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

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me

“Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops - but not on our lies. The Machine proceeds - but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die.” (E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909)

“Technique has penetrated the deepest recesses of the human being. The machine tends not only to create a new human environment, but also to modify man's very essence. The milieu in which he lives is no longer his. He must adapt himself, as though the world were new, to a universe for which he was not created. He was made to go six kilometres an hour, and he goes a thousand. He was made to eat when he was hungry and to sleep when he was sleepy; instead, he obeys a clock. He was made to have contact with living things, and he lives in a world of stone. He was created with a certain essential unity, and he is fragmented by all the forces of the modern world.” (Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society, 1954)

“Those who cannot forgive others break the bridge over which they themselves must pass.” (Confucius)

“Sorry, a machine can’t forgive your mistakes.” (Anon.)

“Books don’t need batteries.” (Nadine Gordimer)

"Now, a machine however subtle does not feel love, does not pray, does not have a sense of the sacred, a sense of awe and wonder. To me these are human qualities that no machine, however elaborate, would be able to reproduce. You may love your computer but your computer does not love you." (Kallistos Ware)

Source: https://twitter.com/nasahistory/status/951861340557234177

This is why ‘the Machine’ concerns me. Not that it might one day determine what I might eat or drink, or whether I can drink or eat at all, but that it will not hear my cries. That it will know nothing of physical thirst or of gut-wrenching despair. How can ‘they’ not understand this? It will have no comprehension of forgiveness. It will never wipe the slate clean. There is no delete. No such thing as absolution. It will deny to give me a fresh start [another more terrible dimension to DoS attack]. Mercy does not run through its microcircuitry. Don’t rush to embrace it too soon, this Trojan Horse which comes as a peace offering to the gods. The Creator has mercy for us, “[t]hough your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Is. 1:18). The ‘Machine’ which is ‘spirited’ by power to apply force and control, is unmoved to our petitions, “Dave, this conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye” (2001: A Space Odyssey). This is the elephant in the living room. Something holds us back, a foreboding, a premonition perhaps, that keeps us from directly addressing this subject.

It really is difficult to see people broken, humiliated, and in some instances to have their lives taken away from them because of something they might have said five, ten, twenty or more years previously. For someone, for whatever reason, to dredge up ‘sins’ of the past in order to hurt, or more concisely, to cause irreparable damage to the other. Who among us hasn’t said something which they haven’t later regretted, or where our words and sentiments can be elicited to carry a meaning or an attitude not originally intended? These can be errors of speech, peer group pressure, or the result of youth and immaturity. Yet it is there, it has been recorded. It is ‘played back’ oblivious to the context. Context is that which “throws light on meaning”.[1] We all make stupid mistakes. It takes time for wisdom and life experience to meld. And in other instances we get to a certain age and become anachronistic dinosaurs. The ‘Machine’ [input-process-output] is calculating and efficient. To ‘terminate’ these people is to simultaneously terminate ourselves. It is to do to another, that which can be done back to us. The ‘Machine’ defines us by our mistakes. It groups us in categories and dumps us in information silos. Is this the fate of the human spirit, to be “born into this?”[2] Imprisoned inside the “big iron” mainframes… like Ted Hughes’ proud Jaguar in “prison darkness” in its cage?

To forgive is an expression of one of our highest elevations as human beings. It is nobler than our finest literature, our greatest art, our most beautiful music. It is greater than all these when practised with a true heart for it takes us into the realms of the deepest mysteries of our combined representations of the Divine. In our religious experience we do not awe at the Creator’s ability with the harp or the writing of celestial sonnets, but rather we are amazed at the expression of God’s mercy and forgiveness. To the extent that we ourselves do the same with our fellow human, that is, to extend our grace towards those who we perceive to have wronged us, we are in the “image and likeness” of the Creator (Gen. 1:26).  We forgive that we could enter more genuinely into the space of compassion, that we might go on loving. The root of “forgive” is the Latin word “perdonare,” meaning “to give completely, without “reservation.” (“perdonare” is also the source of our English “pardon”).  We give up the desire or the power to punish.[3] The ‘Machine’ knows nothing of compassion. It will not forgive because it cannot love. Algorithms don’t have soul; they are devoid of incorporeal essence:

“You can’t forgive without loving. And I don’t mean sentimentality. I don’t mean mush.” (Maya Angelou)

In life not all acts of fellowship are received well or reciprocated. When the grace we give is not accepted and is returned it can be brutal. It is a place of heavy tears. We are living increasingly in a world which keeps us isolated one from the other, and where we might be called-out or cancelled as swiftly as the swatting of an irritating fly. This is not because people are wicked, on the contrary, most people are generous and kind-hearted. We are all fragile vessels on an oftentimes bumpy journey. We can crack. And this is the tragedy, the irony, that this very fragility draws us into systems and networks and ‘mobs’ where we do things so that we, ourselves, might not be hurt. It is increasingly becoming a survival technique. The online world especially has hurt and devastated people by its millions, either by their own hand [addictive behaviours] or cyber-attacks [bullying, misinformation]. “As rapidly as technology advanced,” writes Joseph Carvalko in his prescient novel Death by Internet, “goodness declined…”. Communication technologies are not exempt. They are the voice of ‘the Machine’. The apparatus has no spiritual knowledge of humility and so it cannot practise repentance. Computational empathy or affective computing, is mimicry at worst, and simulation at best. The ‘Machine’ possesses no natural ontology, knowledge representation and reasoning, does not automatically equate to higher consciousness. It cannot possess “human memory”. And therefore it does not know what it is like to be human. I dread to think, if the present-day capabilities of our 21st century technology were available to past totalitarian regimes [especially Advanced LBS and monitoring systems], how enormously more multiplied and innovative their crimes would have been.[4]

To meet likeminded spirits along the way means so very much. It could make all the difference in the world, to have the strength, to hold onto the courage, to keep pushing apart that impalpable space between the light and the darkness. How good to have a friend who is real and co-substantial. To receive an encouraging message to remind you of your humanity, to have sympathy for you precisely because of your flesh and blood. To be accepted for all your faults and list of misdemeanours. And if need be, as it sometimes will be, for one or the other to say “I am sorry”, and to hear those marvellous words in reply, “All is good, I understand.” Not just a graphical control element, or a voice on the other side of an interface, or a recorded message with push button instructions. A machine could be programmed to ‘speak’ all the good things in the realm of metaphysics, but we will always have the perspicacity, that penetrating discernment, that it is artificial, and synthetic. Those words, the programming languages [even if they should ever become distinctly compositional], will never, cannot ever come from the heart [“the blood-beat” of the poets], the place of will and intention. Technology, of course, in and of itself, is not the problem, but our connection to it needs to be kept under constant vigilance, that is, we must keep awake as to how it infiltrates and attempts to redefine our very existence as human beings. When we are in need of some light and succour all the artificial intelligence and interconnectivity in the world will mean nothing. It is like being trapped in a vault of bullion of an unlimited value with no means of escape or communication. What then the benefit of all that precious metal? What good if we are building towards this terrible prediction:

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” (George Orwell)

We give our technology compelling names and dress it up with the most dazzling colours and logos. Many of these technologies, ultimately the most potentially dangerous, we make anthropomorphic. We dress up for example, and give large adorable eyes to the robots. We make-believe that we are understood and can even be loved by ‘the Machine’, that its cold intelligence will keep us warm at night. ‘It’ will seek those divine attributes which we ordinarily attribute to Deity: omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, and omnificence. But being created in the image and likeness of the creation itself it cannot by definition ever achieve them. And so it will incrementally grow to become commensurately desirous and aggressive. The monster built by Victor Frankenstein eventually turns on his creator in murderous rage for making him hideous and incapable of fulfilling its integrated dynamism [5] . The singularity will not breathe new life into us to make us immortal. It could one day make you the ‘undead’, but never immortal. We would do good, as well, to not quickly forget the lesson of the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1-9). Technology gone awry on account of the hubris of the builders and the resultant breakdown of communication.

We know ourselves better than those who might be wanting to hurt us and much better than ‘the Machine’ which wants to imprison us in its central repositories and data warehouses. Their efforts to cause us pain, to potentially bring us to some humiliation, pale in comparison to our own battles, the fight against our compulsions, and those myriad fetishes within. We know much better than our real-life adversaries and the ‘electronic eye’ of the darkness fighting, assailing our souls, as we try to limit its impact on our lives and on the lives of others. If only they [both the adversaries and the ‘comptrollers’] knew the whole truth, had some insight of the context, they would be ashamed and terrified at the same time. Big Brother and uberveillance as much they might try to get inside the head, to get to the “whole truth” with their own particular strains of watching techniques, can only endlessly fall short of the mark. Our life is a mystery infinitely inexhaustible. We are so much more, much more than our search history and CCTV captures. It is weight enough to grasp what those words below from Miłosz mean for each one of us, before even ‘the Machine’ goes after our self-discovery to take away that private space where away from prying eyes we do our living and our dying: 

“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labour for one human life.” (Czesław Miłosz)

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/context

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQJengH58ow

[3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/forgive

[4] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1716&context=infopapers

[5] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/frankenstein

Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City, 1987

September 25th 2010

Gerringong, NSW

Caption: The con-celebration in Rome was preceded with a meeting in 1979 between the two Primates held in the Fener.

There are moments in our lives which leave us with such a strong impression that the picture will fade little with the passing of time. One of these instances I experienced in Rome, in December of 1987. I was twenty-seven years old, recently ordained into the holy diaconate of the Eastern Orthodox Church, yet here I was about to witness one of the most significant events in the relations between the two great churches since the “official” schism of 1054.[1] I had been travelling through Switzerland and was in Zermatt where I had decided to stop for a few days, but was able to make some fast changes to my travel itinerary hop on an express train and make it to the Eternal City. It would be just in time for the highly controversial con-celebration in Saint Peter’s Basilica between Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Demetrios I of Constantinople. Some days earlier the two religious leaders issued a joint-declaration from the Vatican stressing “the fraternal spirit between the churches.”[2] This meeting would also coincide with the anniversary of 1200 years from the convening of the 7th Ecumenical Council in Nicaea in 787.[3] In a solemn ceremony, in a place of worship where soaring architecture and astonishing art alone could strike you speechless, the Primates of West and East together recited in Greek the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed as originally put down in 381 AD:[4] without the filioque [“and from the Son”].[5] From that hour ecumenism careered into a new dimension and we would in the following decades become witness to the extreme articulations of both ‘liberals’ and ‘die-hard’ fundamentalists.[6] I believe, the implications of that great moment were not fully seized or realized. Even so, the foundation stone, directly implied in Ephesians 4:1-16 [‘the unity of the church’], has been forever put in place. 

Outside in Saint Peter’s Square among the throng of thousands happy enough to witness the momentous event on the giant monitors, another much smaller act was about to unfold. Entry into the Basilica on that day was by a special ticket, though it was plain enough to see that it was still hugely overcrowded. I was thinking how memorable it would be to witness it all from the inside. To be part of this historic occasion as it actually happened. It was then that I was approached by a nun who appeared to have been the superior of a small group of religious in her company. I could not rightly guess her age on account of her veil, but her face though visibly pale, was strikingly handsome. She smiled with the expected reserve of an experienced religious and promptly introduced herself, “Good morning Father, I am Sister Benedicta.” All the while during this short exchange Sister ‘Benedicta’ kept her hands clasped in front of her blue habit. A rosary with a pearl crucifix was intertwined between her fingers. She asked whether I would accept the biglietto of one of her group who at the last minute could not be there. It would still prove a challenge to make my way to the entrance, let alone get in. I thanked her and took the ticket.

I would have liked to talk to this softly-spoken woman, whose accent betrayed a French background, to have asked something of her life, but before I could rightly thank her, she and her little troop disappeared into the growing mass of people. Many years later in Bucharest when I had similarly lost the “old man” in the maddening rush of afternoon traffic, I would once more remember losing her, too, in the crowd. I reflect as I write this entry many years later, if I really did ‘lose’ them or if [for some reason] it was an unconscious act which I willed to happen: “[a]nd this that you call solitude is in fact a big crowd.” These disarming words from the Serbian poet Dejan Stojanovic challenge me more regularly as time flashes past and I do further battle with the twin concepts of ‘community’ and ‘solitude’.

I pushed and shoved through this great sea of animated bodies to get to my destination. At last after showing my ticket to the officials I was treated with new found respect and escorted to the front of Saint Peter’s Basilica. My seat was only a few rows behind the impressive congregation of VIPs. The sister’s friend must have been somebody quite important to have been allotted a seat this close to the historic proceedings. Whose place did I take? And why in that mass of people did she choose me? There in the company of cardinals and bishops, and of politicians and celebrities, I became increasingly agitated. At the end of these solemn proceedings together with the other clergy in those front rows, this little boy with the peculiar name from Newtown would meet the Pope. As for the genial Patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox [“the first amongst equals”] I would meet again in the Fener during a Christmas liturgy at the Church of Saint George in Istanbul. I felt my chest puff up and my head begin to spin. Clichés are not altogether redundant. One moment I wanted it all and knew that I could make it happen. For such are the deadly games which the ego, or better still ‘the id’ can play on us, to fuel us with a heightened sense of self-importance. Much of the ‘hard work’ I had reasoned was already done. All the big boxes [education and network] were ticked. A few minutes later I was deeply sickened by what I was feeling and realized that such high-places were not meant for me. I was possessed with too much ‘bad’ pride which I could feel running through me like the foreboding sense of mortality, and I would need to fight against it for the remainder of my life. From that time onwards whenever such opportunities might again present themselves to me, I would have to make sure to ‘uproot’ myself. And flee into the darkness in search of the ‘compensation’. This I would do more than once. I do not wish to pretend it was easy.

It never was. This need to recognize my voice.

[1] https://www.patriarchate.org/meetings-between-ecumenical-patriarchs-and-popes-of-rome-through-history

[2] https://www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/joint-declaration-8155

[3] https://www.apostolicpilgrimage.org/meetings-of-popes-patriarchs

[4] https://orthodoxwiki.org/Nicene-Constantinopolitan_Creed

[5] http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/ecumenical-and-interreligious/ecumenical/orthodox/filioque-church-dividing-issue-english.cfm 

[6] http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/ecumenical/hallam_orthodoxy_ecumenism.html

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.