Museum

Το μουσείον (μούσα-Muse): the thing with the greek words that travel through secret ways (renaissance ways, classicism high-ways and romanticism avenues mostly) to/within other languages is that, while crossing the invisible borders of meaning and connotation, they slightly shift their content, losing part of their poetic imagery and fixing it so that they would reflect an object, a space or a function with no further moony effects. The name was first given to the sanctuary of the Muses (all 9 of them), the goddesses who protected the Arts and artistic or cognitive creativity. So, it was not a place of an official recollection of the Past, but a place to beg, pray and ask for creativity in Present. Ok, there is always a connection to the past in mythology: they were daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Μνημοσύνη: remembrance). All my last few days, even the aspirin-cake days, have been spent at the inner garden of a museum, surrounded by the statues and the sarcofagi which cannot fit in the main halls, out of abundance. I listen to a strange collection of music (again a term of μούσα-muse origins):

• Mozart's Requiem,
• Preisner's Requiem for my friend,
• Arvo Part's Passio,
• Xydakis's To amartima tis mitros mou (My mother's sin)

All of them, melancholic and whispering "farewell". Every time that I depart for my short winter breaks or the somehow longer summer vacations I know that this geographical relocation, even if temporary, will mark the turning of a page: it is a rule I confirmed through the method of repetitive observation. My gaze is captured by the crowded streets, the cars bearing Gulf countries' signs, which I will forunately skip, their crowd, their noise, their disorder. The market of Down-Town with the sharp angles of Escher. The favorite cafes. The haunted in late June University Campus. My neighborhood, with the young football players. The breeze of the summer night in Amman. Baby Yoosef who was born last summer the day I departed, and this year will have his first birthday while I will be spending my first day in Athens, hopefully. (They already informed me of a delay concerning the departure time.) Trying his first steps with the grace of a dancer, or an asian circus acrobat. My evenings with Ala'a in our conversations and our walks, with the tunes of Fayrouz, or the good-bye dinner with his always hospitable family. The Friday evening weekly narratives of Malik and myself. Last night I went to Abu Nsair to get some sweets for the friends and family in Greece (Boghazati, of the best in town suggests my stubborn taste- although I tried almost every reputable shop and other that they are not written in the golden index). And, on purpose, my generous and most feeling with me friend passed by the view to the Baqa'a camp low down, and stopped so that I could take a look. He knows how much I adore this contradictory view, the night that transform through its lights, even hardship into a spectacular frame, so that in the end it becomes a view to the power of night. All these practices are stable, but something changes always. Some correlation exists between the habits here and the events there and then the aura of life changes and the museum extends its rooms, the halls multiply themselves, the cartes postales get more on the stands. Like the cinemas of Thessaloniki, my dear cinemas, that in early June they were putting a sign marking the end of the screening season: "Rendez-vous in September". Sometimes we were coming back to find them transformed into supermarkets. A promise that was dropped meanwhile or, rather, the betrayal of a promise.