The world at this moment is looking towards Europe with a broken heart

But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matt. 26:52)

“Hullo, my relatives.” (Native American greeting)

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” (Letter to Everett “Swede” Hazlett, July 22,1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower)

“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.” (Once There Was A War, 1958, John Steinbeck)

“The cocks don’t crow to wake the morning, [t]here’s not as yet a sound of man, [t]he owls in glades call out their warnings, [a]nd ash trees creak and creak again." (Taras Shevchenko)

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Banksys-Armoured-Dove-of-Peace-on-the-side-of-a-Palestinian-house-near-to-the_fig1_319293800

The world at this moment is looking towards Europe with a broken heart, and those among us, that are compelled to prayer, send supplications to the Creator that a benevolent intercession may quickly put an end to this war which has broken out in the Ukraine. May it be the brave Ukrainian people survive and endure best they can and that the Russian political leaders come swiftly to their right senses. Howard Zinn, the American World War II veteran, philosopher and historian, expressed the awfulness of war with powerful comprehension as to its ultimate cost: “[t]here is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” We are all members of humanity, “consideration of others” and  “philanthropy”,[1] the defining characteristic of this universal body of ‘blood-beat’. And unpalatable as this might sometimes seem to us, that we are ‘tied to the hip’ regardless of our nationalistic or eschatological predispositions, this world is all we have. Our one and only opportunity to live out the meaningfulness of “compassion”, that is, to suffer together with our neighbour. To make our life, and the lives of those around us, the best they could possibly be. All else, however spectacular or mesmerizing it might very well be, like flying rockets to Mars and the like, is at best but a welcome bonus. At worst little more than a distraction, a bug about the ears, to the plaintive cries of all those who are needlessly maimed and killed in theatres of ruinous conflict across the world. The only real winner is the military-industrial complex and the defence industries which drive it. As Metropolitan Anthony Bloom has said: “[t]here is no idol that doesn’t claim blood.” [2] The sad truth that throughout the history of the human race, it has been much easier to find the devil in ourselves, and even easier still to point him out in others, than to genuinely seek after the Creator, or the ‘Form of the Good’, in our own hearts. And, yet, I must confess, there are hours when it could be hard to know the difference, like discerning what stands behind the shadow of a shape caught between the rays of light and the cold ground.

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/humanity

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2OtD5OkHHo

My departed Father’s birthplace

Paphos, Cyprus, November 2016/January 2017

From Sydney, via Dohar, to Larnaca; long haul flight over the Indian Ocean; please an aisle seat if possible; who will sit next to me; young man with sparse chestnut goatee; the ritual before I go on board; comfort shopping; buy a biography [Nikola Tesla]; a double-shot of Bombay Sapphire; since the near miss over the Caribbean; frightened of flying; Mark Webber in the next gate; not long ago it was Eckhart Tolle; and before that the happy songstress; to my right a distressed father of five; we jockey for the middle armrest; why does food taste differently on planes; more to do with smell rather than taste they say; I am repeating myself; Farfalle tossed with Arrabiata Sauce; will George hit his second fifty this weekend; your broken shoulder has healed well my boy; Katina manages amazingly without me; “I have loved you for a thousand years” (Christina Perri); the primary flight feathers of the Mute Swan; crosswind landings; angle of attack; the mythical landscape of Paphos; my changing face and my balding head; my departed Father’s birthplace; the deepest wound is silence; like a mark in the dark; your spirit gives life to the earth; Johann Sebastian Bach; punctus contra punctum [‘point against point’]; Nina Simone; the fingers are an extension of the voice; music smoulders down through to the large toe; C minor naturals and accidentals as required; I should stop for a drink; Zivania grape pomace and dry wine; nothing beats an icy cold beer; Bus 618 to the harbour; Apostolou Pavlou Avenue; Bank of Cyprus; Superior Real Estate; the earth stretches as far as the eye can see; to the end of silence; the suffering of the other is not ever far; Aleppo reveals the actuality of the new world order; Bana al-Abed keep safe under the giant wings of angels; long walk in the heat almost lost; local traffic signs are perilous here; step over cracks with the right foot first; great art like mystery inspires transformation; “The street had its own history/ someone wrote it on the wall, with paint” (Manos Loizos); Kallinikos Stavrovouniotis the inspired iconographer; preparation of brushes and woods; heated beeswax and coloured pigments; two young girls to my right are taking selfies; not long ago they would have been preserved in portraits; nine bus drivers on strike to my left; worry beads fighting a losing battle with cigarettes; no rain for three months; remember take quick showers; hot air masses over from the Sahara; gases and dust; the birth of stars; the big belt of Orion; second draft of the short stories done; “I journey inward seeking a language of lament” (Stephanos Stephanides); “How close we are/ to what we thought was so far away!” (Costas Montis); “Those who die in war, they sing the best songs for peace” (Mehmet Yasin);  true artists will bleed; your voice must bleed to give life to birds; without blood your poems will cease to exist; Aphrodite rises from the foam; Adonis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Book X); Pygmalion’s futuristic fetish gave birth to Paphos; most everything has been done and said before; even pixels and robotics; I need another blanket it is cold; two light bulbs burnt out; please make up Room 201; am I the last person on earth without a mobile; immunity from the network; the portable telephone will go inside the head; a 16 year-old Mother missing with her baby boy; we are all refugees; I have too many coats; “If you have two coats, give one away” (Lk. 3:11); scores of souvenir shops; the ridiculous mingles with the sublime; from nodding plastic Messiahs to the Virgin Mary of Kykkos; feather ice, fine as white Iranian Pashmak; figures of speech the folding doors at Pompeii; dreams the building blocks of images; globalism one of the terrible lies; to obliterate history; to deconstruct identity; the monopolization of food; “To the south, to the south, my time is running out” (Frank Turner); “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin” (Leonard Cohen); “We all live in a yellow submarine” (Beatles); Saint Neophytos Monastery and Temple of the Retreat; a glorious Sunday morning histories and eternities turn together; the Divine Liturgy the summary of all things; Saint Barnabas Apostle to Antioch and Cyprus; Saint Spyridon the Wonderworker; Saint Sapricius the Bishop; mourning must not be wasted; the Berlin Christmas market attack; Russian ambassador assassinated in Ankara; babies freeze in Aleppo; wax honeycombs inside the beehive; synchronized wings; contract pollination; lightning in the form of ribbons; stories trapped in stone; Rock of the Greek; Saint Paul’s Pillar (1 Cor. 2:11-24); Paphos Castle; Tombs of the Kings; the Ancient City of Marion; who am I, dear Mother, and why have I become; what rests in the depths of depths; Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me the sinner; sickening migraine tonight; wild galloping horses; anvils made of splintered diamond; Gustav Mahler Symphony No. 9 in D major; you play music on the inside of my heart; it ends too soon; before we have time to say, this is who I am; a child is asked to decide on a Christmas gift; what will it be a dress or a toy; a small glass of milk, she says; thank goodness it is raining; Trinitarian mystery and supercritical fluids; “Lazarus, come forth!” (Jn. 11:43); I should tell Jeremiah to believe in the resurrection of the living; I should have been in Mexico; I should have brought another white shirt; Gennadios Taverna; White King Chess School; Papaconstantinou Bakery; my jaw is hurting again; oh please Lord, not for a third time; this codeine will not work; the ‘pigeon-toed orange peel’; it never existed Mr Eastwood; film can convince us of almost anything; Zeno of Citium; true good can only exist in Virtue; happiness depends on moral actions; truth is as recognisable as the odour under the armpits; go bald gracefully and delight in the possibilities; a middle-aged man with short-cropped hair waiting for Mediterranean mussels; an elderly woman with cat eye sunglasses is pushing away the past; a young couple bent over, lost forever in their mobiles; Marios Tokas Anoula tou Hionia; Michalis Kakoyiannis Zorba the Greek (1964); Christopher A. Pissarides “theory of search frictions”; a philosopher with broken hands taking notes; dark energy; dark matter; normal matter; expansion of the universe not slowing down; like stars racing on the edges of galaxies; the artist must for a short time forget; only then can he or she create anew; the palimpsest is a valuable example; beards are back in fashion; the Bandholz; the five-blade razor; birds made from old manuscripts and from the virgin’s hair; Pied Wheatear; Warbler Sylvia; Short-toed Treecreeper; Panagia Theoskepasti; Agia Kyriaki Chrysopolitissa; Agios Georgios Basilica; Dostoevsky’s “The Possessed” an ongoing prophecy; please read Albert Camus’ “The Human Crisis”; Dag Hammarskjold Markings; the Cyprus issue falters again; corruption is the mainstay; culture of co-existence a distant vision; the view of the Mediterranean coastline is mesmerizing; each flickering light a poem in the horizon; miles of soul sleeping tonight; “Let the stars appear/ and the moon disclose her silver horn” (Jane Kenyon); South Sudan conflict; another catastrophe; hunger in Yemen; United Nations ineffectual intoxicated on blind power; a rusted door knob; a shoe without a heel; a broken teacup; we become that after which we chase; Midas touched his daughter she turned to gold; let us chase after poetry; why are you reading these lines; have you visited before; would you offer a hat in my distress [or a rope, as he once did]; in Pegeia they speak in key signatures; the young ones still court at the ‘vrisi’; Coral Bay sprays new life into the ancient lithosols; I was a soldier here long ago; one day they prepared us for war; there was lots of crying in camp; House of Dionysos; House of Aion; the “Forum” [the Agora]; the first photo is never right; why do you forget; a wooden boat swaying gently on scattered sunlight; a group of children skipping on pebble skins; seashells on the knees of butterflies; Chapecoense LaMia Flight 2933; from one moment to the next; Alexandrov Ensemble Tu-154 crashes in the Black Sea; a new chorus of mermaids; you will spring from bed one night; the answer would have at last arrived; it will be the last and the hardest of your battles; “years have passed many changes taking place” (Hazel Durham); “what’s changed is you” (F. Scott Fitzgerald); “so take away my passport!” (Mahmoud Darwish); you said you were going away forever; yet I will look for you in the cities; “Or ancient mounds that cover bones, Or rocks where rockdoves do repair” (The Alchemist in the City, Gerard Manley Hopkins); caution no entry; attention heavy vehicles; beware bumps on the road; Troodos Mountains; Pediaios River; Avakas Gorge; the way you clasped your hands; Latin-rig sails drifting into the distance; the secret remains in how we communicate the story; Cyrano de Bergerac and his talking earrings; I sing carols with old ‘Santa Claus’ Lawrence; December 25th Christmas Day; “In the beginning was the Word” (Jn 1:1); “Therefore Christmas, the day of the birth of the God-man the Lord Jesus Christ, is the greatest and most important day in the history of all the worlds in which man moves and lives” (Saint Nikolai Velimirovich); the parcel of land recovered; belongings were watered; January 11th time to go.