Waiting for the storm…

I’m waiting. The clock ticks the seconds away. Ruthlessly. Ceaselessly. Relentlessly. I’m still waiting. What should I write about? About our hospitalized government? About the troika, lurking around the corner like a predator? Days passed in the green. We kept ourselves busy with the Euro Championship and not the euro currency. A bad thing? Not necessarily so. An essential thing? Definitely not. However the Euro Championship will continue to be after the year is through. I wouldn’t bet my life on the euro achieving the same feat, though.

Weeks pass like a river flowing into the sea. The sea that carries monstrous carrier ships. Towards faraway Syria. Perhaps not far enough from us here in Greece. The West is knocking on the gates of Persia and those gates lie in the land which Assad has been painting red. For months. But he is not the only one. Nor the first to do so. The difference between a dictatorship and a “legitimate government” in “these” countries lies in the colour of the ruling dictator’s underwear. If it bears the stars and stripes, then it’s fine.

Unless, of course, politicians and their puppeteers decide otherwise.

I read about horrifying things in the news. Robberies, murders, suicides. Infanticides. Cannibalism. Like a daily, macabre litany. In the sidebars I can see the windy upskirts, the failed plastic surgeries and the wet bathing suits of the famous. The contrast  is surreal, hideous. Inexplicable.

I read everything. Financial analyses. Political analyses. Social analyses. Football analyses. I even read about prophecies from holy men. Unserious, one would say. Droll, even. However, I just can’t shake the impression that some of them are beginning to look dangerously plausible. Even more than all these analyses.

The days have turned from football green to sandy gold and sea blue. For some. For a little while. Most of us, however, will just go back to gray. Others, many more than normally acceptable (?) never left the black. Nor will they, unless they shut the door behind them. But I hope they won’t. Perhaps things will change. Perhaps we will hit rock bottom before starting to climb again. But those who “leave” will never find out.

Please don’t shut the door.

Chaos? War? Some mock the Mayas and their prophecies. Forget about meteors, sun flares, earthquakes and volcanoes. We are safe from those, as a race. But do not forget man. He is the worst threat of all. The Mayas did not foresee disaster. They implied that the end of an era will come, a great change of some kind. Such things rarely come peacefully, however.

And everything seems so peaceful right now. Like the quiet before the  storm. In Greece and abroad. Unpredictable. Torrential. Unending scenarios. No certainty at all.

Months pass slowly. Falling, like rain drops. Blood or oil. Or, perhaps, both. I don’t know what to write about. I’m waiting. I am no prophet.

 Intermission #14

Riders on the storm
Riders on the storm
Into this house we’re born
Into this world we’re thrown
Like a dog without a bone
An actor out alone
Riders on the storm

May we live in interesting times…

The reason of existence for this blog is to be an anti-newspaper of sorts. That is, a newspaper that publishes not just news but ideas and headlines that pop in my mind. Headlines that have some meaning and are not just sensational or catchy. News that I think should be read carefully. Line to line and in between. In the endless stream of information it’s very easy to miss the truly interesting bits, the ones that matter the most.

“May you live in interesting times”. This curse, which is also the basis for the name of this blog, is regularly attributed to the Chinese. No hard evidence has ever been put forward to support this, but times being such as they are, no hard evidence is needed to support anything, really. In recent years, entire wars have begun based solely on rumours or on unsubstantiated reports, later proven or admitted false. No one seems to mind much. At least, no one “important“.

All the “important” people care about today, is debt. And it is not just them. It seems that debt is all people are talking about on TV, in the newspapers, on the street, in Parliaments and in houses of ill repute (one and the same, actually). The Greek debt, the EU debt, the US debt. The debt crisis (a Greek word, by the way).

And so, I chose this wordplay as the name of my blog, where I will post my thoughts and feelings about the state of my country (Greece) in specific and the world in general as I see it. Hopefully, it will be interesting and, perhaps, pertinent to our times. But I can promise you now that reading it will not save you from debt, nor prevent global warming, nor bring about world peace. And that is the sole disclaimer I can offer.

It will, however, bring me some measure of personal peace by letting me express questions and thoughts that haunt me on a daily basis: about the human condition, about the so-called crisis and about whatever else I see fit to comment on. My hope is that, perhaps, it will offer a new perspective for some and that it will also help make people think more about our interesting times.

“Interesting” is, of course, used here as a euphemism, a Greek word by the way. Sort of like calling mass slaughter “collateral damage“. Or calling people looking in the trash for food and jumping out of office windows[1] “austerity measures”. Austerity being, as you might have guessed, another word with Greek origins. By the way.

It seems that my honoured ancestors gave this world all the values and ideas it needed to prosper and become a better place and all the necessary words to describe its failure to do so. Interesting, don’t you think?

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[1]  Any similarity with computer software of any kind is purely coincidental. Even if said software does make me want to jump out the window, on occasion.

Intermission #1

One of my all-time favourite songs. The fact that today, 23 years later, it sounds more pertinent than ever, amazes and appals me in equal measure. Pollution, violence, greed and the inevitable downfall of our society in a few, short lines.

And all the roads jam up with credit / And there’s nothing you can do / It’s all just bits of paper flying away from you…