Αυτή μάλλον δεν είναι μια μούτζα

Το να κοιτάω την ανοιχτή μου παλάμη είναι πλέον ένα reality check το οποίο κάνω τακτικά. Αν δεν ονειρεύομαι, η παλάμη μου θα είναι εκεί, συνηθισμένη, ανοιχτή. Αν όμως ονειρεύομαι, το χέρι μου θα είναι παραμορφωμένο, με δαχτυλάκια να φυτρώνουν από τα μεγαλύτερα δάχτυλα σαν η παλάμη μου να έχει μεταμορφωθεί σε ένα μικρούλι ανάποδο ξεριζωμένο δέντρο. Αν κανείς κάνει συνήθεια το να κοιτάζει την παλάμη του αρκετά συχνά μέσα στη μέρα και τη χρησιμοποιεί ως απόδειξη για το αν ονειρεύεται ή όχι (ας μην ξεχνάμε — όταν ονειρευόμαστε είμαστε σίγουροι πως ό,τι βιώνουμε στο όνειρο είναι η αδιαμφισβήτητη πραγματικότητα, ακριβώς όπως και όταν δεν ονειρεόμαστε), κάποια στιγμή, όταν ζήσει κάτι περίεργο σε ένα όνειρο του το οποίο κανονικά θα προσπέρναγε όπως συνήθως κάνουμε στα όνειρα, κοιτάζοντας την παλάμη του θα επιβεβαιώσει ότι όντως ονειρεύεται.

Κι εκεί ξεκινάει το lucid dreaming, τα διαυγή όνειρα, ένας μυστικός κόσμος στο υποσυνείδητο κι ακόμα παραπέρα.

Η παλάμη μας όμως μπορεί να μας θυμήσει πως όχι μόνο δεν ονειρευόμαστε αλλά και ότι είμαστε ξύπνιοι. Να μας φέρει στη στιγμή. Να μας θυμήσει ότι το τώρα είναι το μοναδικό πράγμα που έχουμε στον κόσμο — το μέλλον και το παρελθόν είναι μόνο ψευδαισθήσεις: περίπλοκες και αληθοφανείς ψευδαισθήσεις τις οποίες χρησιμοποιούμε για να κουμαντάρουμε τη ζωή μας νομίζοντας πως είναι οδηγοί που μπορούμε να εμπιστευτούμε, αλλά ψευδαισθήσεις το διχώς άλλο. Κοιτάζοντας την παλάμη θυμόμαστε ότι είμαστε ζωντανοί, με το σώμα μας και το μυαλό μας και τη συνείδηση μας στον κόσμο, στον χώρο, έτοιμοι να χαθούμε στο τώρα, να ζήσουμε χωρίς αναστολές, πισωγυρίσματα, αμφιβολίες, ανασφάλειες. Θυμόμαστε ότι αυτό που ζούμε δεν είναι όνειρο αλλά ο πραγματικός κόσμος ο οποίος βρίσκεται εκεί έξω και μας περιμένει να τον ανακαλύψουμε με όλο μας το είναι: μας περιμένει να τον παρατηρήσουμε, να τον ακούσουμε, να τον γευτούμε, να τον μυρίσουμε, να τον αναπνεύσουμε, να τον αισθανθούμε, να τον διαισθανθούμε, να τον νιώσουμε. Να τον ζωγραφίσουμε, να τον αναπαραστήσουμε, να τον ξαναδημιουργήσουμε όπως πραγματικά τον θέλουμε, όχι όπως είμαστε υπό τη ψευδαίσθηση ότι τον θέλουμε ή όπως νομίζουμε ότι θα έπρεπε να τον θέλουμε. Μπορούμε μάλιστα να σκεφτούμε πώς η πραγματικότητα μας θα ήταν διαφορετική, αν όντως ήταν ένα όνειρο, κι έτσι να δούμε τον εαυτό μας να αποστασιοποιείται από οτιδήποτε τον κράταγε πίσω.

Αν βλέπετε την παλάμη σαν μούτζα, μπορείτε να το χρησιμοποιήσετε κι αυτό, αν η προσβολή λειτουργεί καλύτερα και μέσω αυτής ευκολότερα ξυπνάτε και επανέρχεστε στις αισθήσεις σας! Αν τη βλέπετε έτσι, δείτε τη σα μια μούτζα σε ότι μας κάνει να στρεσάρουμε και να ανησυχούμε, σε ό,τι μας κρατάει αγκιστρωμένους στο παρελθόν ή στις απαιτήσεις του κόσμου από εμάς, σαν μια μούτζα σε ό,τι είναι αυτό που μας κάνει να υπνοβατούμε σε όλη μας τη ζωή, μεθυσμένοι από τα χασίματα του μυαλού μας.

Tomorrow never comes, life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.

Άλλωστε, αν κανείς γίνει αρκετά καλός στο να παρατηρεί και να απολαμβάνει την πραγματικότητα του για αυτό που είναι, κανένα όνειρο δεν θα καταφέρνει πια να τον ξεγελάσει και κάθε όνειρο θα είναι διαυγές, συνειδητό.

Έμπνευση: Lucid living, Kyle Cease, Eckhart Tolle

Και φυσικά, η παρακάτω σκηνή του Waking Life:

Transcript

I had a friend once who told me that the worst mistake that you can make is to think you are alive, when you’re really asleep in life’s waiting room. The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. ‘Cause if you can do that you can do anything. Did you ever have a job that you hated? Worked really hard at? A long, hard day at work, finally you get to go home, get in bed, close your eyes, and immediately you wake up and realize that the whole day at work had been a dream? It’s bad enough that you sell your waking life for … for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free.

But the trick is, you got to realize that you’re dreaming in the first place. You got to be able to recognize it. You got to be able to ask yourself, “Hey man, is this a dream?” See, most people never ask themselves that when they’re awake, or especially when they’re asleep. Seems like everyone’s sleep-walking through their waking state, or wake-walking through their dreams.


Are you awake?
Are you aware?

Metroid Prime auf Deutsch spielen

Viele meiner Freunde, wie auch ich, haben English aus Videospiele gelernt. Die Kindheit ist die beste Zeit fürs Lernen, und Kinder spielen viel und gern. Deshalb ist sie eine Gute Idee, lernen und Unterhaltung zu kombinieren. Obwohl ich nicht mehr ein Kind bin, ich habe noch die Lust auf spielen und lernen. Ich hoffe dass ich nie diese Lust darauf verlieren, ich glaube sie sind große Teile von was uns Kinder bleiben hilft, und Kinder sind immer so begeistert über der Welt und dem Leben. Natürliche Weise sind sie im Jetzt und wir Erwachsene haben viel von ihnnen zu lernen.

Also, spiele ich nun Metroid Prime auf meinem Wii, ein von meinen Lieblingsspielen, obwohl es ist eine lange Zeit, nicht viel weniger als 10 Jahre, seit ich es für letztes Mal gespielt habe. Es gibt viele schwierige und wissenschaftliche Wörter drinnen, deshalb muss ich immer ein Notizbuch daneben haben, um die unbekannten Wörter darauf zu schreiben. Außerdem und deswegen muss ich sehr langsam spielen – was würde normalerweise z.B. eine Stunde dauern jetzt dauert zwei oder noch mehr. Trotzdem dieser Weg macht viel Spaß und ich kann das Spiel auch viel besser genießen. Laß uns sehen wie es geht!

Ich schliesse dieses erstes Post auf Deutsch mit dem Intro und dem Menübild von dem Spiel. Was kann ich ja sagen? Es ist ein Meisterwerk von Ton und Bild Design (wie das ganzes Spiel auch, natürlich).

Review: Making History

Making HistoryMaking History by Stephen Fry

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“I don’t know why I find it intensely erotic to stand naked before an open fridge, but I do. Maybe it’s something to do with the expectation of a hunger soon to be satisfied, maybe it’s that the spill of light on my body makes me feel like a professional stripper. Maybe something weird happened to me when I was young. It is an alarming feeling, mind, because all those assembled food-stuffs put ideas in your head you’re on the rise. Stories of what you can do with the unsalted butter on ripe melons or raw liver, they crowd your head as the blood begins to rush.
“I spotted a big slab of Red Leicester and pulled off a piece with my hands. I stood there chewing for some time, buzzing with happiness.
“Thas was when the idea came to me, full born.
“The force of it made me gape. A mashed pellet of bread fell from my open mouth and at once the blood flew upwards to the brain where it was needed, leaving my twitching excitement below with nothing to do but shrink back like a started snail.”

No wonder this man can write so eloquently and wittily about penises. It’s a great thing it’s not just them he can write like that about.

Stephen Fry is some sort of homo universalis: a modern day Leonardo Da Vinci, only much funnier. He’s an actor, a humourist, a TV show preseneter, a walking encyclopedia, an activists for gay rights, a linguist… an intellectual all around. I had no idea he was a writer on top of all that but it comes as no real shock. One can’t resist but nod silently, in contemplation and agreement to Mitchell & Webb’s “who doesn’t want to be like Stephen Fry?”.

Imagine my surprise when I found out that the book I had picked from Politeia, just because it had “Stephen Fry” and “History” written with large playful letters on the cover where it also had a picture of a cat, had to do with WWII and alternate history. I was thrilled! It’s been some time since I last read a 500-page book in less than 10 days. It was a good page-turner, not too memorable or original, but for a lover of good alternate history and for one that wouldn’t turn down well-written science fiction, it was rather good.

I know that the best part of such stories, at least for me, is finding out the little details of the “fictional” worlds that have branched out differently. Therefore, I shall not disclose anything but what’s necessary to whet your appetite: if Hitler had never been born, how can we be sure that the evil he was responsible for would have been equally prevented? Would Rock & Roll have ever been born? Would Orwell live to write 1984? What would the computers look like in 1996 — the year the book was written? Stephen Fry in his signature cerebral style includes real historical tidbits on many personalities of the past as well as science and cultural background that make the thing more believeable. It seems only right that a man with a broad range of interests such as himself would be the perfect candidate to write such a demanding genre as alternate history.

I’ll roll this review up leaving you with this: at one point of the book, the protagonist decides that the format of a novel is not enough to convey the action; the book promptly switches to telling the story by means of being a film script, only to switch back when the heavy action’s suddenly over:“I fade from Hollywood screenplay format to dull old, straight old prose because that’s how it felt. That’s how it always feels in the end.

Exquisite.

View all my reviews

Προσωπικές επιλογές από το Animasyros 5.0

Το Animasyros μπορεί να έγινε πριν ενάμισι μήνα σχεδόν όμως μόλις τώρα βρήκα την όρεξη να συνθέσω ένα ποστάκι για τα ωραία πράματα που είδα εκεί. Ίσως να είναι επειδή αυτές τις μέρες βλέπω πολύ animation! 🙂 Περιλαμβάνονται ταινίες πρωτοεμφανιζόμενες, συμμετοχές στο διαγωνιστικό αλλά και επιλογές από αφιερώματα. Ετοιμαστείτε να σας κάνω τον browser σκατά!!

Bendito Machine IV – Fuel the Machines from Zumbakamera on Vimeo.

Silhouette animation με ξεκάθαρο οικολογικό μήνυμα και περιβάλλοντα που θυμίζουν video game – με την καλή έννοια. Από την Ισπανία με αγάπη και guay factor.

Second Hand from Isaac King on Vimeo.

Τι είναι αυτό που κάνει τους ανθρώπους λιγότερο ή περισσότερο στρεσαρισμένους; Πολύ πετυχημένο.

Σε έναν κόσμο όπου αντί για κεφάλια όλοι οι άνθρωποι έχουν γραμμόφωνα και τηλέφωνα, κατα τη διάρκεια του Μεσοπολέμου, ο ιάπωνας γραμμοφωνο-κέφαλος πιανίστας πρωταγωνιστής πάει στη Βενετία για να σπουδάσει σύνθεση μαζί με τη γάτα του που παίζει όμποε και γκο (!). Δεν νομίζω ότι χρειάζεται να πω κάτι άλλο για να σας πω ότι αυτή η ταινία μου κέρδισε την καρδιά. Είναι και από την Αυστραλία, μπουτουγού. Μια ταινία που πολύ θα ήθελα να υπάρχει ολόκληρη κάπου εκεί έξω…

Stop-motion με ένα ψάρι-τενόρο που θρηνεί τον επερχόμενο του χαμό στο τηγάνι. Πρώτο βραβείο στο Animasyros 5.0.

Seven days in the Warsaw ghetto. Ο τίτλος τα λέει όλα.

“Abeyance” from Eleni Miltsi on Vimeo.

Αν έχω δει καλύτερο ελληνικό animation, πολύ απλά δεν το θυμάμαι. Honourable mention στο Animasyros 5.0

LOAD from The Animation Workshop on Vimeo.

Remember The Animation Workshop? Well, they’re at it again!

12 Drawings a Day – 12 Dessins par Jour from Denis Chapon on Vimeo.

Άλλη μια παραγωγή εξ Δανιμαρκίας. 12 ζωγραφιές τη μέρα (1 δευτερόλεπτο κίνησης) για τρία χρόνια. Απίστευτη ιδέα!

Paths of War. Εξαιρετικό 3D το οποίο θα μπορούσε να είναι λίγο πιο μικρό σε διάρκεια. Αξίζει σίγουρα πάντως να το δει κανείς — απλά πείτε μου αν έχετε δει καλύτερα animated dogfights.

Little Quentin from Anikey Studios on Vimeo.

Τοy Story for adults. Oops, spoilers.

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Απλά… απλά… το’χει. Τι άλλο να πω; What on Earth Happened σε animation. 🙂

Animal Kingdom (2010) from nils hedinger on Vimeo.

Για κάποιο λόγο το βρίσκω ΠΟΛΥ πετυχημένο αυτό εδώ, απλό αλλά δυνατό. Όπως μου αρέσουν. Call me a hippie. Στα τριχωτά αλεπουδίσια μου μουστάκια.

Don Hertzfeldt’s IT’S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY (trailer) from Cinefamily on Vimeo.

Στις προβολές όλοι το βαρέθηκαν αυτό εδώ — λογικό, αφού δεν είχε υπότιτλους και λέει την ιστορία ενός τύπου που αναπτύσει κάποιου είδους εγκεφαλική διαταραχή. Τρέχα γύρευε, πού να καταλάβουν… Από τις πιο συνταρακτικές ταινίες που έχω δει, από αυτές που καταφέρνουν να σε βάζουν για τα καλά στο μυαλό ενός ψυχασθενή που μέρα με τη μέρα χάνεται και περισσότερο — and what a disturbing experience it was indeed (μεταφραστές, think fast: disturbing ή unsettling στα ελληνικά. Δεν μπορώ να βρω κατάλληλη λέξη) . Κανονικά, είναι μεγάλου μήκους (κοντά ~60 λεπτά) αλλά αξίζει. Συνέντευξη με τον Don Hertzfeld εδώ.

Παλιό (1994) αλλά διαχρονικό. Δεν το ήξερα πάντως. Είναι από αυτά τα «σας προκαλώ να μην γελάσετε βλέποντας το». Εμπρός, σας προκαλώ. Δείτε το και προσπαθήστε να μην γελάσετε.

ΚΑΙ σε αυτό σας προκαλώ να μην γελάσετε. Αλλά αυτό είναι ένα αποσβολωτικό, καταπληκτικό μείγμα cyberculture, καφρίλας, political incorrectness στο φουλ, αυτοπαρωδίας και ευρηματικού randomness (καινούργιο challenge για τους μεταφραστές που μπορεί να μας διαβάζουν, αυτή η λέξη). Όχι για όλους.

“Drink” Animated Short Film. from Patrick Smith on Vimeo.

Αυτό το πρώτο του Patrick Smith, δείχνει πόσα διαφορετικά άτομα μπορεί να βγάλει από μέσα σου αυτό το μυστηριώδες ποτό που παίζει τόσο μεγάλο ρόλο στη ζωή μας.

“Handshake” Animated Short Film from Patrick Smith on Vimeo.

“Based on a true story”, είπε σε όλους μας ο Patrick καθώς μας απευθύνθηκε στο Θέατρο Απόλλων της Σύρου (και μετά τον γνώρισα και στο afterparty. Και μπορώ να τον καταλάβω, γιατί κι εμένα όλη αυτή η ιστορία μου φάνηκε γνώριμη… πολύ γνώριμη…

Το Handshake και το Drink να αναφέρω σε αυτό το σημείο ότι είναι εξ ολοκλήρου ζωγραφισμένα στο χέρι. Κι εδώ υποκλινόμαστε και λέμε, φίλε, όταν μεγαλώσω και γίνω animator, θέλω να κάνω τα παιδιά σου, θελω να μου δείξεις την τέχνη, θέλω να συνεχίσεις να είσαι το mancrush μου, oh forget it!

Και τέλος αυτό για το οποίο παραμίλαγα:

Ο τύπος πήγε από τη Λισαβόνα στις Αζόρες και έφτιαξε φιλμάκι animation βασισμένο στα σκιτσάκια που έκανε στο σημειωματάριο του. Το τρέιλερ απλά δεν φτάνει, όπως και για πολλά από τα παραπάνω, να περιγράψει το μεγαλείο. Όχι μόνο Ταξιδιώτης με Τ κεφαλαίο και εραστής της περιπέτειας αλλά και καλλιτέχνης. Πολλά θα είχε να πει για σένα ο Nietzsche, αγαπητέ δημιουργέ.

Ναι λοιπόν· είμαι ανθέλληνας

MUTE: The Visualization Of An Economic Rape

MUTE – The visualization of an economic rape from Yiannis Biliris on Vimeo.

Dramatic representation of 2012 Greece (I’m tempted to say Athens). Good direction and photography, kind of corny at times, even when the subject is very dramatic indeed… still good though.

Instruments of Robot Repair FTW!

No idea what the concept is (apart from “let’s sample aaaall of our musical instruments in a single montage — how neat!”), but I still like it! It’s addictive, actually.

While we’re at it… (no, I haven’t completed Portal 2’s co-op yet*hi-fives Mordread*… still addicted to this track from the OST though!)

Genealogical Mandala

Translated by yours truly from the original article in Greek:
http://hallografik.ws/archive/?p=2775


How many were there of your parents? 2. Of your grandparents? 4. Of your great-grandparents? 8. Of your great-great-greandparents? 16.

How many generations until we reach 64? Only 7, going back roughly 150 years, if we assume that every birth comes 20-25 years after the last. At 10 generations back, not too long before the Greek Revolution of 1821, this number reaches 512. If we go another 10 generations back and touch the early 16th century, when the Ottoman Empire was at the peak of its power with Suleyman the Magnificent at its reins, when America had just started being conquered by the Spaniards and when Michelangelo Buonarroti was sweating under the ceiling of the Capela Sistina, the number of your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents alive at the time will have already exploded to 1,048,576. At this rate, of course, and if we take into account that we humans have existed as a species for over 100,000 years (even if we steer clearly away from counting our humanoid ancestors, and before them the Common Ancestors, and before them some obscure mammals, and before them some synapsid and his lot and the beat goes on), it doesn’t take long to reach trillions of individuals and beyond, extraordinary numbers that humanity never saw, even if we put all the homo sapiens that ever lived in its history and prehistory together! To be exact, it’s said or theorised (which doesn’t count as much if you get down to it) that all of us are descended from a small group of homo sapiens that survived the last Ice Age. The answer to this apparent mystery is that there has simply been a lot of incest around — incest that we would probably not even count as such. If my great-great-great-greatgrandfather from my mother’s side was the brother of my great-great-great-great-grandmother from my father’s side, it wouldn’t remotely count as incest, etc.

Our genealogy is as mysterious and magical as is our history: we know, we can know so little about it, that we easily fill in the rest using our imagination’s colourful palette. As we do with anything unknown and mysterious, that is to say with everything.

The matter is definitely a chaotic mess. I shall incist however on the initial number. 7 generations, 64 ancestors. It seems to me like the perfect combination of control and proximity: were it larger it would soon be out of control and any form of sense of closeness to those distant ancestors would be lost; any smaller and we would lose most of the magic and complexity lying therein. Not to mention that 7 and 64 are nice, round, culturally powerful and significant numbers that please the eye, our aesthetics, and that thing deep inside of us that complains when a frame is crooked or that makes us wait observantly for the split second in which the green and red lighthouses at the entrance of the port will synchronise their flashes of different frequency.

Let us cut to the chase. In my experience, when talking nowadays about genealogy we use two terms: trees and families.

As usual, I have my objections.

Fernando Chamarelli -- http://www.galleryad.com/art/archives/art/backroom/fernando_chamarelli_pangea/

 

The idea of using trees to describe a family when we ourselves are the trunk, as in the image above, seems strange to me. Family trees would be OK in the representational sense if we were the trunk, our roots were the ancestors and our branches and leaves were our descendants. I have never, however, seen such a tree being used for this purpose.

Next is the family, the surname. There’s something of the question “where do you come from?” nesting in their use. It took me years to understand that this question is generaly translated as “where’s your father from” and to tell you the truth, I’m not at all sure whether “from Australia!” has been the answer that all who have asked me have wanted to know, despite the almost unbearable honesty of the reply. I was born, raised, and live in Nea Smyrni, Athens, Greece, after all!

Perhaps this is happening for the same reason surnames sport certified name of origin characteristics; tell me your surname so I can tell you who, or at least where from, you are. That’s certainly half the truth — or to be exact, much, much less than half of it: only men in the genealogy share the surname, with women losing themselves in this mixture like salt in water. Many family trees even study their family’s history not based on the people but on the name, especially in older times and in noble dynasties, trying to find everyone that shares that name and are relatives or descendants, without however giving much notice to the women that joined, and still do, the family, perhaps only because of the sheer necessity of the matter. Besides, I believe it’s relevant that in much of history, definitely in Christian and Muslim history, men wanted sons so that their family as reflected through their name could endure throughout the ages.

Thus I wanted to portray the above and more in some creative and imaginative way. What I ended up with is this (as you must have noticed at the top of the article):

Why mandalas?

Mandalas are radial, symmetrical shapes, symbols of wholeness, cyclicity and at the same time of the moment, the greatness and insignificance of the now, at least in the context of the philosophy that gave birth to them, Hinduism and later Buddhism. Carl Jung was deeply inspired by them: he used to ask of his patients to draw mandalas and he later used the results as aids for his diagnoses. He believed that within the symmetry and the shapes there was a sequence to be found, a meaning to be discovered behind the use of the various drawings that they comprised. The uniqueness that emerged was, he believed, the essence of the individual him-or herself.

This clean-cut geometricity indeed has something soothing and wholesome about it; I can’t describe it any other way. Furthermore, the concepts of repetition and expansion and the one significant centre fit genealogy like a glove.

Not to mention mandalas can be stunningly beautiful.

Symbolisms

The symbolisms behind genealogy under the prism of the mandala are many and will vary depending on the person. The ones I choose, the connections I discovered that I found inspiring, are the below:

Man-woman equality

Any given great-grandmother is just as important as any given great-grandfather…

Devaluation of the surname.

Because, someone, somewhere, could have been a woman, and then I’d have a different surname, which I’d cherish as much as the one I have now…

…even if I’ve inherited my surname from that great-grandfather.

Disconnection of family history with surname history.

64 ancestors, 64 names (except if we have the cases of knowing or unknowing incest mentioned above). Only one prevails. Why?

Those 64 people your existence connected 170 years after their birth, are all equally responsible for your existence today.

Emergence of local roots and emmigration. Abolition of national false pride.

If I filled in my own mandala, one quarter of it would have lots of “Smyrni”/”Izmir” in it, which would soon dissolve in the depths of Turkey (and who knows where else… the city was the “New York of the Eastern Mediterranean” at its time, after all). Another half of it would have “Australia” writtern all over it but even that would turn into England, even Wales if my sources are correct, the further back I went. Again, who knows what else.

Who knows what 64 parts of the world I’m from?

Is one born or does one become Greek? Hm… Good question. My father got his Greek citizenship after he had lived in Greece for more than 20 years — what is he, Australian or Greek? Similarly, many 2nd generation immigrants, young and old, choose to be Greek because they were born and grew up in Greece. Their children — the 3rd generation– will probably search for the roots their grandparents abandoned by force, while they themselves will by then be indistinguishable from “normal” Greeks. This has happened countless times in Greece’s history. Before the Albanian emmigrations of the early ’90s, there had been many others, centuries ago. The same holds true for the Asia Minor Greeks who were treated like Turks when they first arrived to the shores of Attica and Macedonia but are now bragging about their “macedoniality”, even if their ancestors haven’t been living in Macedonia but for 2 or 3 generations (Google Translate is acceptable for this page), from 1922 onward. On the contrary, they might cut their emmigratory personal history short or forget it altogether as they prefer feeling descendants of Alexander than “merely” Greeks from Pontus, Asia Minor, Capadocia etc. Besides, the national sentiment must stand high and proud against the menacing FYROMites, North Macedonians or what have you… Just remember that those Macedonians might be more Macedonians than the Macedonians. Not descendants of Alexander or some other pitiful misguided conclusion, mind you, no: more Macedonians than the Macedonians because maybe their family has been living in the general region called Macedonia for centuries. Have I come across as wanting to be controversial? Mission accomplished!

Naturally, it’s not just Macedonians, Albanians, Pontians or other more recent immigrants that have decided that Greece should be their home country. Vlachs, Arvanites, North Epirotes, catholic Greeks of Syros (and other catholic islanders) and many others who were and are some of the greekest of Greeks, are now treated as minorities in the Greek state which is trying so hard to retain its purity and its Single Story. In vain of hatred, discrimination and national complexes, we all sacrifice eachother’s family tradition. We have no IDEA of our history and thus we believe the first simplistic fairytale we come across. THAT’s what national identity is about: leveling out and simplification. It’s a goat herder’s pen with the minimum common denominator of historical ignorance as its criteria. It comes as no surprise then that being historically ignorant we learn to disrescpect and even hate, again and again, generation by generation, all that is different — a deviation with which we might have common roots or even be descended from, more or less. Wise were the words of George Bernard Shaw: “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it.”

A better understanding of our individual family history can help us be a little more sceptical when dealing with simplified and kitsch national stories. It might help us see that our home town or country is of course very important when it comes to our identity but is not more than a point in time and space which is significant to us just because it is our own. In the age we are going through, let us not allow oral history, that of pain, emmigration, pain, co-existence and complexity be lost under the weight of national epics.

Never allow others to force your roots down your throat: discover them on your own.

The roots are tangled, the past is mysterious and complex.

Of course, the above isn’t at all easy to pull off. The more back we go, the more difficult –in a gemetrical progression– it becomes to keep track of everyone! Perhaps in future generations, now that we record everything, it will be easier for our great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren (if we of have any, that is, for there’s also the problems of aging population and infertility…) to find us. The cases, however, of people who are alive now and know where the ancestors of their great-grandparents were from, are few and far between. We can rarely go back more than a single century, let alone two or three. This mystery, as forbidding as it might feel, is just as worth it to embrace and accept. In the example mandalas this is clear: the 7th generation is appropriately mixed up and it becomes more obscure(?) and harder to keep track of. But that’s just the way it is.

As you set out for the Past…

Creative freedom.

I think it’s very important for us to be able to colour all aspects of life and beautify them as each one of us sees fit, for us to be free to create even with and on the simplest of things.

Mandalas don’t have too many rules and they are simple enough. I don’t believe that any special kind of artistic inclination is needed for anyone to fill in their own genealogical mandala exactly the way they like.

By far the toughest part of making our genealogy into a mandala will be to give it a soul and substance, for it to be a work as beautiful as it might be complete with meaning, a piece of cultural representation that will satisfactorily represent its own story.

I put my trust in us.

Here is a blank mandala in the circular shape of the second image. Print it out or open it on Photoshop and…

…happy creations!

Colour me, draw on me, fill me in, make me yours...

Bastion – The Singer (Zia’s Song) Remastered

Also known as: “Build that Wall”.

Playing Bastion these slow, hot summer days nights. The day I was waiting for finally came, that is, the game to be on a ridiculous sale on the Steam summer sales: €5+ for the game and the soundtrack. What a steal. Almost as big of a steal as this song’s picking of my insides. Truly a great moment when it is first heard in-game.

Why Nikola Tesla was the greatest geek who ever lived

[…]Dear Nicola Tesla,

I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.
You were a man diplaced in time;
an Archimedes, Steve Wozniak, Tony Stark of the 19th century
You were the greatest geek who ever lived
in a time when humanity was crappier than usual.[…]

 

The Oatmeal gets it again!