Ι could hardly breathe when I was found sleeping naked in bed. I covered myself with the first thing my hands could reach, apparently a T-shirt that didn’t cover much, and then looked at the face across me. I think she was telling me some kind of story, one that my feeble mind intermittently missed. She was mumbling something about habit and it sounded like this:
I cannot describe what it’s like to be called Antic, to be in your mid-thirties, to live alone in a big city in the 21st century, to have diverse degrees and a dog called god. Such brief resumes are convenient like individual AZs that help others draw conclusions and feel content that they know you.
What I have got used to, this part of my identity, is a matter of understanding and appreciating needs, events and absent causes. A Sunday walk up the sunny hills of Athens is not part of my habits, yet today I have decided to divert and walk. Even though I prefer walking alone, so that I don’t have to talk much, this time I have company, not only the dog, but Diamantes. We are co-performing this walk dazzled by the sun, the heat, the crowd, by temporality.
Our talk ranges from racial diversity to nature. We contemplate on how the smog habitually degenerates nature, which in turn is quiet until it has something to say. Habit is one thing and repetition another. Put them together and they are still applied differently and at different levels. Yet, if man can become predictable, nature’s repetition is of an unpredictable order.
Nature: I am a miracle. I could not have existed but that's not the case. So, what do you think, am I necessary?
Man: Well why should I suffer about it? The fact that we take after you according to acts of moderation so you can be first in everything is just pathetic.
I: This doesn't sound so good..
I like idle walks. They seem to arouse the idea of origin only by looking around you- who I am, where I come from, why I'm here, who the others are. God, my dog, is even more confused than I am, he feels no fear, no defense, no aggression, just that innate curiosity that gets you out of the house in order to understand.
God has got a blue and a brown eye. Many times I look at him and wonder whether it would have been better if both eyes were the same colour. Then I think that both colours would suit him fine so colour doesn’t really matter. The dog’s natural aesthetics is indifferent to which colour will prevail. So perhaps it’s better that they are different. Maybe this too is what God is all about, a reflection of mismatches that somehow combine, a little bit of everything.
I to God: Do you exist?
God: I am your prime mover.
I: Are you the reason I suffer?
God: Shall we turn it into a song?
I: Will it alleviate my pain?
God: I can only suggest and you can do as you please.
I: So I guess that’s how songs developed. What were they ever thinking of when they first turned their words into melody?
This is also how I explain my ratio of good and evil and how I compose them for any eventual outcome. Any outcome, however, will always be different because it will be the outcome of various participation rates or abstinence from both sides.
Today everything seems related in the white light around me. Difference is clearer in different shades. Our sight needs the right light to distinguish. Perhaps, then, eyes can be better trained in milder climates than those of Northern bright whiteness or the glaring Mediterranean sun.
What I can say about Athens I have already said. Our homeland cannot easily be dismissed. And this land more than any other is my land. To put it plainly it occupies most of my memory, I was born here and I’m familiar with its every little corner. The Parthenon is always in the same place, crowded in the mornings, lonely at night, always incongruous with contemporary Athens, showing how the economy of form can turn into a mall of historicity.
So this is what they do on Sundays when the sun is out. They are available. They come out in the morning and withdraw at night. They follow frequencies. I am amazed by habits, or rather the conditions that create and consolidate them. Habit I believe has always been our strongest point of personal disclosure and testimony.
