So it's Xmas:)

Actually its almost New Years Eve and my msn tagline is 'Noone should be alone on Xmas' after seeing for yet another time 'Love actually'

In the last few days I've seen again 'Love Actually' and 'Meet Joe Black' and 'The Fellowship of the ring' and La Boheme (live that one in the Greek National Opera , a really great production of La Boheme, modern and vivid and full of colours, performers young and very talented, indeed a great production. Especially Musseta in a cheerleader's costume. Puccini's music though is eternal and can make your eyes water at any moment and under any circumastances. I was grateful my spirit was still able to weep at La Boheme)

I ve also seen a couple of theaters , worst or most hilarious (any way you wish to put it ) the one K.Dandoulaki stars in this year. Really bad choice.

Its the first time after 3 years I have a 2 week holiday during Xmas.

I was supposed to be in Vienna or Prague now but things have a way of working out for themselves and I was unable to go. I was actually literraly unable to go.

I am not well yet even though each day is yet another fight and sometimes this fight gets extremely tiresome.

I read and re-read Rilke's letters about solitude, I read Kahlil Gibran's Prophet and Jonathan Livingston Seagul and yet I still lack the strenght, as if my final remains of strength are only barely enough to get me through each day.

I am tired of the reckless and meaningless pretenses of people, of 'trains filled with the foolish and the faithless' as my beloved Walt Whitman says.

I live what Thoreau described as 'lives of quiet desperation' and I am trying but there is just no Earendil's light for me.

I am tired. And thats really not a nice thing to write for possibly the last post of the yhear but I am so tired. I appear to be great and everything but the truth is if I ever desperattely needed help and meaning that time would be now.

Life is very beautiful but also very lonely. And it is especially during Xmas that loneliness may become unbearable.

Anyway, I do wish Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year to the world......and I hope its a year with meaning and light.

Liberty by Paul Eluard

Liberty

On my notebooks from school
On my desk and the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name

On every page read
On all the white sheets
Stone blood paper or ash
I write your name

On the golden images
On the soldier’s weapons
On the crowns of kings
I write your name

On the jungle the desert
The nests and the bushes
On the echo of childhood
I write your name

On the wonder of nights
On the white bread of days
On the seasons engaged
I write your name

On all my blue rags
On the pond mildewed sun
On the lake living moon
I write your name

On the fields the horizon
The wings of the birds
On the windmill of shadows
I write your name

On the foam of the clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On dark insipid rain
I write your name

On the glittering forms
On the bells of colour
On physical truth
I write your name

On the wakened paths
On the opened ways
On the scattered places
I write your name

On the lamp that gives light
On the lamp that is drowned
On my house reunited
I write your name

On the bisected fruit
Of my mirror and room
On my bed’s empty shell
I write your name

On my dog greedy tender
On his listening ears
On his awkward paws
I write your name

On the sill of my door
On familiar things
On the fire’s sacred stream
I write your name

On all flesh that’s in tune
On the brows of my friends
On each hand that extends
I write your name

On the glass of surprises
On lips that attend
High over the silence
I write your name

On my ravaged refuges
On my fallen lighthouses
On the walls of my boredom
I write your name

On passionless absence
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name

On health that’s regained
On danger that’s past
On hope without memories
I write your name

By the power of the word
I regain my life
I was born to know you
And to name you

LIBERTY

This is dedicated to a memory not lost to a professor never forgotten that taught me so much in so little time.......about Paul Eluard and about R.M.Rilke and about Y.Ritsos and Kavafis and so many others.....

and my favourite:

In the name of the perfect profound face
In the name of the eyes I look at
And the mouth I kiss
For today and for always

In the name of buried hope
In the name of tears in the darkness
In the name of sorrow that brings laughter
In the name of laughter that brings fear

In the name of laughter in the street
Of the gentleness that links our hands
In the name of fruits covering flowers
On an earth good and beautiful

In the name of the men in prison
In the name of the women deported
In the name of all our comrades
Martyred and massacred
For not accepting the shadow

We must drain our rage
And make the iron rise up
To preserve the high image
Of the innocent everywhere hunted
And who will triumph everywhere.

Και στα ελληνικά (γιατί αυτό το ποίημα για πρώτη φορά στα ελληνικά το διάβασα....και για να βρω τη μετάφραση ξέθαψα το βιβλίο λογοτεχνίας της τρίτης λυκείου...που το είχα κρατήσει μόνο για αυτό το ποίημα....)

Στ' όνομα του τέλειου ψηλού μετώπου,
Στ' όνομα των ματιών που κοιτάζω
Και του στόματος που φιλώ
Για σήμερα και για πάντα

Στ' όνομα της χαμένης ελπίδας
Στ' όνομα των δακρύων μεσα στη νύχτα
Στ' όνομα της θλίψης που φέρνει γέλιο
Στ' όνομα του γέλιου που φέρνει φόβο

Στ' όνομα του γέλιου κάτω στο δρόμο
Της ευγένειας που δένει τα χέρια μας
Στ' όνομα της οπώρας σαν σκεπάζει το λουλούδι
Σε μια όμορφη γη και καρπερή

Στ' όνομα των ανθρώπων που σαπίζουνε στη φυλακή
Στ' όνομα των εξορισμένων γυναικών
Στ' όνομα όλων των συντρόφων μας
Που μαρτύρησαν και σφαγιάστηκαν
Για να μη δεχτούν τον ίσκιο

Πρέπει να στραγγίξουμε την ορμή
Και να σηκώσουμε το ξίφος
Για να φυλάξουμε την ιερή εικόνα
Των αθώων που κυνηγήθηκαν παντού
Και που παντού και πάντα θα θριαμβεύουν.

Milan

Well since I really have no time to write a lot about my time in Milan just a few pictures to get in the mood....more to follow....