Λέων γεγραμμένος

The Friday effect has been mild, lighter than expected, after all. The Amlak edition along with Al Waseet and Al Momtaz brought normality and the regular rhythm of breathing back to me- everything: food, suits, furniture, tanks, training benches, maids, apartments and tiles are precisely encoded in photos, so I felt the World turns round again and around its magnetic axis. Events were minimal and regular.

I wake up early; this is a shortcoming since ever, which made me a caffeine and nicotine addict. What is now needed for such a freak? Music. Today I was in the mood for Henry Purcell and, since I do not have Dido and Aeneas in compact disc, I found its cousin, King Arthur, a very weird semi opera, typical for british baroque and the atmospere of the Court. I find it amazing the construction of national identity by means of music. Arhtur, pious Britons, heathen Saxons, a blind princess, Merlin, mixing of the visible and invisible worlds (like in Shakespeare sometimes) and a story that would trouble even Spielberg. The music goes at some parts identical like in Dido, the cold song for example. One of the few things I kept listening to in Thessaloniki this time was the Cold Song with the unbelievable voice of Klaus Nomi. (Strange, both Henry and Klaus died relatively young, like wild anemones.) Then I was rushing to the bus stop and from there to the clinic. But, as the story deals with a national identity affirmation, it does not take me very high, and I think it is better this way, this very morning. Lots of paperwork.

And here are the good news I found in the Greek news: In 2008 the museum of Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika will be ready. Six storeys: the galerry on the fourth, and they will display his correspondance with Seferis, Sikelianos, Elytis, Pentzikis, etc. oh Generous God! and his manuscripts. This is a good motivation to keep it up till 2008 :)). I do not recall exactly how many exhibitions of his I have attended. Some while he was still creating, and other, posthumous ones.

Three encounters influenced me deeply: two of his paintings I saw while I was 17, a big thematic exhibition at the Old Archaelogical Museum in Thessaloniki (a nice rococco mosque of the late ottoman years), in which I realized how good he was in scetching, and last summer on Hydra, a small one, like a revision, at his place of origins, in a house like his, with the landscapes he painted just appearing from the windows. It was like a revision in general for more than one thing: His art, his austere choices, my youth, my conclusions. Then we stood with Voula and Pelagia, by the canons watching the night and the dark waves in silence. Never trust lovers who give lectures from the podium of their pillow:)).