Greece is a country of protests and protesters. On any given day or week, the Metro might suddenly be shut down. The taxis on strike. Ferries to the islands halted in the sea. Even the farmers from my family’s region of Thessaly and other areas occupied Syntagma (constitution) Square last week, driving their tractors hundreds of kilometers to block off highways and roads. I found the sight incredibly touching; for they are the ones who provide us food every week at the beautiful Laiki markets. (There are of course farmers who raise/confine animals too — this, as I’m sure you know, I do not find touching. But I am not without suggestions: Transfarmation.)
The protests are usually about low wages, inadequate pay, or, in the case of the rail tragedy last year, safety and government failure to improve antiquated systems. I absolutely love the spirit of protest. I’ve heard some complain about the inconvenience this causes them — but that’s the point. One doesn’t make demands without a price. Movements halt movements to create movement.
Since we moved to Greece as a trial run in June of 2022 through June 2023, then now since November 2023, I have been writing a journal of sorts called Greek Gossip. Being here longer than a vacation as more than a tourist opens up a few new windows to this culture (through which I’m delighted to stare) I knew peripherally through childhood summer trips and adult vacations. This is the first blog in the “series.”
Flying on the hill of muses
On February 27th last year, we went to fly kites as per the Clean Monday tradition on Filopappou hill. Our friend Karen was visiting, and the three of us went and bought cheap kites, Lagana bread (made for Clean Mondays only) and halvah. At noon, we figured we were late and there would be no one there. Yet as we approached, the hill was full of kite-flying families. My heart felt full. Some enjoyed picnics. We ate our Lagana bread and halvah, watching tiny kites soar, specs in the sky. Afterword, we wandered through the olive trees, following the notes of Clarino music. People danced:
The very next day, a train from Athens to Thessaloniki crashed, killing 57 people, mostly students. I wondered if any of the people were flying kites with us the day before, returning from their university breaks from Thessaloniki to Athens for the holiday.
Human error, the government said. Murder, said the public. A flawed and unsafe system.
Today the Greeks are protesting the one-year anniversary of the train crash that killed 57 people due to the negligence of both one individual and an entire system.
On Forgetting
Greeks don’t forget. Memorials are, as the name implies, a way of not forgetting. In the works of French-Czech author Milan Kundera, he explores the idea of forgetting as a historical phenomenon that permits us — and those in power — to repeat the same mistakes.
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Our good friend Matt Y. was struck, on his visit to us last year, by the fact that Greeks are still commemorating the murder of a young teen who was killed in 2008. Or that a huge protest happens each year on November 17th, marking the day in 1973 of the student uprising where the Junta killed several students and civilians, ramming a tank through the gates of the Polytechnic University. The gnarled, rusted gate remains on campus as part of the memorial.
I will leave you with a poem I wrote last year after the accident. (There is perhaps nothing more annoying that a non-poet attempting poetry, but I channeled my college poet-writing self. )
A note of explanation: The word “kite” in Greek (hartaetos) means “paper eagles.”
Paper Eagles
We ate halva with Lagana bread
sat flat on ancient rocks buried on Filopappou Hill
where Socrates drank poison
they say.
Hundreds of kites soared skyward
hartaetos ghosting the hill of muses
souls floating to heaven.
Clean Monday, the fast begins.
We hoped a swift breeze
would guide our paper eagles to rise
not crashing into gnarled olive trees
or each other.
Children stared up impatiently
as parents pulled strings to prove
resurrection was possible
for the grounded.
I wondered which of those souls
soared the next day
flying off the tracks
as random as kites rising
or falling.
They found the heavens
cleaner than Monday
sooner than hoped.
We are left to remember,
tangled in grief
iron-winged
sunken eagles, eternally
demanding the unanswered
(Why?)
An old system
devouring young souls.
Criminal, the thief who steals kites
from empty useless hands
drowning a river of stone-eyed faces
searching for signs of flight.
Paper eagles, we are
delicate
a mere tear will end us
flesh no better than bread.
Forty days grieving
even mourning has an end
drunk as Dionysus in the late afternoon
whose own party celebrates
one season giving way
to another.
(March 1, 2023)
