Goodbye Salonica

There's something oddly romantic in the city of my childhood. The trees are swaying in the spring wind as people and cars cross the streets with an ant-like pace. Seen from above, everything loses some of its urgency, of its sense of drama too. Cyclists and pedestrians pause on the brink of the pier, as if they're contemplating jumping off. But they're not. The sea is flowing as ever.
Only the statues, the courts and ancient walls don't move. Silence amidst the noise. How Greek is silence? Very, contrary to appearences, I'd wager.

Addio Città clip by Emmanouil Papadopoulos on Youtube
Original Music: Calexico-Departure In F Minor

The Fog

photo by Stathis Stavrianos/Flickr

What does the future hold? Is everything misty and hazy? Or does a ray of light make itself known from afar?

Greece was more beautiful in our minds...

From the film "A Touch of Spice" (Cuisine from Istanbul) by Tasos Boulmetis, 2003.

Street of Dreams

Every garden has a nest for the birds
Every street has a heart for the children
But you my lady, what are you chatting with the dawn about
gazing at the stars that keep falling like rain...
Give me your hair to make them a prayer
And I will start my song from the beginning
Every house hides some love
In its silence
But there is a boy who treats love
As shame.

Street of dreams (1962): music & lyrics by Manos Hadjidakis, sung by Yiorgo Marinos.

Black and Brown with a hint of White

Katerina at Fashion Week Athens F/W'10'11, Technopoli at Gazi. Photo by Streetgeist

What makes this "so Greek"?
Conservativism: black and more black in somber, Spartan lines. Check!
Rebelliousness: introducing a non matching toffee-brown hue via the accessories. Check!
Unwillingness to forsake femininity: nipped waist, hose, high-heel T-bar ankle-straps, red lipstick. Check!
Tradition: The white scarf on the head turban-style isn't miles removed from the folk garment of centuries past. Check!

It's all so quiet, it's all so still

photo by caribb/flickr

Plaka down the Acropolis, strewn with red for the Olympic run in 2004.

Like a hot star towards your island

All these years I have been searching for you in my maps,
even though you never leaned your lips on my forehead to leave a breath in my life.
And if my prayer smells of alcohol, of tobacco and of fever,
to the glassy wave your name I shout;
I shout your name, so that my voice is mirrored.
And if on the shore where you're combing your hair,
it's heard like a salty song that the water brings you, enamored,
to the devil I'll sell my soul, I, so that I can be wrapped tonight
at your body's depths.

Somewhere the night is hanging mid-ocean to the gallows of the skies,
and the demon is riding the darkness, clutching my wish mid-air.
Like a hot star towards your island, he throws my words,
hurting the rocks and the sand,
and he pins my soul on your hair comb.
And drop by drop, I stream, I,
like salty water on the shoulders and your dear neck.
Nevermind that I know he is biding his time on top the rope-ladder,
waiting for me, waiting to file away the ropes.

It's been years that strange lights shine across on some land,
on some forsaken island,
which is said to be the peaks of heaven.
But I know it's the sea's spell,
there's no such land, since no one ever went there.
So I grab myself tightly from your body,
and in front of the damned I pass,
like a shadow which promenades your scent through Hades.
And I think, it's heaven, my little love,
to share this hell together.

translation author's own