his, Frederick. He signed him to go closer and Jonathan found him relishing some tobacco and scotch as he was sitting comfortably in his doorsteps. He joined him, although he denied kindly the tobacco and the scotch offer. Frederick was too in the group which left Noland the time it was needed but he had came back too many years before as he found difficult to settle himself in anywhere outside that Hill.
They talked a lot and when he was asked Frederick said that he had discerned no difference in the local people stance. Their talking, although interesting, wasn’t getting to a constructive point. They were chiefly arguing about the way they were both seeing their co-townsmen but still they were remaining polite. They both had different opinions and they were unwilling to relinquish them, so Jonathan claimed sleepiness and said that it was time to go. Frederick didn’t make any effort to postpone him, mostly because he said he had a ceremonial thing to do. Jonathan didn’t quite understand what he was talking about and Frederick offered readily to explain himself. He told him that when he was in the City he got influenced by the people he met there. He told him that they were giving names to the separate divinities they believed in and they were following specific procedures to beg for their mercy or just to pleasure them. Of course Jonathan already knew that because that was happening in every City he visited, too. It was always the same devoted routines more or less, and only the names of the divinities were different. As Jonathan was watching Frederick doing his ritual routine he tried to explain Frederick’s and the other peoples urge to specify and personalize an indefinite concept. That night proved complicated enough, so he for the third time attempted to take the way back leaving his friend submerged in a -already seen in the past by Jonathan – kind of meditation detriment.

After the annoying ascent Jonathan desperately wanted to lie in his bed but he noticed something strange in the house next to his. It was his sister’s house. She was living there with her husband and even though the couple was still childless even after all those years they were married, he noticed that there was a noise which was probably coming from one of the back rooms of the house and it was sounding like a little baby’s cry.
He knocked the door twice but not a sign of response neither from his sister nor from her husband. The only noise he could hear was that crying. He knocked the hardest he could again and again but no one answered him. The crying was louder now but he couldn’t shout his sister’s name because he was afraid that he would awake the rest of his family who were all sleeping in the house besides.
He then remembered that even before his compulsory flee, when that house was just an abandoned property, there was a door in the back yard with its lock broken. He went to that door and to his surprise when he pushed it, it opened widely.
He walked into the house and he tried not to stumble anywhere because it was really dark and his eyes hadn’t yet got used of it. The only hint of light was coming through a crack in the door that the sound was coming from. Few more steps and he was next to the room, definite that the sound was a baby’s cry but now it was unbearably loud and uncontrollably uneven. The shadow of the two moving pair of legs he saw from the crack made him fell hesitant for a moment to open that door but his affectionate instincts were already alarmed by the desperate cry...

GOOD DEEDS / PART THREE

A short story

It was time for Jonathan to return back. He hadn’t gone far away but everything he experienced away from Noland, made him believe that his homeland was not substantial but just a creation of his imagination.
If for any reason he was asked, he could still name you exactly what had happened the day he left his native land. He wasn’t the only one to make such a decision. Moreover, he hadn’t planned that for while before or anything like that. It was something unexpected and inevitable.
Everything happened a quiet regular evening. After the animal feeding he was on his way home when he heard the double stroke. At first he thought that he had probably overheard but as seconds later he saw his fellow-townsmen trending hastily to the central square, he realized that something wrong was actually happening. He accelerated his pace and as he reached his destination he found out that almost everybody was already there. Few seconds later he saw his father standing in the highest spot of the place ready to announce something –as everyone could understand- unpleasant.
He wanted to ask him what was all that about, but he wasn’t in position to reach him because the square was overcrowded and everyone was standing frightened, and stable before him. So, he stood there waiting to hear what his father had to say and right that moment he saw his mother and his two sisters looking to his dad with the same surprise in their eyes.
Quietness spread to the crowd when Joseph told them to. Not to broaden any further, he told them what he had found out and he tried to explain to them how things used to be in the past. The residents seemed confused and they surely were, because no one had ever left Noland, nor even for a day and it seemed totally inconceivable to them to realize how things could possibly have been different. You see, the current way was the only way they had ever known.
When everything was said you could see that some of the Nolands was just standing there apathetic, some frustrated and some surprised. But all of them were facing something unprecedented. They were all trying to imagine how things may used to be like and why such an event was well-hidden all this time. If you were there that moment you could hear nothing but an uproar. That exact time nature made her presence perceptible. They hadn’t yet reached to a conclusion when a great rainstorm poured down. That time everybody headed to their houses in order to protect themselves by the sudden weather breakout. That night some thought that this event was nature’s punishment for the revelation and some as nature’s gesture for salvation. Despite what was for real, it was for sure the strongest rain Noland had ever experienced. Even until this present day.
The next morning found the peasants numbering disasters. Most of their animals and plants had vanished by the strong wind and the flood. After the initial shock they gathered again in the same square. Double stroke was not necessary this time because they instinctively went there, as they had nowhere else to go. A lot was said during that congregation but the final decision didn’t pleasure any of them. As they didn’t have any other choice they decided that some of the peasants had to leave from their native place because the food wouldn’t be enough for everyone. The place was in miserable condition and it couldn’t provide everyone with the necessary supplies. No one was forced to do such thing but the ones who would decide that they could, they would do it for the common good and only by their will.
Everyone was hesitant at first but when Joseph’s son Jonathan took the first step a lot followed. His character was kind of exemplary as well.
Now after a long time by that day Jonathan felt like he had to go back home. He was feeling kind of disappointed from the outside world. In the beginning he felt charmed by all the new sceneries he faced. The enjoyments he tasted were tempting and obstructed but as years past an inner voice was calling him back. He definitely had felt happiness from time to time but he never felt fulfilled. He had met a respected number of lovers, he had drunk the greatest wine and had tasted really memorable flavors but nothing of those had managed to warm his hurt. And how could they?
It was about to dawn when he reached the Noland borders. He didn’t know what he would find after all those years, which now seemed like it was like all had happened just yesterday, and he didn’t know if he was the first to come back or if the others had already came back before him. Mostly he was worried if Noland and his family were as pure as he had left them. He had seen a lot during the last period and he was hoping that his shelter would still be as unaffected as he had left it. The anxiety and thrill made him feel a lump in his throat the moment he crossed the imaginary border line...