In a Time of Violence: “Greece’s inconvenient outbreak of democracy” (Marshall Auerbach)

“because death is heavy”  Jack Hirschman

I see a man lying on the grass; part of him is lying on the grass, the other half of his body is on the cobbled pavement. I think maybe he is dead. Why would he be lying that way? Why not lay his entire body on the grass? I think to avoid actually passing him and having to take a closer look. Then I think I am being cowardly. Why would I shy of seeing, or admitting to this fact: a dead man in my path? So I decide to keep walking, and as I pass this body asleep, or dead, I pause. If I am truly brave I would look more closely at this man and see whether or not he is indeed dead. Maybe he is a metaphor for some “levitated elsewhere” lying on the grass, tripped out in despair.

A couple of days ago I lost it in the pharmacy when I went to buy another supply of Vitamin C. The price had gone up a euro. And the brand, “Power Health” with extra Echniacea, is Greek. “Why has this gone up?” I said to the pharmacist as a man sitting on a seat in the small space reading a newspaper looked up. The pharmacist nodded, “These products are going up,” he said, as my voice rose several decimals.  “Increasing instead of lowering prices now is crazy… People can’t afford basics. We need to stop buying anything that goes up in price!” The pharmacist nodded. The man reading the newspaper ran a shop with his wife next to the pharmacy. He put his paper down. They sold fabrics, buttons, zippers and threads. I always love going into their shop when I need something like a particular color of thread or a button, appreciating the time they take with each customer, no matter how small the job, finding a button to match a blouse, a zipper that blends into the fabric.

“So how are you suggesting we resist?” asked the man who owned the fabric shop. “By voting for Papariga?” Aleka Papariga who heads KKE, the Communist party, is forever planning protests and ongoing rallies to resist whomever and whatever happens to be the current mainstream threat. I shook my head. The pharmacist chimed in: “She means we should do without anything what goes up in price.” We had a conversation for another few minutes.

Almost anyone I run into, work with, or speak to, is prone to outbursts in the high tension of these daily uncertainties. The constant updates on suicides, pay cuts, rising unemployment, is grim. One of yesterday’s stories — a 50-something year old taking care of his 90-something- year-old mother with Alzheimer’s wrote in his note that the family owned some land “But we can’t eat or sell it”; he pushed his mother off a balcony, then jumped himself. We are living the count-down to the next elections, the next (uncertain) loan installment, as banks are being emptied of cash and people speak openly of growing tomatoes and peppers on their balconies, of merging kitchens, and ways to survive on a lot less. “This, this sickness of not knowing where this is all going has to stop!” M says, telling me of her 26 year-old-nephew, with a degree in marketing, who makes 600 Euros in a job that he has to spend 130 Euros monthly in gas mileage to keep. Yannis Varoufakis made the point: Greece is the unique example of a country in default whose debt continues to increase. It is going through a death that presented itself with brutal abruptness. It is what has put SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Radical Left, in second place in the last elections, and will potentially put it in first in the next. This sense of profound betrayal by those in government for the past 30 years, and the continuing malaise of the state to take measures, has made for a wild card of popular resistance.

In a chat with Paul Brennan, a journalist for ALJAZEERA British, we spoke of Alexis Tsipras, SYRIZA’s charismatic leader whose awkward English had him saying we would all be going to “the hell” if we kept to this course of austerity. Tsipras, who cunningly referred to Chancellor Merkel as Madame Merkel, is Europe’s current nightmare. But why is Europe so surprised — the international press suddenly inflamed with headlines about Alexis Tsipras’ “danger” to the Eurozone efforts to keep itself afloat? I’m not a fan, but I have to say he has displayed the kind of guts that was sorely lacking and desperately needed when the diagnosis of bankruptcy was first made in 2010. Maybe then, with the right kinds of treatments, the nation body may still have been saved. Tsipras’ bravado and some believe insane, rhetoric of resistance is probably coming too late and it is often articulated in alarming and extremist discourse. But he represents the fact that people are precisely that, that they will express their resistance, even at great cost to themselves, when their fundamental humanity is threatened. Who knows if he or anyone can force Madame Merkel et al to reconsider the fact that austerity has not only devastated a country but strengthened the economic contagion?

“SYRIZA doesn’t want to tear up the agreement,” says E, who is a supporter. “It’s that we can’t pay all this money back in a matter of 2-3 years. We need 5 or 10.” Madame Merkel has had the shock of her life, calling the President of the Greek Republic Carolos Papoulias in the middle of the night, almost mandating that he find a way to form a government that will support the measures. In a world where the covert violences of what Marshall Rosenberg calls the game of rewards and punishment in which “domination cultures” decide what and who is right, the “Greek outburst” is throwing a wrench in these surely mistaken “politics of the north.” Last week T arranged for a workshop on Rosenberg’s “Non-Violent Communication” methodologies led by G, an advocate and facilitator of Rosenberg’s philosophy.

It was enlightening in the context of what we’re all living through to listen to some of the strategies Marshall Rosenberg uses. He talks of “natural giving,” of differentiating feelings from needs, how to make requests as opposed to demands. He’s an American from the Midwest and to some in the audience of mainly Greek students, perhaps seemed “too American” for his optimistic, hands-on, approach to problem-solving. But his main premise, that violence is the result of distorted, refused or misunderstood needs, is valuable. Rosenberg’s formula is simple: take responsibility for feelings by naming them correctly. Perhaps this is one way to read the May 6 election results, to see them as the voicing of a people chaffing under the double bind of a collapsing state and the shrill threats of the European Central Bank, the IMF and Madame Merkel. Logic, the consequence of a responsible use of logos, is what Rosenberg advocates, and it presumes a respect for the other, and their needs. Madame Merkel is oblivious or indifferent or both to such, and of course it’s not her direct responsibility when Greece’s leadership has failed so spectacularly to protect its people from this strangulation.

T says there is really no leadership in our times, as everything is controlled, and run, by so many interests. He says we are in a period of entropy that will bring new beginnings. On the streets, in the shops, we speak to one another as if we’re in mid-conversation. T now knows the people working at the supermarket where he gets his groceries on a first-name basis. After the NVC workshop G says, “The Greeks aren’t very good at obeying but if you ask for something you really need there’s still philotimo…” He made the point in the context of Rosenberg’s “request versus demand” paradigm. The Greeks famously resisted the Italian invasion of October 28, 1940, with their “ΟΧΙ” (“NO”). It was the Balkan Campaign of WWII, which resulted in “Operation Marita” (known too as the Battle of Greece) in which the guerilla resistance to the Axis powers some historians believe played a decisive role in delaying the Germans’ invasion of the Soviet Union which determined the course of the war. Someone makes the analogy: “Germany expected the Greeks to accept these terms without resistance. We’ve delayed them again.” There is a Greek saying that seems to speak to the moment: ΜΑΖΙ ΜΕ ΤΑ ΧΕΡΑ ΚΑΙΓΟΝΤΑΙ ΚΑΙ ΤΑ ΧΛΟΡΑ which roughly translates as “the green shoots will burn with the dried brush.” We keep telling each other we are entering into new spaces, the old structures are coming apart, and we are witness to the unraveling. T repeats the need to resist giving into fear. D at work tells me “I never stole a thing in my life.. but I’m paying for thieves.” I’m dismissive, “You’re in good company… think of what people went through in the past.”

“That’s what my wife tells me” he says soberly, “she says to respect the dead.”

“We have to let the rot die. Maybe there’ll be some hope if that happens.”

“Do you have the courage?” D looks me in the eyes.

“I guess I’ll find out,” I say.

ΥΠΕΡΠΑΡΑΓΩΓΗ

Ελένη-Χριστίνα Σταμοπούλου

Το Σινέ-Ελλάς σε συνεργασία με την ΕklogesProductions παρουσιάζει το κοινωνικό δράμα: «Χωρίς Αυτοδυναμία».

Η πιο δακρύβρεχτη ιστορία πόνου και προδοσίας μετά το «Μάνα γιατί με γέννησες» και το «Αμάρτησα για το παιδί μου».

Πρωταγωνιστούν:

Στο ρόλο του αρχηγού του πρώην ΠΑ.ΣΟ.Κ και νυν Δεν-Ξέρω-Πια-Τι-Στην-Ευχή-Είμαι κόμματος, ο Βαγγέλης.

Στο ρόλο του παραλίγο πρωθυπουργού, ο Αντώνης.

Και στο ρόλο του κακού, ο Αλέξης, ο ωραίος Μπρούμελ.

Έκτακτη εμφάνιση: ο ένας και μοναδικός ΦΩΤΗΣ!

ΘΑ ΚΛΑΨΕΤΕ ΜΕ ΤΗ ΨΥΧΗ ΣΑΣ!

Λίγα Λόγια για το έργο

Ο Βαγγέλης συνέρχεται στην εντατική ενός δημόσιου νοσοκομείου και προσπαθεί να καταλάβει τι έγινε. Καθώς αναρρώνει, η μνήμη του επανέρχεται σιγά-σιγά. Σ’αυτό τον βοηθά και ο φίλος του Αντώνης, που ξημεροβραδιάζεται στο προσκεφάλι του και παρακαλά την Παναγιά την Κανάλα να κάνει καλά τον Βαγγέλη και να κάψει εκείνον τον άθλιο που μπήκε ανάμεσα τους και τους χώρισε.

Εντωμεταξύ,ο Βαγγέλης, στο κρεβάτι του πόνου,αναπολεί το παρελθόν, τότε που αυτός και ο φίλος του ο Αντώνης, πιασμένοι χέρι-χέρι (χωρίς Καρατζαφέρη) ορκίστηκαν πάνω από το μνήμα του αρχηγού και μέντορα τους, Γιωργάκη. Ορκίστηκαν να συνεχίσουν και να υπερασπισθούν, και με τη ζωή τους ακόμα, το έργο Εκείνου, του Μεγάλου, του Τεράστιου ηγέτη-ποδηλάτη-κωπηλάτη-αθλητή. Για το χατίρι το δικό του και για τη σωτηρία της πατρίδας, άφησαν στην άκρη προσωπικές διαφορές, όνειρα  και φιλοδοξίες και ενωμένοι, σα μια γροθιά, χτύπησαν το χέρι στο τραπέζι και βροντοφώναξαν:«Όχι! Η Ελλάδα ανήκει στο Ευρώ, και το Αιγαίο στα ψάρια του» και ρίχτηκαν στη μάχη. Πολεμώντας άγρια και λυσσαλέα,όρμησαν στο τέρας της φοροδιαφυγής και το ξεκοίλιασαν, πάλεψαν με την Λερναία Ύδρα της διαφθοράς και της έκοψαν όλα τα κεφάλια και τα οπίσθια. Με την βοήθεια του Θείου από την Αμερική και τις ευλογίες της Αγγέλας, προστάτιδας των ΚΕΦΑΛΑΙΩΝ (και των μικρών), άφοβα και ατρόμητα έδωσαν μάχες πολλές και σε πολλά πεδία ταυτόχρονα, και θα κέρδιζαν τον πόλεμο αν δεν έμπαινε ανάμεσα τους εκείνος….

Εκείνος, ο Αλέξης, το τρίτο πρόσωπο, που τους πήρε τη μπουκιά από το στόμα, την αυτοδυναμία από τα χέρια, που τους στέρησε τη χαρά να σταθούν όρθιοι και ευθυτενείς και να αναφωνήσουν «Νενικήκαμεν» και μετά να πέσουν τ’ανάσκελο ως άλλοι Φειδιππίδες.

Ποτέ δεν θα ξεχνούσε τη στιγμή που ένα παιδαρέλι, αμούστακο ακόμα, κάθισε απέναντι του χαμογελώντας ειρωνικά. Ακόμα δεν έχει καταλάβει – και ίσως να μην καταλάβει ποτέ – τι του βρήκε η Ελλάδα  και τον προτίμησε. Πφφ! γυναίκες, σκέφτηκε. Εντάξει! ‟Είμαι νέος”, έπρεπε να το παραδεχτεί, ‟αλλά κοκκαλιάρης και ο άντρας πρέπει να έχει τα πιασιματάκια του”, σκέφτηκε, ‟να πιάνει τη πέτρα και να τη στύβει. Αλλά τι τα θες; Έτσι είναι η ζωή και πώς να την ξεγράψεις;”

Εκείνος, ο Αλέξης, που εκείνο το καταραμένο βράδυ ήλθε πίσω από τις λέξεις, και έγινε η αιτία που βρέθηκε στο θάλαμο της εντατικής, έτσι ξαφνικά, χωρίς να το περιμένει κανείς, με 13,5% πίεση, και απέξω ο φίλος του, συμπολεμιστής και συνοδοιπόρος, Αντώνης με 18,5% να κλαίει και να οδύρεται και να αγωνιά για το μέλλον. Και ενώ σκεφτόταν αυτά και η καρδιά του έτρεμε σα φύλλο στο βοριά, εμφανίστηκε μπροστά του ένας άγγελος με τη μορφή του Φώτη: «Μη φοβού Ευάγγελε!» του είπε «ο Σόιμπλε μετά Σου! Αυτή την ύστατη ώρα με έστειλε να Σε βοηθήσω γιατί το έργο Σου είναι ωραίο και ο σκοπός Σουιερός. Προχώρα λοιπόν και μη φοβού Ευάγγελε!» και μετά χάθηκε..

Και ο Ευάγγελος συνήλθε, και έβγαλε φωνή μεγάλη, και αναφώνησε:

“Vedi, Vindi, Vinci”

Όμως θα κρατήσει η χαρά του Βαγγέλη; Το popolo θα εκτιμήσει επιτέλους τις θυσίες τις δικές του και του Αντώνη; Και η καρδιά του θα αντέξει τα χτυπήματα της μοίρας;

Η συνέχεια επί της οθόνης.

Σημείωση

Εισιτήρια καθώς επίσης και χαρτομάντιλα, για να σφουγγίζειτο φιλοθεάμον κοινό τα δάκρυα του, διατίθενται στην είσοδο. Εντός της αιθούσης, ποπκόρν και αναψυκτικά.

IN EXTREMIS

“In our struggle for responsibility, we fight against someone who is masked.”

Walter Benjamin, “Experience”

This blog is a series of riffs on post-election feelings, happenings, anxieties …

The historic upending of the two-party system with SYRIZA’s (The Coalition of the Left) coming in as the second party with nearly 17% of the vote put PASOK (the Pan-Hellenic Socialists) in third place with an all-time low of 13. 18%. Meanwhile the right-wing NEW DEMOCRACY, the predicted winner, got 18.86%, of the vote. Even a coalition government looks like a slim possibility right now. That PASOK dropped so dramatically from its 43.92% win in the 2009 election is stunning. As one journalist noted, this represents a loss of one percentage point every month since the last 2009 elections; the result is that PASOK’s electoral body has shrunk by over 70%.

About the political thermometer of the election results, G, at work the day after, said:  “the THYMO(ΘΥΜΟ)metro broke,” Thymo = Gk for anger. He was being critical. He wished we could have stayed cooler.

I said, “How? Everything’s been falling apart. The only thing people are told is that there’s no choice. Not only that, but that it’s just going to get worse…” Even the coolest have their limits.

Headlines in the international news speak of an impending default. In the GUARDIAN Tristan Cooper a sovereign debt analyst at Fidelity Worldwide said “the eurozone’s weakest link just got weaker…A Greek Eurozone exit is now firmly on the cards … The irresistible force of German austerity has clashed with the immovable object of Greek popular resistance.”.. “immovable” is a curious adjective, I think on the contrary there has been a constant, anarchic movement. One of the unnerving aspects of the various “anti- mnimonio” groups is that they can’t pin down a specific rescue agenda, so we’re left with the troika, and the previous coalition government’s threats – “What if..” leads to take-overs, the instant drying up of  basics — gas, food, supermarkets suddenly bare – But, what we now have in front of us is already terrifying.

B left a post-it on my desk yesterday morning. She needed to talk. B is a work-study student; I wasn’t concerned since we often communicate through notes when our schedules don’t coincide. But as soon as she walked into the office she started crying. The picture in her camera showed a spray-painted swastika with its Xrysi Avgi wreath on the side of a silver-colored car. The car is her father’s. B’s family has lived inAthensfor over 16 years and owns their home. B speaks and writes Greek fluently as she was very young when her family moved fromAlbania. “Xrysi Avgi”, Golden Dawn, is the Neo-Nazi party who has just won 6.97% of the vote which gives them 21 seats in the Greek parliament. B assures me she and her family are close to the people in her neighborhood. But “there was a woman” she tells me, the girlfriend of a friend of her boyfriend’s, who had admitted to being in the party. B says she distanced herself, but remembers that she had told B she shouldn’t be going out with her boyfriend who is Greek, “what will happen to your children?” she told her, “who will be mixed blood.” B is suddenly very calm. “Believe it or not,” she tells me “I’m more sad than angry.”

“It was a mistake not to give these people more news coverage,” someone else says during the same day. “People may not have voted for them if they knew exactly what kind of people they are.” I say the obvious. What more does anyone need to know when a group defines themselves as Nazi-sympathizers. E says a lot of the vote came from villages, the islands, Mani, the southern Peloponnese, Crete, even – this truly defies comprehension – Kalavryta, the mountain village where the Nazis massacred the entire male population above the age of 12, after locking up the women in the church on December 13 1943.The village was burned to the ground. Here “Xrysi Avgi” got 6.44% of the vote. E tries to explain the broader picture, though I am hard put to grasp it. “People feel they are being occupied. Everyone’s now a foreigner, a threat, the immigrants get the jobs, the politicians are dishonest, corrupt … you should see how the priests and the police treat these Xrysi Avgites, they greet them in the streets. They see them as the protectors.”

When journalists went to interview the XA leader after the election results, they were told to stand up. The camera caught a screaming thug yelling at the group of news reports to “Stand up in respect for the leader!” A journalist writing for the Greek newspaper Kathemerini had her entire personal life splashed over their web site, then there were threats, after her April Op-Ed questioned the constitutionality of the party even running in the elections. Stathis Gourgouris’ May 3 piece in ALJAZEERA “Greece at the global forefront” speaks of the “knee-jerk reaction of a people” enduring the “conditions of flash impoverishment” as a result, among other things, of German policies: “What seems to have escaped the pundits… is that German policies are producing new Weimars elsewhere in Europe.”

After NEW DEMOCRACY failed to form a coalition government, the mandate went to Alexis Tsipras the 38 year old ex-KKE member who leads SYRIZA, the Coalition of the Left. KKE (the Stalinist Communists) flat out rejected any invitation to collaborate with SYRIZA, with whom a coalition government could have been formed. But Aleka Papariga, like her party’s ideology, is another voice of extremity (& the past). For all her party’s expensive posters and large rallies of the Greek youth, she publicly declared she does not want any part of governing power; she only wants to represent “resistance.” “When are we going to learn to say more than ‘No’” one journalist lamented. “When, are we going to finally decide what we want and who we are?” The question is profound. 35% of the voting body did not go to the polls on Sunday, a shocking number given that the bulk in that percentage belonged officially to PASOK and NEA DEMOCRATIA. 19% of the voting body cast votes for parties who did not pass the 3% threshold for parliament seats, including parties center right and left, like the “Greens” (Ecologists); DRASI, with their “citizens not clients” logo, Dora Bakoyannis’ neo-liberal Democratic Alliance party, and DIMIOURGIA KSANA, “create again,” all just points shy of the 3% mark.

The day before the elections A came over to the apartment where we sat on the balcony as the sun splayed through the pines’ May green. A is a professor, active in her field and politically engaged. But that afternoon we talked mostly of her dying cat. How she could only feed her finger food, and how much she loved the cat. Her whole life in the past month has revolved around the cat. There are tears in A’s eyes. I ask why she won’t put the cat to sleep and she says because she doesn’t want to interfere in its dying. The cat seems to come to after food. She lifts herself from the pillow when she’s put out on the balcony and seems to look toward the sun even though she’s completely blind.

“What Are You Voting?”

“.. every contingency must threaten a society which is no longer guaranteed by citizens.”
from “Understanding and Politics (The Difficulties of Understanding)”     Hannah Arendt

Tomorrow, Sunday May 6, Greeks, like the French are going to the polls. We don’t ask each other “who” but “what” we are voting for. It comes up in almost every conversation. Sometimes not until the end, sometimes as an after- thought, but we ask each other the question quite bluntly. It feels vital somehow,even though we all know there’s the “fait accompli” of the mnimonio, the economic shackles of the “PSI” and other assorted terms that have been agreed upon by our unelected coalition government. Nevertheless, there is an energy and urgency to the conversations around the upcoming vote: after all it is a shot at voicing any number of points of view. There is the “punishment” vote – those voting against their traditional allegiances, like the ΠΑ.ΣΟ.Κ., Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party, and ΝΕΑ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ, New Democracy, loyalists, there’s the “Anti- mnimonio” vote that runs the gamut of extremes, from the far left, Stalinist Communists (KKE), to the (incredible!) ΧΡΥΣΗ ΑΥΓΗ “Golden Dawn” Nazi-sympathizers.  There is the “political vote” and the “ideological vote” which for some of the above is one and the same, but for a great majority, including myself, it’s the dilemma that follows the question “What are you voting for?” — That we are asking “what” rather than “who” is revealing of a state of affairs which is no longer about leaders – there are none – but about the platforms whose groups might bring the possibility of future hopes closer to reality — which group, we ask ourselves, might undermine the real threats of the extremes which are alarmingly gaining ground.

For many, the issue of “what” versus “who” is one of ideology versus survival; ideologically, in a more hopeful world that might give momentum to a vote that could make a difference, the vote cast might be the vote that builds that ideological hope. But that hope is now hijacked to the larger question of how to fight, or resist the growing economic strangulation which has resulted in a shocking 40% rise in suicides since 2010, and a ballooning unemployment rate of 21% and rising with degree-holding graduates in the 22-35 age category being the 3 in 5 of the unemployed. To then hear Mme Lagarde say “There is still medicine to be taken” sounds frankly insensitive or, more possibly, simply indifferent to the grim fact of these facts. Of course as the April 8 “60 Minutes” CBS coverage of the crisis in “An Imperfect Union: Europe’s Debt Crisis”  noted, in the voice of one economic consultant interviewed, once the mnimonio loan package was signed, “Creditors take over.” While Greece has effectively lost its sovereignty in what P describes as “a government sponsored default” beginning with the George Papandreou government which complicated an already devastated economy with belated and mistaken initiatives that brought the country to ever-greater threats of complete collapse. It is now, indeed, the creditors who have taken over, and they, of course, are not expected to have sentimental feelings about the consequences of what the country has to go through to pay its debt. But the looming question remains where is this leading us, and who is doing the leading? It doesn’t help when Wolfgang Schäuble, the federal minister of finance in Angela Merkel’s cabinet, makes reductive statements like Greece’s “prosperity is thanks to our handouts [from Germany]”; the rhetoric in the foreign press over the crisis has been generally problematic, and sometimes appalling. Students at HAUniv did a discourse analysis on the word choices of some of these articles (which I’ll post at a later point), but even in Steve Kroft’s “60 Minutes” discussion, phrases such as “the relaxed Greek lifestyle” and binaries like “the frugal, industrious north” versus the “Portuguese, Italians, and Greeks who are more relaxed about work and money,” aggravate already problematic misconceptions, and feed into a slew of reactionary responses, from Katerina Moutsatsou’s recent, embarrassing, “I am Hellene” Youtube clip blogged on Keep Talking Greece to the passionate, more to the point “My name is Spyros…” response.

The discrepancies between the reality of what the austerity measures have done, & continue to do, to the social fabric of the country, and the unabashedly threatening overtones of the likes of Schäuble (See blog on “German FinMin Threatens Greek Voters 36 Hours Before the Elections”) which treat these realities as inconsequential has created outrage. It has also made tomorrow’s vote an important one. There are the cynics, or realists, who claim “it doesn’t matter what I vote for” since “it won’t change anything.” There are those, like F who holds dual-citizenship but has never voted a day in his life, either in the U.S. or Greece, “because if you look at it mathematically it really doesn’t make a difference.” There is I voting KKE (Stalinist Communists) for “sentimental reasons” because the village her parents come from, and the one she visits regularly, still remembers the Civil War (1946-1949) as that fiercely bloody time when the British and American backed rightists (Democratic Army of Greece) fought the Bulgarian and Yugoslavian backed leftists (KKE Community Party). T and D with many others are voting for ΣΥΡΙΖΑ the Coalition of the Radical Left (which the polls are tagging as the third party at 11.5%), hoping that it will create a nub of informed resistance, including what T views as necessary “de-growth” sustainability initiatives. E, J, and K are voting for ΑΝΤ.ΑΡ.ΣΥ.Α.  the Anti-Capitalist Collaboration of the Left for the Overthrow” [of the mnimonio] which has pulled in some well-known actors and authors to its ranks. ΔΡΑΣΗ, Action, with its wonderful slogan “We are citizens, not clients” almost strangely, is low on the polls with a mere 2.2% of the predicted vote — though a lot of people I’ve spoken to, including myself, are hoping ΔΡΑΣΗ will make the 3% for seats in parliament. There is Kamenos’ right-wing ΑΝΕΞΑΡΤΗΤΟΙ ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ, Independent Greeks, polls predict will get around 7% of the vote, the ΧΡΥΣΗ ΑΥΓΗ, the Golden Dawn thugs with an unbelievable 4.1% of the vote which would get them into the parliament; and a new hopeful ΔΗΜΙΟΥΡΓΙΑ ΧΑΝΑ! Create Again! which P is voting for because “None of these people are politicians.”

The one common denominator across party lines is the belief that we are, in this critical time, without inspired leadership. Evangelos Venizelos who heads ΠΑ.ΣΟ.Κ., the Pan-Hellenic Socialist Party, admits all too smoothly to “our mistakes” without any concrete discussion on how issues like tax evasion and unemployment will be addressed. He is also weirdly unaware of how servile he sounds when he speaks of his recent negotiations as Finance Minister with Schäuble et al., challenging “anyone else” to manage such tough deals. Then there’s Antonis Samaras who heads ΝΕΑ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΙΑ, New Democracy, the party most likely to get the largest percentage of the vote (polled at 22%), who comes across as someone having a fit of hysteria every time he talks of, or screams, his determination to return Greece to a “self-respecting country.” How he plans to this is never made clear. While many believe, given half the chance, he will sell off the country’s remaining assets to the first bidder.

So what are we going to vote for tomorrow? We’re hoping that at the very least, those coming into office will realize how fragile any tomorrow will be, and salvage it.

“The Naked Truth”

 Aggeliki Mintzia / Αγγελική Μίντζια

Listening to the political campaigns in the last days, I recalled a phrase that I heard some years ago: “This is the naked truth”. When I first heard it, I was somewhat impressed, since I couldn’t decode its meaning right away. Actually, I had the assumption that we use the word “truth” when we want to refer to a real situation; when we want to refer to a fact, or a series of facts, something that might have taken place at a specific moment in time. In other words, “truth” is reality. Given therefore that truth is reality, what does the usage of the adjective “naked” serve? How does it describe the noun “truth”? I mean that something either happened or not; either exists or not. Afterwards, being unable to reach a logical conclusion, I decided that the adjective “naked” in this case was a weakness, an example of wordiness.

Some years later, namely right now as I’m writing these lines, I have completely changed my mind. Now, I compare truth to a naked woman who is physically damaged. In order for the politicians to cover these injuries, they turn themselves into dressmakers, and they grasp the opportunity to properly dress her. Or so they think. By the way, for the May 6^th elections, I have been called to vote for the political party which will take the initiative in the struggle to achieve a better tomorrow for my country. But, I have not understood yet how that word is any better defined. It’s like “truth,” suddenly suspect: I have also been told that I must make “the correct choice.” I have answered that I cannot make a correct choice, because I don’t know what the incorrect one is. As I am no longer sure how “untruth” is different from what politicians and others are calling “truth.” I have pointed out that I choose neither the right nor the wrong, because I don’t know how serious the injuries are which are hidden beneath the woman’s dress. There was no response to this. However, they keep insisting that I, the voter, must make the correct choice, a “true” choice. And I keep wondering what else I must tell them, as I like the woman Alethia (“truth”), am speechless.

Αγάπη μου, να σου εξηγήσω… Δεν είναι αυτό που νομίζεις!

Σταμοπούλου Ελένη

 

Αγάπη μου, να σου εξηγήσω: δεν είναι αυτό που νομίζεις… Πουλάκια κάνουν τα μάτια σου και έχεις παρασθήσεις.

Δεν είναι οι άστεγοι που κοιμούνται στα παγκάκια και τις στοές – άνθρωποι που μέχρι χθες είχαν μία ταυτότητα, μια δουλειά, ένα σπίτι και που σήμερα δεν έχουν τίποτα. Ούτε, βέβαια, οι εθελοντές που έτρεχαν μέσα στο χιονιά νυχτιάτικα για να τους μοιράσουν κουβέρτες και ζεστά ροφήματα μπας και καταφέρουν να τους κρατήσουν ζωντανούς.

 Δεν είναι οι άποροι που συνωστίζονται, καθημερινά όλο και περισσότεροι στα συσσίτια της Αρχιεπισκοπής για ένα πιάτο φαί και ένα κομμάτι ψωμί.

 Δεν είναι οι άνεργοι που κάθε μέρα, όλο και περισσότεροι, στέκονται στις ουρές του ΟΑΕΔ για να πάρουν 360 € κρατώντας στο ένα χέρι τη κάρτα ανεργίας και στο άλλο τον λογαριασμό της ΔΕΗ και προσπαθούν να υπολογίσουν πόσα επιδόματα χρειάζονται για να πληρώσουν το χαράτσι.

 Δεν είναι τα «περήφανα γηρατειά» του Ανδρέα Παπανδρέου που τους έκοψαν τις συντάξεις και τα επιδόματα και που τώρα πρέπει με ό,τι τους απέμεινε να πληρώσουν φάρμακα, λογαριασμούς και να στηρίξουν οικονομικά τα παιδιά και τα εγγόνια τους που έχουν χάσει, αν όχι ολόκληρο, τουλάχιστον το μισό εισόδημα τους.

 Δεν είναι τα παιδιά στα σχολεία που λιποθυμούν από ασιτία, ούτε και οι μερίδες φαγητό που τους μοιράζονται όπως τον καιρό της κατοχής.

 Δεν είναι οι νοικοκυρές μπροστά στα ράφια των supermarket που κοιτούν με απορία τις τιμές να ανεβαίνουν συνέχεια και που καλούνται κάθε μέρα να παραστήσουν τον Μεσσία για να ταΐσουν την οικογένεια.

 Αλλά είναι ο κύριος Καλοχαιρέτας* που θα σε ανακαλύψει προεκλογικά όπου κι αν είσαι. Ο κύριος Καλοχαιρέτας που δεν έχει χρώμα ούτε και σαφή πολιτική ιδεολογία. Θα ανοίξει τον χάρτη και θα σε βρει -και στου βοδιού το κέρατο να κρυφτείς – και θα σου έρθει χαμογελαστός μεσα στο ακριβό του αυτοκίνητο, που εσύ πλήρωσες, από τον κακοφτιαγμένο δρόμο, που εσύ πλήρωσες, για να σου σφίξει το χέρι. Ο κύριος Καλοχαιρέτας που τόσα χρόνια έκανε μνημόσυνο με ξένα κόλλυβα και μοίραζε τις επιδοτήσεις σε φίλους, γνωστούς και τσιράκια και που καλεί τώρα εσένα να τις πληρώσεις. Ο κύριος Καλοχαιρέτας που όσο κι αν έφαγε δυστυχώς δεν έσκασε, θα έρθει στο χωριό σου σέρνοντας πίσω του και την κυρία Καλοχαιρέτα, με τα τακουνάκια της και την Prada τσάντα της, ίσως και κάνα δυο καλοχαιρετάκια για να μαθαίνουν το επάγγελμα.

 Τότε μην ξεχάσεις να πάρεις τη σημαιούλα σου και να στηθείς στη σειρά να σε χαιρετήσει – δια χειραψίας παρακαλώ – και να σου πει ότι η υπόθεση σου «τελείωσε». Ίσως να βρει  και μία θέση στο δημόσιο για το παιδάκι σου που έχει δύο πτυχία και μιλάει τρεις ξένες γλώσσες και που είναι άνεργο. Γιατί πώς θα γυρίσει στο χωριό να βόσκει πρόβατα ή να μαζεύει ελιές, επιστήμων άνθρωπος?

Και θα τον ψηφίσεις ξανά γιατί ξέρει πως να χαϊδεύει τ’αυτιά σου με ψεύτικα λόγια και λάγνες υποσχέσεις.

Και μετά θ’αναρωτιέσαι ποιός φταίει για την κατάντια μας.

 

*Κύριος Καλοχαιρέτας από την ταινία του Ντίνου Δημόπουλου «Φτώχεια και Αριστοκρατία» (1959) . Στο ρόλο του βουλευτή Καλοχαιρέτα ο Απόστολος Αβδής.

On the Island of “lambri”

Praised be…

The islands with all their minimum and lampblack

the islands with the vertebra of Zeus

the islands with their boat yards so deserted

the islands with their drinkable blue volcanoes

“The Gloria” Axion Esti, Odysseus Elytis (trans. Edmund Keeley & George Savidis)

It is the Greek Easter weekend and it feels important to leave the city – despite forebodings of bad weather, and the 48 hour strike. After all the weather and the strikes have been relentless this winter, and resilience has been one of the ways we’ve coped. It turns out the boats will leave but only after midnight. And the weather, S tells me, is supposed to let up for Thursday and Friday even if there are predictions for more rain over the weekend.

Patmos is special, the island imbues a rare harmony with its gradual hills, terraced in rock fences and its Xora crowned by the monastery that stands above the whitewashed houses and narrow “sokakia” and alleyways still reminiscent of the Venetian years. In early spring the hills are touched in green, colors from yellow swathes of daisies and chamomile to poppies and “lambri” as the locals call the bushes of topped lavender. The sea, visible everywhere, hugs the coastline in its varying shades of azure and cobalt blues, these colors as much an indication of the time of year as the temperature. It is the island where St. John the Divine had his apocalyptic vision and dictated it to Prokopis, his young apprentice.

The ferry was surprisingly crowded given that these are not easy times to be shelling out money for tickets, and the strike meant no one could be sure that it would in fact end at midnight. It did though, and around 12:30 or so, we left the port of Piraeus for the long 8 hour ride that had us arriving  on Patmos in the early morning. S hadn’t slept very well on his floor mat, and I’d slept deeply if only for a couple of hours scrunched into two seats with my sleeping bag. “Μεγάλη Πέμπτη” (Holy or Maundy Thursday) on Patmos is the day of the “Νιπτήρας”: the monastery monks’ reenactment of Christ’s washing of his disciples’ feet. The ritual is a tradition on the island often attended by visiting politicians and ministers. I didn’t expect to see any politicians this year. Most were afraid to show their faces in public for fear of being the target of thrown yogurts, or worse. The morning was chilly. S and I sat at the only café that was open. The owner smiled and said, “Of course” when we asked if he had eggs and coffee. Skala, the port village, was still waking up. A cluster of men having their coffee sat at one of the tables, other than that there didn’t seem to be anyone else around. The morning’s sky still had some of its winter color — bruised blue shades of light and dark reflected the sea’s almost-purple waves. The light was crisp, with a clarity it never has during summer’s thick-sun days.

Being on the island felt like… I’m going to try hard not to sound cliché, too much seems to be riding on this, I mean Greece, already so loaded with nuances, from antiquity to Aegean holiday romances, and now in its present catastrophe, there is this: an island (and islands) of gorgeousness in the midst of  the tragic and ugly. As S and I were taking in the sea and eating our eggs, I suddenly noticed another person in the almost empty square, and of all people it was Petros Kostopoulos, the Lifestyle King, a symbol of the blatant materialism of the 90s. I suddenly swallowed very deliberately. Here was the man, with his Jack Nicholson looks whom I had confessed to friends that I sincerely hoped would go bankrupt one day and find himself decrepit and uncool. His ever-so-coolly misogynist editorials in Klik – the magazine he founded that launched a whole Lifestyle movement — helped derail the priorities of at least two generations who bought into the seductions of image over essence. Such seductions as large 4-wheel-drive contraptions that seem always to suggest much smaller issues, were suddenly everywhere, Cherokees and Land Rovers driven by dudes in designer sunglasses with beautiful escorts, looking absurd as they negotiated Athens’ narrow streets and nonexistent parking spaces in vehicles that were clearly not designed for European cities.

Kostopoulos looked a lot older than his 50-something age. He had been one of the names in the news, a man who owes money and has not paid his employees in months though he publicly and indignantly said he was the one with money owed to him, the person who would vouch all his savings to save his employees. I don’t always keep up with the ongoing barrage of names and episodic dramas constantly in the news, but I did ask a friend about the details when I’d heard Kostopoulos’ name mentioned; she said she heard he was about to declare bankruptcy. So here he was on Patmos for Easter. It seemed incongruous, but maybe it wasn’t. “apokálypsis” means to reveal something hidden – so what was revealing about a symbol of what went wrong with Greece in the past 20 years, maybe the hidden emptiness of those seductions was now visible? I watched him pass our table. From behind he looked like a man close to 60. He still had his swagger, his Nicholson look, but this was the untouched picture, the Lifestyle King who was real rather than photo-shopped, in one of the country’s, if not the world’s, most naturally beautiful places during the Greek Easter weekend.

S and I drank our coffee and went up to the Xora to dump our bags and walk to the main square where the enactment of the washing of the feet was taking place. On the path were strewn sprigs of “lambri” as the Patmians call the topped lavender blooms with their sweet camphor scent. A Patmian woman explained it grew naturally and abundantly this time of year. “Lambri,” Greek for “brightness,” a word heard repeatedly on Easter Sunday to express the “light” or “brightness” of Christ’s revelation if you’re a believer, is also a perfect metaphor for this Greece that exists outside the mistaken lifestyle choices of people like Kostopoulos — here on the island was a more organic, hospitable Greece. Part of the magic is that the Patmians themselves understand this; they are the first to tell you that Patmos is “a small piece of paradise,” “a seed of glory,” and generously share its wealth. Maria leaves eggs at the house. Xristodolos brings me a bouquet of Calla lilies and the topped lavender “lambri,” and when I look stunned he says to me, “It’s a gift. I’ve been given gifts in my life, so why can’t I bring one to you?”

I think rebirth, more than birth, is rightly celebrated as the more miraculous occasion. Certainly in Greece Easter is the holiday whose rituals, from fast days to the dying of eggs, are followed, even by the secular, with a love for their symbolisms. Symbols all the more resonant as Athens’ hopelessness, its abandoned lives and neglected futures, threaten to poison any hope for change. The courage of sacrifice comes, too, of a faith in better days. It’s the Easter lesson, the deliverance of Πάσχα or “Pascha” the passing, or Passover, of the spirit that promises another birth in its passage through death. I stared at the Byzantine frescoes in the chapel of Zoodohou Pigis (“Life Source”). Swaths of red wound down one of the walls, a brilliant, falling stream that ended in the mouth of a beast. What looked like human heads were in the animal’s open mouth. The various ravages, small and skeletal, of human figures, were caught in a tumultuous apocalypse. The frescoes were magnificent depictions of the torturous fate of humankind. They were also violent and beautiful expressions of imagination.

The chapel went dark before the resurrection at midnight. As the church bells start to ring throughout the island, priests tell the gathered people to come forward and take the light — “Να πάρετε το φως.” We’re told it is holy, flown in from Jerusalem. We move toward the alter where the priest lights the first wicks in darkness. Touching our “lambatha” candles to the person nearest us with a lit flame, the petaled light spreads.  As we leave the chapel others come up to light their wicks, wishing “χρόνια πολλά” (many years) and saying “Χριστός ανέστη!” (Christ is risen). The small alleyways and island “sokaki” start to fill with candlelight. People cup the flickering wicks so they don’t blow out. It’s a windy night. My flame goes out and I find someone nearby whose flame is still lit. People lean into each other, relighting their wicks as they blow out, trying to keep the flames burning. The idea is to reach home with the light alive.