Sketches from Athens (A Guide, ish)

Locations: https://goo.gl/maps/UgiJLTFbtpWpy1rm6

Figure 1 - Athens, Return to the Acropolis, 1983, Theo Angelopoulos (still frame from @GreekVisions)

The following text is neither story nor city guide, it’s not even a journal excerpt really, or anything more than a thoughtless collage of thoughts and cherished moments from a recent trip home, laid down in a series of pleasant words by a hand with no brain.

Athens, Greece; April 2023

I’m glad to have arrived in time to get a whiff of our Seville Orange Trees

Bastard children of pomelos and mandarins

Denuded of savory fruit for all but marmalade fiends

Yet graced by God (Darwin?) with divine little angels sprouting come Easter

Little cherubs sent off to perfume our urban filth, our awe-inspiringly ugly sprawling jungle of concrete apartment blocks, solar thermal collectors, uprooted pavements, and desolation.

Lake Marathon freshwater to the face and the day’s half-begun, 93.6 FM, KOSMOS RADIO and the day’s begun. Sir Prokopis Doukas lays out snide political commentary and speaks Athenian truths over the crunch of thyme honey toast breakfasts and eon commutes. 8 to 10am, when all the smart folks tune in for record spins and morning knowledge. Sometime in the afternoon, maybe at 6 or 7pm I’ll tune in again to listen as Vasilis Stamatiou – the Greekest Latino or the Latinoest Greek – plays a continent the way virtuosos sound their instruments, with direction and grace. Doukas and Stamatiou are the gems of Greek radio. They speak we listen; they sing we dance; they preach we understand. 

The metro track rust hasn’t been cleared in years obstructing the Alstom carriage convoy which wails in harmony with beat beggars of purpose riding to nowhere, pendulating from mountain to sea, Piraeus to somewhere over yonder. The nation lost its way sometime around 2008 and to this day most of us remain lost on the road not taken, doubting if we should ever come back.

Lady Day and Sir Samuele await in Monastiraki square – she an old acquaintance pleasantly become new friend, he my personal favorite Englishman in Athens – slowly chiseling away at Lord Elgin’s evil precedent. No mind you, Sir Samuele does not steal marbles, quartzites, gneiss’s, slate, or any other rocks for he has dignity.   

A gauntlet to run,

Ermou street to meet them,

Crossing: tourist church heroin needle in the haystack promotion discount metropolis, yuck!

Ermou is an urban colonoscopy.

But Ikaros, gentle cradle of modern Greek poetry, where Seferis, Elytis, Engonopoulos, and other beautiful minds hunkered down in the attic exchanging verse and vision, great dreams of a Hellenic future inscribed in lyrics more captivating than any political promise of the postwar era, sturdy oak cradle still standing tall disseminating poetry – old and new – and children’s books, comic books, political books and manifestoes, and all other sorts of words on paper! This Ikaros learnt from his namesake’s mistakes to be prudent, to choose life. €5 for Thanos Stathopoulos’ La Folie and I run on down. Was it worth the effort or not? I’ve not yet concluded; I may do so soon or perhaps never; What does it matter; who can say with certainty what is worth the effort and what is not; who knows what matters and what does not. There was more but I forgot, La Folie.

Lady Day and Sir Samuele fall off the Green Line into an embrace one year in the making, don’t skip a beat, start for Anafiotika, conversation flowing over news, jobs, friends, lovers, lack thereof, trips, we decide we only want to talk about things and never again discuss people. I expound on why the Seville orange flower must be a ancient divinity caught in natural Samsara as they preach of Samothracian lemon tastin’ leaves and nudism until everything eventually is wonderful (as everything eventually should be). Hours unfold like paper napkins walking until we reach the promised land on Karagiorgi Servias, opposite the Public, into the bank, up to the 9th floor, enter the one-man-show canteen gem! Η Καντίνα της Καραγιώργη Σερβίας (Ο Κρητικός), The Canteen of Karagiorgi Servias (The Cretan).

One jolly old man and his young accomplice, having set up nifty grill on a prime Athenian rooftop, spend their days cooking simple foods for local people – young man no table at this moment mind you – no stress sir, we can wait with a drink or something – sure you go ahead, take the beers out the fridge and I’ll open ‘em for you, not too close to the edge… young but patient huh? – young but patient? I guess so, sir – so we grab three bottles of Alfa ambushed by Mount Lycabettus to our rear, the Old Palace and National Garden to the left, and the Acropolis down towards the sea, drinking and waiting with a monumental view.

By the time we get a table right in the corner we’re so famished from scaling Athens all day we order another round of beers with a horiatiki salad, this large plate of jumbo amber shrimp, meatballs sliced across the middle, fried potatoes, and bread, then we eat all smiles until we can’t no more at which point we switch back to talking and laughing about a pigeon that won’t vacate our lot, he looks less sickly than the rest of them so we love him and don’t mind – we pay the old sir his honest €34 and bounce.

Nine floors back down to earth, cars with 150 thousand kilometers on the dash zip by spewing gray guck everywhere, vendors selling all sorts of junk like those conmen Americans watch on twilight television channels but in Athens they roam the streets performing live – cigarettes, lighters, lottery tickets, pre-made football bets, pantihose and lipstick flavored chewing gum – we take a right then another right and seek refuge in Ariston, an Athenian institution from 1910 where my mom and my nan before her also sought refuge from the chaos to buy pies and pastries.

Consultations with the wise old ladies of Ariston Palace leave us with only one choice: mpougatsa, a Greek semolina custard pie dusted with powdered sugar and cinnamon wrapped in phyllo native to the Macedonia region up north, which we heartily take in snazzy paper bags and run off to sit at the Old Parliament’s steps around the corner.

The building went defunct in 1934 when the Senate began convening in the Old Palace at Syntagma Square, it was later converted into a museum and statues of the two longest serving prime ministers of the late 19th century were erected on opposite poles, facing away from each other. Even in death, Trikoupis and Diligiannis could not look each other in the eyes; even in death our political leaders could not bear each other’s presence.

The whole thing is funny to me. If even in death we do not expect our political leaders to coexist, what hope can we have with our living ones?  

Blackout in Psychiko – the prophets have gone to bed, there is no enlightenment to be found on the streets, one must wait until the Epitaph on Friday for the church procession to flood the neighborhood in candlelight, for now, must tread lightly in the darkness avoiding headlights and tree trunks, follow the Karelias & Sons tobacco and vanilla scent to find Kamelia, then find home.

I return feverish to a stray Seville Orange angel defecating in my toilet, butt-naked with only a pair of fortified rubber boots on his feet, purple from the bowel movement strain, vomit on my carpet yet he’s still beautiful sitting there all entranced giving pain to his notepad.

Yellow morning, kale and sprouts,

Doorstep, wet, moist and brown,

I blame the daily mailie,

Steak for dinner, nasty pool, fake tits

And a beering busted lip,

Sandals Vavucci, they were a present.

Four wigged pigs invited, wife suggested,

With them, ten with ‘lets’ and pests and lice.

Soul mud-hugging grass, but no shoes.

No speaker, fence caroling, shut up dicknose

His name is Harold,

See a nun and then her thong,

This is a birthday song!

Police sirens shatter sundown’s peace as they charge up Filothei Hill. Mr. K’s sitting so Zen-like on a rock, he’s been rolling peacefully doesn’t even notice the buggers until their headlights light him up. Two rogues burst out the patrol vehicle fancying an altercation. Hey you, yeah you, the one who threw something off the hill just now, you, up against the wall motherflower. Over the roaring V8 you make out the faint buzz of their dispatch radio – a calypso band going full swing chanting motaaa Mexicana, motaaa Mexicana. A sigh of relief, it’s the hippie police. 

Shuteye

One eye open, two eyes open, Lake Marathon freshwater to the face, sweatpants, unlaced sneakers, baggy t-shirt, dirty sweater, sunglasses, fanny pack, my Athenian uniform on and I’m sprinting down to Faros to catch a bus to Kifissia for spiritual coffee at Varsos – a strange old confectionary where old people overpay to relive bygone pleasures, their bygone-ness punctuated by the ever deteriorating Tsoureki; our sacred Easter bread for which Varsos was once undisputed champion but can no longer claim that title. No bother, I take one anyways for family’s sake and lay on a couch until Lady Day and Sir Samuele spawn all gleeful in the sunlight and eager for Freddo Espresso talk of divine entities.

***

(Transcribed, courtesy of Sir Samuele)

*We experience beauty and emotion that is so profound that it cannot be fathomed without appealing to the existence of a god.

*Did we discover this god through profound experience or create it to help us process profound experience.

*If there were no humans, a discovered god would still exist (mind-independent). If god is created, and is a construct that each believer upholds through their faith and devotion (mind-dependent) this god would cease to exist if there were no humans.

*If god is mind independent, this can create problems. Different people interpret and practice their faith in different ways. Some of these interpretations are contradictory. If god exists mind independently in some defined way, there is a correct interpretation of god, and many incorrect ones. (Freaky line of reasoning —> justifies crusades & caliphates).

*If god is mind-dependent, then it is difficult to reason how we can assign divine properties to it (e.g., being the creator).

*Perhaps there is a mind dependent-aspect of god, and a mind-independent aspect.

*The mind dependent aspect is the ‘idea’ that each person has of god, which is a product of their culture/society, and which they consciously devote their faith to. People from different backgrounds interpret this god differently, sometimes in contradicting ways, and this is ok.

*However, there could also be a mind-independent aspect of god, which is the reason people are drawn to the path of faith. This mind independent aspect is common to all faiths and is the divine truth that the faithful yearn for. Humans create different constructs around the divine in order to comprehend it, but all faiths are touched by the same light that compels them to interpret and practice their faith.

***

I’m falling ill to the alluring Athenian laziness, a Sisyphean sentence of lukewarm watery Frappé and double Tavli losses, souvlaki for breakfast and melomakarona for dinner, sports betting at OPAP and fanaticism for Panathinaikos. Just one more place to visit then I can get out this black hole. The Ikismos Georgiou Papandreou perched atop the Attiko Alsos, a small unlicensed and likely unsolicited neighborhood which sprung up one lazy afternoon in the 60s on the same hill my family lived on and has since then remained untouched – an island in the concrete ocean, a literal village of one storey residences, lush green gardens sprouting tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and all sorts of herbs, two well-kempt monasteries, old men and nuns, chickens and goats and dogs and cats roaming around and perhaps the  grandest most peaceful view of the city.

It is a necessary save haven as even here, especially here, it’s tranquility that counts.

So much for that, until next time Athens.