The coming winter

With the advent of the cold, I begin to dread the winter to come especially the cold mornings when getting out of bed even to relieve myself is a struggle. With the advent of the cold, I begin to look forward to the winter especially to the sudden shock of the cold air to my face and body and the stark sensation of being alive that comes with it. With the advent of the cold, I find myself overwhelmed with bittersweet thoughts and sentiments of apprehension and aspiration....apprehension about the short days and long nights and aspiration about the season that follows. With the advent of the cold, the dying leaves and flowers become magical expressions of their rebirth in the afterlife that is Spring and Summer and I find my rhythm, my pace, my creativity, my passion for all, and everything, and everyone....because I know it will pass and the days will become longer, and my body will be heated by the sun's fire, and the Aegean will be beckoning me again and again. With the advent of the cold, I have much to look forward to in spite its discomfort for I know it burns just as much as fire and if it is respected equally it will provide the solace and comfort I seek.

Desire

On this grey and rainy day here in Istanbul either made for cocooning in bed with your lover or enjoying a cappuccino in your favorite cafe with soft music playing loud enough to embellish the feeling of magic in the air and making eye contact with a beautiful stranger sitting at a table across from you, the following F. Scott Fitzgerald line encapsulates your state of being..."He looked at her the way all women want to be looked at by a man."

Life is always elsewhere

A day in the life of anybody in any city of any country in the world must not be very dissimilar from that of mine. You wake up early in the morning as I do, breakfast, shower, and get dressed (the order may vary at times) and set off for work. You labor all day (most of the time there is a purpose to it, especially teaching and learning and creating and being intellectually stimulated…some of the benefits of being an academic) and then go home to continue your habitual routine – dinner, family, friends, television, reading, making love, arguing, sleeping – though it too varies a lot…and the making love part is mostly poetic embellishment. When I have some time for myself I realize that another day or days or week or weeks or month or months have gone by and I attempt to take stock of what has come to pass. I am an expatriate having moved from Athens to Istanbul a little over three years ago….from one historic and beautiful city to another. Yet, as I ponder my humdrum routine…a day in the life of Dimitri…I sadly come to recognize that it so overwhelms me that I don’t enjoy the sounds and sights and smells of Istanbul as much as I would want to. I came here to escape the sinking sensation of Athens and to nurture the need to stimulate myself with new experiences and I do what I used to do….a life structured around work. As a result, when I periodically hear the call of the muezzin or focus on the language being spoken around me, it suddenly dawns on me that I am elsewhere, in what should ideally be an exotic environment….but it is not…a day in the life of Dimitri in Istanbul is the same as a day in the life of Dimitri in Athens or a day in the life of Dimitri in London…the only marked and tangible difference is the food when I have lunch at or around my work place and dinner whenever I go out. The tastes still surprise me even though they are similar to those found in Greek cuisine. I find myself comparing and contrasting and sometimes even experimenting in the comfort of my kitchen to reproduce them (without much success).

As in Solzhenitsyn’s classic portrayal of A Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich, the routine of the day is my gulag with its repetitive cycles and the intermittent novel experiences interspersed in it. Life is always elsewhere yet I am living it day in, day out. “Life is like weeds,” Kundera writes in Life is Elsewhere…like weeds, the routine grows on you and you keep on living…