the problem, of course, is time-
(always time, menacing thief, exasperated lover, begrudging teacher of all things wonderful and fragile and finite and splendid and alive and ultimately dead)
-a world away from another world, more corrupt, more simple, less stratification, less nuance –
(this is not true at all, if anything there is a greater range of nuance to the greek language and people, a constant analysis and counter analysis, examination and burial and excavation)
-and there is no catching up, no synchronicity: it’s impossible, they are literally living in the future, 7 hours at a time.
(perhaps this is why facebook works for them the way it does: a record of their likes and dislikes, not a catalog of where they are every instant [this ugly new trend of people “checking in”], mini websites and blogs, expressing themselves through found internet art, music videos, pictures, in photographs: they are broadcasting onto a monument against time, for those of us living out of it, for those of us tracing out the future through their past)

away we go paros bound; shoot through economy class, coach straight into business, stride on in and fuck it: even the luggage takes a table.
and of course it’s all fun and games against the tide and the nausea kicks us all in the gut and we toss the sesame bread rings we ate just minutes before.
arrival and everything is as you left it and not at all as you remember it: wasn’t the tavern on the beach? weren’t the buildings whiter? barkers less persistent? “Hotel cousin? Where are you staying? Come with me!”
in greek, in english, the language of commerce and despair share the same grammar.

it’s a set of emotions that tumble: you’ve been before but it’s all strange all over again. between the years, joining the eurozone, imminent bankruptcy and the life inbetween: booming infrastructure and frozen wages. spectacular vistas interrupted by unfinished bridges and tunnels. Athens is rife with graffiti, mistrust and resignation: things have always been this way to some extent where the rich abscond and plunder through the resources of a country densely packed with the poor. pockets of ethnic ghettos form within and on the outskirts of the inner city and resentment seethes as the native population refuses to acknowledge their own complicity in the economic situation of the country: everyone’s out of work but they’re also enjoying a frappe in the platia while they bitch about the latest influx of pakistani’s.