Exhibition in Agrinio at Papastratos old Tobacco Factory
Megali Chora Street, 15, Agrinio
On holidays we didn’t decorate any tree in the house. Countryside it was, beginning of the 60s, I often played truant. Little were still, and but for a scanty few, the mass cultural accessories. As it were, the market for the holy days would fill up with colourful small lights, provoking one’s sight in the darkness, turning on and off all night long at windows which showed decorated trees (false ones in the beginning, from book-paper-gift-shops, replaced later by the upper top of true pine trees). No sooner had shops closed, the only artificial night lights to be seen were some rare public lampposts, to help you see and prevent one from stumbling in flights of steps or walking into puddles in the earth path. Christmas lights, however, were something different, whims to be jealous of. The town started its make up of progress, to open up its collar beads, to show feast-like, and so the lights, all the more so, cheated our fear of the empty nights of culture and darkened the skies and man’s insecurity from loneliness. The end justifies the means, loneliness justifies the wrapping and justifications justify it all.
And cold, it was so cold, I remember, snow and frost outside, and inside everything tidied up because of the season, the best cover cloths spread out, the inside rooms closed, so we wouldn’t go into the cleanliness in our muddy shoes and lest we would spoil the way the melomakarona, the kourabiedes and the syrupy cakes, the strifto and the baklava (all of them home made, for days on end we would crack open and carefully pick almonds and walnuts for their sake) had been arranged on the plates. Only in the living room by the fire-place and in the kitchen by the woodstove could we find warmth, perfumed by the burning wild wood, roasted chestnuts and orange zest, hot bread and pork and hanging sausages and collars of figs with oregano and pomegranates and apples and quinces and the hazy window-panes (for us to draw little stars and human figures with our fingers) from the water which was boiling for the mountain tea or the black one, with cinnamon and cloves and lemon and a ‘tip’ for the older ones and honey for the children. All this together with the holiday rest and our Sunday best gave shape to Christmas and New Year’s Day. It was my name day at that, friends and family gathering in the house. Sometimes there might even be some kind of toy bought from the shop, Sunday joy as much as the holiday’s, which, if it didn’t lose its eyes that same day would soon lose our interest. In those days we still preferred made up and team games out in the street, in the streams and in the fields, before we definitely locked ourselves away in consumer goods and loneliness.
One such holiday morning, as I stepped out of the front door, the floor suddenly eloped from under my feet and I felt the urge to step back into the familiar cosiness of home. Unexpected like a fairy-tale, beauty revealed itself and I hesitated. The road was deserted, no soul in sight either, opposite the house (the tallest houses hadn’t been built yet), the sun in its full brightness had just mounted the Panaitoliko, whiter than white with snow, her grace, the peak Lady Grace. Frost had set in since early evening, water had frozen and dew was flowing low in the air, as if I were the one fleeting above the clouds, gazing at a shrunken world down below. From the roof tiles and the saliencies on the walls there hung crystal stalactites which slowly melted, the water drops gliding on them and falling massively like threads and sprinkling smaller droplets, shining rays scattering reflections in puddles and rivulets that ran amongst mountain ranges of moss, stones and frozen grass. I was enwrapped in this small twinkling world, blinded by reflections from colourful gleams, the air rich with an infinity of small sounds from the water and the sun, and even my breathing refracted the light and ascended like a swarm of flocking birds, which bit me slightly on my cheeks and nose before melting away in the lit biting cold only to come back as I next breathed out. How to describe such a wonder? I didn’t dare take a step. I stood on the stone edge feeling that if I moved I would fall, I would vanish into the void of that wide-open world. And I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to melt into it or not, fearful I should lose it. In this indecision high above, I looked up and raised my hand to grab a crystal of water and as I did so one frozen drop ran up my arm into my armpit and, as if I had awoken, the other dimension disappeared and everything got back to my own measure. The sun rose higher, the shades and shapes of the world changed, haze melted, puddles and rivulets moved place and changed shape, the rocky forest-covered mountains turned back into gravel and moss. The ice I was holding in my hand melted and gnawed at my bones. I came to. I wandered outside all day; I sucked frozen crystals and kept finding small worlds, again and again. And I stopped fearing they might get lost. There they were no matter what. I was never jealous of the decorated trees again. How could their lying decorations cheat me anew? The miracle is around us, I know it now, never mind if I often forget it, it reveals itself on its own suddenly, a virgin world, which offers itself to us each time we regain the innocence of pardon from marvelling at it. Tales are true, not in what they tell us but in what they aim to tell. All we need is a virgin look and a sharp ear. Time and again, the salvation of the world comes from a virgin mother; otherwise it stumbles in the desert of days and places. «…I slip and fall down and get dirty in the mud, I put out my two hands and I get up…». Buried in the heavy covers before falling asleep, I would put my head out and slightly open the curtains beside me in order to listen to and to watch outside the window during the night. Even when the weather turned and rain fell and there was thunder and lightning and our house shook and the hail hammered the zinc in the yard, I would feel the sky breathing peacefully behind the heavily clouded cover of winter, at rest and resurrected, and I waited the moment when it would turn up.
