17 - Father's Physics

I tracked the quasi-predestined course from early in life, with a few certificates under arms -in the domain of traditional positive sciences before engineering, guided less by my own initiative than external influence, which by and large acted upon me subconsciously. My involvement in sports activities I enjoyed and early literary ambitions were suppressed and suspended. My writings and discourse obtained technical, dry and wooden forms. Afterall, how many people make a decent living from writing stories or playing football?

The 1st Panhellenic Conference of the Union of Greek Physicists took place in the autumn of 1977 in Thessaloniki in a pavilion of the city’s Internation Trade Fair. Father was appointed member of the organizing committee, by virtue of his degree and short career in teaching physics, assigned the responsibility of providing telecom support for the conference, given his position in the Greek Telecom monopoly. It was also an opportunity for him, this conference, to exercise his self-proclaimed passion, from his student days for the branch science he chose to study, that is physics, although this passion had likely been weakened by the non-creative, routine work, more bureaucratic than technical, in the public telecom which had already employed him for a decade. The new school year had not started yet and I was towed along to the conference venue for a glimpse of the preparations he was overseeing, convinced that I might be intrigued, but also to introduce me to some of his fellow physicists-professors, potentially future teachers of mine in the future, although we both knew than not of much the aims of that gathering of physicists and the content of the sessions would have made much sense to me. It was the very first conference after the transition to democracy and, apparently, a milestone for the small society of Greek physicists, and besides for Father it carried the importance of a reunion with his university mates. It was even more important for the body of academics amongst them, who would dominate the technical sessions, less so, perhaps, for school teachers of physics or the few physics graduates, like Father, employed in engineering jobs in the public sector. And I could sense its importance for the members of the organizing committee members by the hustling, the handshakes and lively conversations between the various volunteers, many acquaintances of Father’s from his student days, and the few years he devoted in physics research and teaching, and the few curious associates coming and in and out of the halls that would house the conference.

Memories of that conference are hazy: there were pointless comings and goings, in and out of the conference halls or idly waiting in a corner for Father to end his long chats with people he knew and take me home. Urged by Father I attended some incomprehensible to me presentations in Nuclear Physics and Elementary Particle Physics, subjects at the frontier of physics research on which many Greek academics, conveniently detached from the Greek scientific and economic reality, devoted their efforts. Father saw it as a kind of baptism of fire for the hopeful and ambitious young man I was, with dreams and a drive to excel. Little sense did I make out of the talks, despite the intellectual effort I put in and a negligible effect did they have to enhance further my youthful predisposition to science. The latter was rather settled unwavering towards a career in science and engineering.

At the end of the week, from the generally pleasant mood and smiles of satisfaction and humor of Father, I surmised that first conference of the Greek Union of Physicists was crowned with success. First and foremost, Father had the opportunity to mingle with the few academic personalities and our national pillars in Physics he was acquainted with and respected. I sensed then how deep down he wished he had pursued an academic career in one of the branches of modern Physics, instead of the thankless, obscure and tedious quasi-engineering, mostly bureaucratic, role in a public telecom organization: to enjoy the prestige of a professorship some of his peers from university had already attained, the conferences and the expert speeches from the podium on pioneering research, in short, the lights of publicity the role of a university professor in Greece attracts.

In those days, tucked away deep in the cabinets of our bookcase, I discovered textbooks in physics and electrical engineering with the name of Father as the author. They were nothing more than typed lecture notes bound in a book, but the family name displayed in the cover of any sort of publication, such as those textbooks or even the conference program that caught the eye, I saw it as the crowning of some effort and dedication, as a piece of intellectual work that somehow withstands the passage of time. That generated a small dose of pride: I saw it as one of those infinitesimal contributions, notwithstanding the fact that they fast become obsolete and disappear under the weight of scientific progress.

My delving into physics continued with more zeal in the aftermath of the conference. Amongst several books, mainly university textbooks, Father had collected on physics, I discovered a relatively popularized version of Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, which, however, included mathematics and a pre-required knowledge yet to acquire. I labored through its pages with effort, racking my brain, gasping from one equation to the next, struggling to understand the mental experiments supposedly proving expansion and contraction of time with speed, starting from the axiom that the speed of light was a universal constant, considered the maximum possible speed in nature. I realized huge gaps in my scientific knowledge, in mathematics and physics, despite my excellent record with my studies at school and of exam grades. Yet, I considered that laborious study, which only scratched the surface of an important theory, as a minor intellectual achievement, a small victory of the brain like when solving a difficult puzzle. Later in life I recorded as personal intellectual achievements of similar magnitude the completion of reading and understanding of some of the great scientific or philosophical works, the magnus opuses of human civilization, and noted the experience of the great satisfaction I derived from these endeavors.

With the encouragement and pocket money from Father, who, at least as far as book purchases were concerned, tended to ignore their impact on the family budget, I bought the five thick volumes of Berkeley’s Physics. It was a purchase that filled me with joy and boosted my confidence in my scientific future, especially when, after reading through the first pages of the first volume, that of classical Mechanics, I realized that I understood most of its content and walked through it without many setbacks and relative ease from one chapter to the next. The awareness that it was used as a textbook of one of the world's leading Universities was uplifting for a generally fragile confidence, and reassuring in terms of the limits of my cognitive abilities and the attainment of bright future in science. This youthful enthusiasm subsided somehow after I skipped several chapters and volumes to venture into the more advanced and exotic subjects of physics, which would have attracted any restless young scientist in the embryonic stages of one’s career: Quantum Mechanics, Nuclear Physics, Relativity, fascinating objects considered springboards of scientific prominence. It was the bitter realization of a novice of the many things he had yet to learn before he could be counted for in this arena!

It was also at the culmination of the conference and my first contact with modern theories, when lying on the floor amongst stacks of physics books, in a cloud of childish naivety, I tried to come up with ideas, conjectures and hypotheses, like Einstein and the great physicists of his ilk· to establish, in my illusion, a novel revolutionary theory: about the structure of matter or the beginning of the universe, which at some point would place me on the same pedestal with great scientists like Einstein, Heisenberg, Bohr, Planck, and others, whom I heard of and admired. My ambitions set new aims, scientific this time. It was just absurd childish dreaming, of course! I was quickly disappointed by fruitless attempts for a ‘new’ theory in physics, with the rudimentary, schoolboy knowledge I had: my scribblings ended up in the wastebasket. The road to scientific glory was long. I was by no means a prodigy and I realized again how much still was ahead of me to learn. Along with those thoughts and sketches of my so-called ‘theories’, my wanderings through the volumes of Berkeley's Physics were limited to chapters that corresponded to, supported and somewhat extended the curriculum and forthcoming exams material.

And those those ominous national exams were fast approaching and each passing day was weighing heavily in the revision schedule. Mother, ignorant of science, was overwhelmed by anxiety caused by a belief that my focus was diverting from the revision of core exam material and this might dent the prospect of achieving the major goal of every petty-bourgeois family: the admission of their offspring to the university, preferably in a respectable subject with sound professional career prospects, preferably in my hometown -the latter, for economic reason. The departments of physics or mathematics were not incorporated in the category of schools that would safeguard a prosperous future in Greece and considered second rate-choices for candidates. After exhausting every line, every equation and example from the chapters Berkeley’s Physics pertinent to the exam syllabus, the main points duly highlighted, I placed its volumes of on a shelf in the library -to Mother’s relief, with the covers of just the first two volumes (on Mechanics and Electricity & Magnetism) worn out, some of their contents underlined in red ink. Since then, rarely the need occurred to refer to the physics topics they addressed, but all five volumes traveled with me, in their scientific weight and value, wherever around the world I have been, to any house I happened to occupy. It became a legacy nostalgic reminder of another set of naïve and unfulfilled ambitions from an age of callowness as much as of an unbridled imagination.  

16 - Early Timid Literary Aspiration

 A great deal has been written since time immemorial about reading and studying and creating works literature, and the experiential relationship with this form of art. For many, literature became a focal point of their existence and their writings influenced the way of thinking and stance in life of others. What Stalin had precisely in mind when he said that writers and poets are ‘the engineers of the human soul’, but we do not need a Stalinist buzzword to remind me that reading works of literature profoundly affects soul and mind, generates and shapes emotions, forms thoughts, ideas, and articulates speech, the prerequisites to will and action, and the bond of man with the world. I realized early in life the emotional touch books could have on the soul, how my connection with literature shaped and matured the inner world of ideas, feeling and emotions, how it developed my perception of reality and enhanced self-awareness, helped me to formulate thoughts and ideas, and eventually gave rise to a need to express this inner world of mine with words and, when possible and applicable, with actions.

Literary works of Greek writers of the last century, virtually unknown outside the narrow confines of the Greek literary world and society, Papadiamantis, Karagatsis, Myrivilis, Venezis, Delta, Theotokas and others, whose works excerpts, however, had prominent places in school textbooks (as deemed suitable by the ministry for the ethno-religious edification of Greek children) and, later, Lountemis, Kazantzakis, Varnalis, Sotiriou, Alexiou, Hatzis, Tsirkas,  of Koumandareas, Themelis, Doukas, most of them of leftist inclinations and whose unconventional and progressive writing were banished from the mainstream ‘curriculum’ of my school years, books from both sets of authors adorned the family library. Reading short stories, novellas and novels in my native language was easy and enjoyable and I devoured our books one after another, the most intriguing amongst them in a single day, through incessant and marathon readings that often began in the quiet, lazy afternoons after lunch when others were enjoying their siestas, and ended at dusk in the dimmed skylight through my balcony door. No volume and weight, no number of pages in any book discouraged or intimidated me.

Father's collection of books unfortunately lacked works of poetry. That might be both cause and effect of a deficit in sensitivity and romanticism in his personality, characteristics of poetic souls, as far as I know, which Father neither inherited from his family environment, nor did he cultivate in his life. As I grew older, motivated mainly by the revolutionary music we listened to and the lyrics of songs we sang, I embarked in enriching our library with collections of poets like Ritsos, Varnalis, Seferis, Livaditis, Kavvadias, Embeirikos, Karyotakis, from the rich Greek heritage, and of Neruda, Lorca, Mayakovski and others from the progressive world poetry. Old-school established and mainstream poets, like Palamas, Solomos, Drosinis, Vizyinos, Kalvos and others, were studied and their poetry occasionally discussed in class, with indifference it must be said, while some of their poems were memorized from and recited in front of teachers and parents in national holidays.  

As is well known, that period of adolescence and early youth, a period of immaturity amongst other things, opens up in the mind a constantly renewed and expanding range of ambitions. The readings motivated me to try to write my own prose. And I did attempt to write, without any particular authenticity in form and creativity in the content, the harsh truth was, mostly imitating the style and idiomatic language used, in the natural or authentic forms developed by each seasoned writer I read. Those diverse style influenced my prose along the way and altering accordingly my style of writing, as I was reading one’s work with its individual authentic style, such as women get ideas for their outfit by flipping through fashion magazines. Timidly, but with furtive hopes of some recognition, I submitted to a national student competition a short non-fictional story competition story: about the neighborhood which was enveloping my childhood years, the taverna of Tsapatsaraina by the stream where common folk gathered on Saturday evening, the old low-house of my best friend’s grandparents, our plays in the alley, where construction of blocks of apartments was changing in a fast pace. All of this in rather melodramatic tones for the generations being lost in the passage of time. My short story did not stand out. As a participant, I received a small booklet with a selection of student short stories that received distinctions in the competition and my work I was longing to see printed was not amongst them. The disappointment was momentary and minimal, at a time when my core ambitions were shifting elsewhere. I managed to save a manuscript of that first (and last) short story for some self-criticism and improvements. I still had a life ahead of me for my literary forays and experiments -I thought, as an amateur and maybe professional writer. Thenceforth, my writing efforts were limited to essays, as parts of school assignments, and depending on the motivation, normally low as with most school work, and the topic we were called upon to address, I regularly won praise –however, insignificant to resurrect my literary ambitions and spread my wings to that direction. The respective philologist, after grading our essays, usually invited me to recite my work in front of an indifferent and noisy class. Despite the shyness that I possessed by each time a teacher invited me to stand in front of the blackboard, in those early class environments, I used to overcome my bashfulness and managed fast-talking, with a relatively steady albeit flat-pitch voice, to articulate my short theses. But the national exams for university admission and the grades the most prestigious subjects like medicine, law or engineering required was were approaching and those ‘extracurricular activities’ like story writing had to be drastically curtailed. My study and performance in maths and science were given absolute priority in the allocation of time.

Towards the end of last year of Lyceum, that would conclude the last stage of our mandatory education, the progressive philologist of the year, Mrs. B, a petite figure with the kind and refined manners I mentioned above, assigned us a review of the works of writer of our choice. I chose Dimitris Hadjis, a communist writer and political refugee of the diaspora, sentenced to death by the post-civil war courts, and spent his life, until the transition to democracy in 1974, behind the Iron-Curtain, in Budapest. His short stories and novels -The Double Book, The End of Our Small Town, and others, I had read with interest and I was inspired by his linguistic style. I devoted plenty of time at the expense of few leisurely activities I was afforded, and with commendable drive and passion I wrote a multi-page essay with a synthesis and the exhibition of ideas that I found interesting in his novels. With the remarkable volume of books read on my own accord and initiative I felt that I had acquainted myself with a wide spectrum of modern Greek literature. I was pleased with the concisely, if not over-long, written essay I came up with, and my critique of a favorite author and I expected what I thought was a mature exposition of Hadji's works would impress Mrs. B, and maybe a handful of half-interested students, as much as it had impressed Father when he leafed through it. Unfortunately, under the circumstances in the public school for common people I attended, the presentation ended in a fiasco -as described above, nulling the little value I had attached to it. That presentation marked the limit of my lonely journeys in serial reading works of modern Greek literature and the end of my first timid attempts to write. The last traces of ambition to become an author were erased as well, although a small open crack in the depths of mind allowed some light through to shine through and show me that path I had abandoned, but at an older age, certainly too late for any career of note as a writer. If once I possessed a little bit of creativity the art of writing requires, that diminishes with time until it dries up in later year. Barely time was left to unimaginatively and uninspiringly salvage some of those memories.

The avid reading of books, having become an integral part of a ripening youth, turned into other directions. A career was discouraged along one of the so-called ‘humanities’ paths from early on: for a ‘positive’ mind, as mine was labelled, only a direction in scientific or engineering discipline, encompassing mathematics and physics in its core (subjects which occupied Father’s academic and professional life, as he proudly proclaimed at each opportunity) would highlight the limited range of talents I possessed and make the most of my potential. Besides, such disciplines were more tailored to the male brain and mental inclinations according to the stereotypes of the time. The ‘humanities’ were not for the highly intelligent, I was told, and intelligence, always according to Father's preoccupations, was almost exclusively associated with the ability to negotiate and solve complex mathematical problems or logic puzzles. Early literary wanderings served only to formulate one’s language, develop written and oral skills, and, importantly, obtain a good grade in the cumbersome essays we were asked to come up with in real-time -in those thorny sessions of the national exams. No one questioned the importance of language, but cultivating language skills were driven as means achieve specific goals, rather than an end to a professional engagement in literature, journalism, historiography, etc. On the other hand, studies in Mathematics and Physics as levers to success in national exams, aiming at prosperous career in engineering, subjects cold and barren relying on the use of logic, deprived me of aesthetic and emotional stimuli, stifled the imagination, made me a less sensitive, poetic and romantic and lyrical human being, and, perhaps, rather excessively practical. The opportunity for a golden mean, the equanimity and balance from a state of mental equilibrium, to borrow a term from physics, was sadly lost during those school years.

Nietzsche’s famous quote is brought in mind: ‘Art and art again. We need art so that we do not to die from the truth.’ It took more than half a lifetime to appreciate this message. My early literary ambitions were crushed in their cradle, along with a few others in as much an embryonic stage, the pursuing of which could have aided in the development of a better-rounded personality. Instead, this development has been permeated from an early age with the aim of pursuing an ambiguous ‘success’ in a professional career amongst a handful of options. This imperative and demand the lower middle class in Greece place on itself and its offspring (for self-preservation and advancement in the social ladder) was often met at the expense of the soul and spirit.

15 - Reading for Ever

Since I remember, I have been surrounded by books, a lot of books· books numbered in the hundreds and thousands, lined up on dozens of rows of shelve· books Father inherited from his uncle or bought in his youth and continued collecting for the rest of his life. As a child I counted them, sorted and arranged them, leafed through each one, I read most. Later, I used to sign by hand or stamp with my name everything I bought or thought it belonged to me. With pocket money I started creating an own sizeable as much as cherished collection. I read a lot of them continuously, systematically: underlining the main ideas and points the author touched upon, making notes in margins and notebooks. I did not merely read, but I studied them: in breadth and depth, with the peculiar personalised system and styles of study I developed along the way, as it felt more suited to my cognitive and perceptual abilities and idiosyncrasy, and more conducive in accumulating knowledge and making its comprehension effective. The frequency and intensity of reading books and the dedication to studying them remained undiminished from early childhood through the present day and it will continue so for as long as I retain my faculties and until the death of the human spirit in me. For the environment I grew up in, the opportunity I was given as a child and young man -to be immersed in a plethora of books and volume of knowledge they render accessible, I feel fortunate and grateful to my parents for providing the initial spark.

Father, the de facto family spokesman, often praised and congratulated himself in front of friends, colleagues and acquaintances as the charismatic educator, who taught me how to read well before I turned four. All started, he was saying, by asking me to read the names of boats in the port of Hydra in our summer holidays when I turned or the sign board of the shops of Thessaloniki at four. Deep dives from early age into books made reading them addictive. An avid reader, a "bookworm", Ι was devouring books at a rate that has been maintained unabated throughout life and occasionally accelerated by the positive feedback to the spirit a conductive study environment and ambience can provide. With an infinite world of knowledge stretching out before me, I branched out my studying endeavours to new subjects and authors and a diverse spectrum of sources: just as a tree grows –the ever growing ‘tree of knowledge’ in this case, from a sapling quickly grows taller and wider, sprouts branches and expands in many directions. From the first years of school until today, at a more or less undiminished pace, hundreds, perhaps thousands of books passed through and worn out by my hands· books in which I always deliberately left the markings of the meticulous and avid reader: the underlining, the notes in the margins, folded pages, the gray-black or oiled fingerprints, my name and signature above the completion date in the top corner of one of the first pages, later stamps with my name. (As soon as I finished school, I hastened to obtain an ink stamp and pad, along with a deck of business cards, as a kind of self-affirmation of the scholar and scientist, yet unrealisable, invisible to and unacknowledged from the outside world). Everything I underlined or noted in these books I believed and still do, rather foolishly, would be traces left for posterity and evidence that an undersigned existence honoured with time and intellectual effort, a not insignificant period of his life, a particular work and its author. And at those early stages in life, I used to read most genres of written work without a particular inclination: literary novels and short stories, classical or modern, philosophical essays, current political analyses, art critiques, scientific articles and books, and so on.

I am compelled to reaffirm some truisms on the subject of reading, because it occupies a significant part in the lives of devout readers, the ‘bookworms’ as they say, like me. The epigrammatic metaphor of Uberto Eco, that reading books allows us to experience through the power of imagination other lives and existences, fictional or not, outside our own, would suffice to justify the endless hours spent in bending over books -as far as I am concerned. Indeed, reading, especially novels and stories, transported me each time to different places and eras, societies and the souls of human being, as articulated formed by the author. The characters in them, their actions and passions on occasions stirred me. Throughout their stories I found my own feelings fluctuate in tandem between joy and sadness, I smiled or my eyes were misted over whilst tuning into the feelings of their heroes, I exercised empathy. Several times I identified with parts of their lives and thoughts and ideas, I reflect parts of my life and existence behind words and sayings, thoughts and actions. The emotions from the actions and thoughts and the psychology of the heroes of a novel, as they spring from the pages, are reflected and re-enlivened in the mind, extrapolated by imagination, often stirring emotions and bringing a smile or tears in the eyes. The latter, in particular, is often affected– for reasons that I have not been able to fully explain other than an inherent sensitivity to real or fictitious human drama, by the approach to the last lines of a book narrative and the end of the human story it tells. It is the same range of emotions, of melancholy and sadness, that often affect us when we feel that a chapter of real life is reaching its conclusion: a relationship, a change of house and neighborhood, a long period of working with the same group colleagues in the same place, a child who grows up and leaves home, the death of a person who was a part of our lives. There is a natural explanation to this: each ending reminds us of the passage of time, a past without return to it, a step closer to the very end.

The equally significant scientific and philosophical readings do not produce the emotional effects with literature. In a sense dry and impersonal, academic and analytical, they aim exclusively at the transfer of knowledge, whilst they empower logical thinking and judgement. No doubt they open our eyes and minds outwards, into the material world that surrounds us, as well as inwards, to the depths of our own selves, to self-awareness and conscience. All this knowledge, all the theories and systems of ideas we acquaint ourselves with and before we adopt some of them, eventually become integral part of our lives, they expand it to hitherto unexplored dimensions, guide us in our present and future existence, enhance the meaning of our past, and sometimes, perhaps subconsciously, shape the uncanny world of emotions within.

After all we have been afforded by nature a unique opportunity of an infinitesimal in time and space existence in this world, within this mind-blowing universe, as well as a miraculous brain and the consciousness to perceive life and this existence, to give it some direction in its finite journey and to express ourselves with words and actions. It would be a tragic omission and a great loss in its value if we do not to strive to understand this existence in this world to the maximum possible extent.

14 - Where is the Road Leading to?

Most of us grew up in increasingly competitive capitalistic class-societies, immersed ourselves and became cogs of its operations, as the only means to survive and live in the best possible way. Prospect of a radical qualitative transformation of this socioeconomic system into something else, despite the utopian goals and struggles of our youth, proved non-existent. How good a life one has can be assessed either subjectively or objectively, on the basis of societal and economic norms. Congenital biological attributes, along with acquired skills and education, the social class we are born in, are some the parameters that potentially shape our course in life. Of course, at the end of this journey, ‘success’ and a life’s worth, regardless of how this is assessed and determined can be function of myriads of factors, circumstances and situations, many exogenous, outside our control or influence, others unpredictable or unforeseeable, despite our tendency and efforts to plan and predict with some clarity the future ahead. Before one set out to recount and analyse the factors that have contributed to isolated ‘successes’ or ‘failures’, and a cumulative qualitative evaluation, one must first, both as a judge and the subject of judgment, understand and define ‘success’ and the yardsticks in the evaluation. That is, with a reference always to the spatiotemporal, one needs to understand and define what fundamentally constitutes ‘success’ in life. Is it accumulated material wealth? Is it material and intellectual output and the legacy (or the traces and their longevity of these traces one leaves behind)? Is it a recognition by fellow human beings, in a community or a nation or internationally, horizontally in society or vertically, through one’s field of occupation and expertise in an incessantly progressive division of labour in modern societies, which diffuses and reduces the contribution of each one into the intellectual and material production of society to the infinitesimal.

The question of how successful one’s life and what is its worth has been, is a complex question. One that we normally ask ourselves towards the end, when we take account of the value of a course that is approaching its end. What for most of is a purely subjective evaluation a lot have been said and written, perhaps disproportionately much given the importance of such an undertaking for common mortals. We are not the ones, after all, who could judge our own success, and not many outsiders could do that. In fact, few are interested in those sorts of judgements and evaluations of their lives and those of the common folk they were associated with, during the lifetimes.

But I am reaching a point in time and in my writings where the issue of how good and ‘successful’ and ‘meaningful’ a life concerns and weighs on me, and begs for answers at least with reference to universal criteria and the metrics that society I belong to uses as norms. It is of my own exclusive concern; it is for the sole purpose of resting the consciousness: an a posteriori evaluation of existence has no particular importance, rather no importance outside of oneself. In any case, ‘the way of life’ we chose or guided to embark on, ‘success’ and ‘recognition’ are of existential concern. They are exclusively posited as existential queries from the individual to the individual. While questions of ‘success’ and ‘value’ and ‘worth’, along with the innate want for recognition (Camus wrote: ‘All consciousness is basically the desire to be recognised and proclaimed as such by other consciousnesses’) hover in our minds throughout existence, often torturously, as elements of the broader philosophical question of whether ‘the whole lot’ ha been worth the toil or the more prosaic: ‘What do I aim at? What do I want to achieve? What have I have achieved?’ Death wipes off those question marks, along with the occasional timid, certainly unsatisfactory, and sometimes uncomfortable answers we gave on occasions to ourselves; which, by concluding the vicious cycles of brooding about ‘success’ and ‘achievement’, ultimately, the search for and, maybe, the revelation of a ‘meaning’, makes me wonder whether there is any point of positing such questions and vainly searching for ultimately inconsequential answers.

Yet, I ask this question to myself, hysteron-proteron and by the way in the narrative whilst discussing the dreams and ambitions of a now distant youth, being now at a stage of life devoid of major aims and ambitions for a rapidly shrinking future. Young people, however, as I wrote above, with a few exceptions, set and nurture ambitions, grandiose or modest, along with an ambiguous want of a better life with future prospects, with the ambitions and aims of previous generations, of the grandparents and parents, of friends and colleagues, along with a given level of social advancement, as benchmarks. And their minds design an equally vague ‘success’, as again is guided by the norms of their milieu, and with respect to recognized, valued and distinguished in various domains of social activity.

It was Father who, in one of our recent discussions of ‘success’ in life, that a successful man is one who has achieved the goals and largely fulfilled the ambitions he set out (or others set out for him) when young. I could not agree. I considered such statement contradictory and arbitrary (another one of his unsubstantiated sweeping statements amongst many he used to utter from time to time), as it raises more questions than supposedly having tried to answer –as if such a question could be answered tentatively or answered at all. The world around us changes at a pace and in directions, impossible to imagine and project when we were young; ourselves in it, living and acting, are unconsciously carried away by the river of social and technological evolution. Growing up in this fast-moving world requires effort to grasp these changes along the way and adapt accordingly. Adaptability is clearly a condition of basic survival, let alone of ‘success’, prosperity and distinction. In my case, family and especially the constrained and rather insular environments of Greek society, that is, the circles in which I grew up and with which I interacted, created and established a system of norms and institutions, pointing to relatively rigid goals from an early age, against the back drop of the conservative social reality of my place and time. The establishment of a system of goals and ambitions for young people can again be attributed, as written, to its inherently competitive nature of a class society, even if, in the case of Greece, is somehow distorted when compared with more advanced economies. Such competition encompasses most aspects of social activity; and the more developed a capitalist society is, the more intense it appears, and the higher the demands it places on the individual, as I found out later in life. This, however, opens another topic of discussion.

Perhaps, then, to survive and stay afloat and advance in the journey of life, to manage and close its various chapters, as pointed out by our established social norms, the time and geography, that is chapters in education, love, family, work, to accumulate knowledge and experience, without touching peaks of the material wealth and fame – the reach of a few, is an achievement of a kind in this brutal human arena. And concluding all those chapters, without paying much heed to the richness of the content, can be considered as an accomplishment per se and provide, when reminiscing about them, a satisfactory answer to the call of conscience about the meaning of life towards the end, of how ‘good’ or ‘successful’ or ‘worthwhile’ that life has been.

13 - The Little Daydreams that Died Young

 With the restless energy and vigour of youth, teenagers, those daring divers into the depths of unexplored seas, nurture primitive ambitions. They daydream, with imagination as the main tool, despite and beyond the limited range of experiences and limited knowledge of a young life. They project an apparently limitless future into their minds from innumerable different perspectives and points of view, they extrapolate into a web of myriads of possibilities, contemplate their eventualities. A few of them they reject before replacing them with others, to some they give primacy, at least temporarily. In short, they create an imaginary journey into the open future horizons and draw the paths they intend to follow, with however scarce consideration on the necessary means to conquer that future. And this, while they collect along the way a diversity of mundane or sensuous and colourful experiences through their daily association with people and things: simply by moving and acting within their world and environments, by thinking, feeling and caring; as movement in the world and concerns, desires and feelings are the fundamental components of human existence.

This multitude of desires and dreams spinning in adolescent minds, and lie ahead for them to grasp in a seemingly endless future within a vast and inexhaustible world of opportunities in front of them, change with time, often daily. Priorities are upgraded or downgraded, cancelled or revised, depending on ever changing circumstances. The stream of life after the first crossroads enters a groove, before it flows into the river of life. And a present life, one we call a mature person eventually experiences, might be in partial or complete mismatch against the dreams and ambitions of his early life. That is the most likely outcome. Even a partial realization of the dreams of youth hardly depends on the vitality of imagination and associations of early years, those generally dormant spiritual powers, which rekindle fires in the soul and animates conversations between young people about their ambitions and future plans; nor does it hinge only on the reserves of will which each one possesses and directs towards the one or the other goal.  Myriads of other factors, which may stem directly from the individual within or be influenced by events occurring in our family circle or some other part of the world and we are not necessarily conscious of, mark and affect the course of life and existence. After all, our dreams and imagination are projections into the mind of the external material world, its forms and models that the intellect has created and processes and extends. And it reshapes them with knowledge and thinking and newly created ideas, the mind forms along the way and records and deposits in the registers of memory and makes up our conscience.

Then, there were times when, I, the ‘immature teenager’, was dreaming the day world and future would open up before me with their limitless spatiotemporal horizons: the world in its multitude of people, nature in its infinity and grandeur, death and the end of existence not yet conceived of. I was surrounded by many books, hundreds of books, scattered on shelves and cabinets of the three bookcases and shelves in our apartment of Deligiorgi Street, and my mind, despite the occasional pretence to the contrary (usually due to an innate selfishness and pride that inflicts most) was an open and hospitable space to nurture fleeting daily stimuli and influences from family, friends, school teachers, inevitably newspapers, images from films and television, but always the books, which ever since became an integral sine qua non of life. All these stimuli, even if and when I resisted them or they penetrated me subconsciously or imperceptibly, with thinking deliberately or unintentionally drawn to focus elsewhere, they always found their way into the subconscious and conscious banks of memory: images and readings along with the plentiful spare time afforded in the tired and silent, but sweet hot summer afternoons of childhood and adolescence when family and the neighbour were immersed in their Mediterranean siesta. I, in the solitude of my little room and stacks of books at arm’s length, with thoughts and an imagination venturing far away, outside the four walls, with the company of real and fictitious characters.

I was healthy, well-fed and -bred by Mother and grandma downstairs, physically capable to compete above a minimum level in the children's team play we set up in yards, fields, streets, at school, the sandlots -the few open spaces the city still offered at the time, although I was not athletic enough, as I realised later, to excel in sports in regional and national level. I had an above-average intelligence, as I was made to believe, whatever metrics could be used at the time to estimate what we call intelligence. It was the general consensus I overheard in family and friends’ conversation about me or discussions of Father with teachers. What I did not possess in abundance was quick wit and mental agility, gifts in children producing witticisms that raise eyebrows and smiles of praise and admiration amongst adults. But nimbleness and mental agility are not always compatible with the ability of deep and tenacious thinking and being analytical of complex problems and situations. Neither was I equipped with an obvious and exceptional inclinations in particular fields of knowledge or objects of human activity; if this inclination had been latent, it would not have been spotted and recognized in time by mentors, that is, parents as the Greek public school always exercises egalitarian and levelling-down tendencies; nor a specific aptitude and talent was detected, in arts or sports for instance, that could be cultivated and realised to its fullest and flourish. Genius, in a word, I not and I could not be possibly claimed to be. Comments from parents and friends in conversations about bringing up their children that caught my ears, one word, simple, dry, and rather meaningless characterized my intellectual potential: ‘positive.’ This characterisation, I understood then, placed me on a different, a somehow lower scale from the class of ‘bright minds’, those with extraordinary intelligence and talents, who, according to the opinion of my proud parents, seconded by family friends, characterized Brother. Yet, it was at least consoling and reassuring that I was standing just above the average intellectual abilities of my peers. In short, I was no more than what the British would describe as an all-rounder.

Therefore, on the basis of this knowledge and a limited degree of self-awareness, I nurtured several ambitions early in life, from daydreams and various associations and mental journeys and extrapolations, and I set a few short- and long-term goals, realizable and achievable at some stage of existence- from as far as I could understand life then. Many of those ambitions were enhanced or quashed, based on ever changing life circumstances, impediments, zeal and tenacity, personal successes and achievements along the way, or external interference -predominantly family, in those early stages. Then again, of course, there was no time pressure or strict timetables for their realization. The end of the road was still invisible; existence on the world and the success in life was widely talked about amongst adults, seemed to me a slow, apparently endless process.

During the early childhood years, when friendly or vicious rivalry was ingrained in our games with friends (in football, basketball, athletics, and elsewhere), the star players and athletes we watched playing or competing in stadia or the portraits of football starts on the cards we exchanged (where wrinkled stern faces stared deep into the camera with toughness and determination and arms folded and rested on muscular torsos), all those reflections of fame and success naturally inspired our first dreams and ambitions -as childish as they might have been: playing and winning under the watchful gaze of thousands of spectators focused on us and our every move, every display of skill, in the expectation of scoring a goal or a basket that would trigger an outbursts of applause and cheers. As children our view point was too narrow to observe what was happening in the wider spheres of social life. Discussions of adults about economy and politics, the arts and science, or, worse, their jobs, we found tedious and left us indifferent.

I did not possess exceptional physical attributes (I was a skinny teenager with distinct, protruding and countable pectoral vertebrae, and slightly below average stature) but the occasional praise and applause from schoolmates, when I scored a goal or basket, made me delusional of some skills, even an inherent talent in the sports I enjoyed playing. I had a good sense of the ball, some insight in my passing, I could use body feints to dribble past opponents; I could ‘read’ the space and movement of teammates around me; I had a good perception of team tactics. Solo long practicing session improved my technique and skills in shooting and scoring from a distance in basketball or my passing in football by kicking the ball against a wall. The body would sooner or later mature and I would become stronger and more athletic with an enviable physique, so I believed. And was measuring my height and stretching my muscles in front of a mirror. Soon, however, ambitions of a career in team sports were quashed by the brutal reality. On one hand, I soon came to realise that without dedicating a disproportionately large amount of spare time outside school in training in, even with such high levels of dedication, I would hardly exceed the performances expected from an average amateur. Playing the recreational match in the field or a park, in the schoolyard or the sole and usually crowded sports centre of our city on weekends or during school holidays, would not warrant much progress. On the other hand, my parents promptly and persistently discouraged, before eventually outright blocking any initiatives and attempts to dedicate myself with zeal on a sport, as that would distract me from loftier educational aims in science or engineering. Perhaps, they had a valid point, despite my disappointment.

Impossible to forget were the soliloquys and scoldings of Father and the acquiescent and condescending silence of Mother listening from a corner (which I saw as disingenuous and insidious, even hypocritical and contradictory against the proclamations of love and sympathy, and angered me as much as Father's yelling) after they learned of our intention, with my friend Kostakis, to join and train with the junior YMCA basketball team more than once a week -after we had officially registered with the club, without their knowledge. Our frequent visits to the Palais des Sports to watch the Aris Salonica team (which featured a pantheon of local and national stars, like Papageorgiou, Ioannidis and Alexandris at that time, and later Galis and Giannakis of international calibre) on Saturday nights, before watching football on Sunday afternoons at Harilaou stadium, urged us to try our luck and skills on the basketball court -at least. The doors of a career in football were clearly shut. A certain school boy, Papaoikonomou, by far the most talented player in our primary school, the one who unforgettably in one of our makeshift matches with a rubber ball in our praised my skills, was an object of admiration and envy, when we watched him playing on the Harilaou stadium pitch, in the matches of under-15’s that sometimes preceded the main game of the senior league team. In any case, football, despite the attraction it exerted as a spectacle to Father, as well as grandpa during his lifetime, was subconsciously seen by many in our social circle as a sport for the uneducated and vulgar lower classes devoid of intellect, that is, of people belonging to social strata considered inferior or alien to ours. Basketball, for its part, seemed to our dreamy and deluded minds to be somewhat more accessible and agreeable sport, and a rather nobler way out of the tedious school routine -perhaps, a crack in the door for a partial fulfilment of our naïve child ambitions. It was considered more ‘civilized’ and ‘unspoilt’ than football and the foul-mouthed and rough rascals of the majority who played it. The fat coach of the YMCA team admitted us rather reluctantly, as our physique and relatively short stature at a first glance at least would not take us far in this sport, even for the standards of the lowly amateur divisions in which the YMCA teams were competing. How and by whom those delusions were fed back then, even if it was for a low-profile career in basketball, is still questionable, but clearly childhood naivety and the omnipresent need for one’s acknowledgment by peer groups played their roles.

In our first session with the club, the fat coach made us train with the second or, perhaps, third-tier group and, after some brief instructions and semi-sarcastic remarks, he left us to focus his attention on the first team. Kostakis woke up soon to a harsh to our ambitions reality and did not come back to the club for a second time. I had another warm-up session in that indoor court, with the pleasant echoes from the bounces of the ball on the parquet floor, the whirr from the net of the hoop when a basket of was scored, the whoops and hollers of the players to each other, the yelling of instructions by the coach. I scored a single basket in the friendly game after the warm-up routines, and then I abandoned my venture altogether disillusioned. Father’s scolding had already put me off, but no more than Kostakis’ dropping-out, but both made valid points.

Middle-class parents and the unyielding and sometimes compulsive determination into nurturing their children to preconceived models and notions of success in life, became the main contributors into forcing me to curtail joyful activities, suppress pertinent ambitions, and quash my dreams of success in the arenas of sports. Such pursuits and outlets, like football and basketball games with schoolmates, were gradually restricted into the margins; to a few hours a week in low-profile activities in the popular team sports I cherished as a child. With the encouragement and urging of my parents, I began substituting intellectual activities -so to speak, complementary to the demands of school and the merciless succession of exams, for the far more enjoyable football and basketball playtime. The necessary preparations for exams and schoolwork, non-creative and sterile and unexciting as they were, would be for few years in the core of my adolescent life. To this end, the family environment, Father primarily with a more open-minded approach, and Mother, with her miserably and often irritating pedantic attitude, would furnish anything that would potentially maximise performance and grades in those exams, which, for my unfortunate generation, occurred on an annual basis. Of course, I had my little room for privacy and undisturbed peace, whenever I needed it, whilst little Brother was generally prohibited from entering it, and that was regardless of whether I ended up using this private time for the sake of studying for my exams and grades or doing in secrecy some more gratifying things. They even entrusted me with a key to the door of the room, which I used regularly, on one hand to prevent annoying intrusions from Brother, on the pretext always that they would divert my dedication and distract my concentration, but also discourage indiscreet and unwanted inspections (‘What this boy might be doing for hours in there?’) and random inspections behind closed doors and shutter. As I grew older, I became more and more furtive and secretive about what I was actually doing in that little room and even more about was going in my mind: I developed and accustomed to prominent caginess as far as personal matters and thoughts were concerned, mainly based on a growing fear of parents' (Father’s in particular) reactions to unapproved actions and initiatives.

The oak desk the small room of our old street apartment was replaced by an imposing and of managerial specifications walnut desk, with a thick glass slab for desktop, as soon as we moved to our new apartment in the Harilaou district. The tall old bookcase, built by that clumsy carpenter Traitsis, covered one of my new room walls. It was soon overflowed with books, which were numbered now in the thousands. Row of shelves up to the ceiling of the opposite wall were fitted by personal labour in the opposite, as well one wall in Brother’s small bedroom, and along with the bookcase in my parents' bedroom, accommodated the excessive volume of books. All sorts of books were featuring on these shelves: literary, political, philosophical, historical, which Father used to bring from his bookseller-cousin’s bookstore on a weekly basis to Mother's dismay and frustration. Those were amended by university and scientific textbooks I was allowed to buy freely from Thessaloniki’s bookshops.

Education and admission to the University was an über alles imperative, the holy grail of my existence; a non-negotiable precondition for future life, and that would henceforth shape my ambitions and ultimately the future. The rest of the teenage dreams were shelved before fading into obscurity. My landing to the reality of the small part of world I inhabited was taking place.

12 - The Great Earthquake

The great earthquake of 1978 which startled and awoke Thessalonians from their summer indolence, and the impressions from that evening and the days of unrest that followed remained indelible in the memory of all those who lived through the event and its aftermath. A fear, which for many exceeded hitherto limits and caused panic, from the unprecedented in their lifetimes event and the not insignificant probability of dying under the rubble of aging and untested building structures, can be classified as a natural human reaction regardless of the reserves of innate fearlessness and bravery each individual possessed. The instinct of self-preservation and survival is patently stronger than the sexual instinct, because the latter presupposes life and existence. And that is a trivial truism.

It was late in the warm evening of June 20, 1978. The clock was about to strike 11pm. The formality of the easy, as much as unnecessary, exams for graduation from 3-years of mandatory education in the Greek Gymnasium and admittance to the second tier of the high school system, were over. There were no concerns whatsoever about grades and the result of those interim exams. Schools had already closed for summer and soon my family would head to the regular holiday destination of the last years: the camping of Skotina. It would be my last holidays in that place, before the marathon of the arduous preparation for the national university entry exams began. A last period of carefreeness and respite that summer would be then! The much-discussed at school World Cup, despite Greece’s national team elimination from the tournament, as always have been the case in the past, was taking place in distant Argentina and was in full swing. Father and I were sitting at either end of our old green, art-deco sofa, and watching a match from the previous day on the main channel of our national broadcast corporation. Although pre-recorded, it attracted the undiminished interest of the ardent football fan in me. There was nothing much better to do in that warm late evening, anyway.

The first jolt was startling and intense -one of those shocks that double the heartbeat within seconds· as much as terrifying as the shaking of our surroundings and the roar from the foundations of the building and the bowels of the earth below. It lasted several seconds, about ten seconds as it was reported, but during such a phenomenon anxiety and fear skew the linear perception of time in proportion to their intensity and the impact on our emotional state: time is generally expanded.

Father's first reflexive move was to turn off the television set, stand before the bookcase shelf it was placed and put his arms around it front of the library shelf to prevent it from crashing to the floor. I admired his equanimity and courage. Did he not experience fear? Did he consider the TV set such a valuable commodity worth protecting it ahead of himself and his family?  As far as I was concerned, my instantaneous reaction might have been naïve, but as instinctive: I sprang from the sofa and went to stand the header of the living-room door frame, with my arms extended and hands against the jambs. I had read somewhere in the popular literature about protective measures in the event of an earthquake that door-frames offer minimal cover. Crouching under a table could offer a better defence against falling debris or indeed the ceiling, but the nearest one was in the kitchen. The shelfing unit with books and bric-a-brac used to divide the reception hall area from our ‘drawing room’ was shaking behind me violently back and forth just in tandem with the floor under our feet, the walls, the earth. A couple of vases fell and smashed despite Mother's commendable attempts to hold on to them. And then, there was that universal eerie silence, as much terrifying as the quake.

The shock from the tremor was succeeded by the not baseless fear that at any instant our apartment building and the tons of concrete above our heads would collapse before we could manage a swift escape through the staircase. But, after the initial shock, traces of rational thinking emerged, albeit still guided by human instincts: of self-preservation and survival. A dark fear of similar magnitude I was seized by, when with heart-to-mouth, along with other block occupants, I cautiously descended the stairs from the top floors, was illuminated by glimmers of hope. In seconds we would be standing somewhere on solid ground, far from the menace of tall buildings around us, those plastered beasts of concrete that sprang out in the neighbourhood. As it happened, the nearest safe ground was the sand plot on the other side of the stream, where as children we used to play football. Other families from our and neighbouring streets had already assembled there. Most were acquainted with each other and talking in serious tones and pseudoscientific terms about the unprecedented natural phenomenon. A few neighbours headed to more distant open spaces and the few remaining vacant lands of the city. The more privileged or cautious ones headed to the parks by the city’s seafront.

Father brought the car from Deligiorgi Street where it was likely stationed perilously under someone’s balcony, and parked it under the crooked willow by stream so that I and Mother can sleep. Himself, he took Brother and returned back to the flat, fearless and brave, with the arrogant demeanour of a scientist, someone aware of the risks and consequences of such natural phenomena and one who had faith in the practices and conduct of Greece’s civil-engineers and contractors who designed and built those apartments blocks. Physics, Statics, Mechanics, Strength of Materials, etc… he knew better than the ordinary folk chattering about the earthquake and its impact on the concrete structures around us. His courage and bravery impressed me, again. On the other hand, his sleep, in nights and afternoons, would never have been negotiable and no event, even an earthquake of a magnitude never experienced in our lifetimes, would deter him from missing it. Mother and I tried to squeeze in the uncomfortable interior of the small FIAT to get some sleep on its seats. In the wee hours before dawn, with our cramped bodies tossed and turned uncomfortably in search for some vital sleep, we picked the one sheet we brought from upstairs as a cover, and ascended to the warmth and comfort of our beds. There had been no signs that ‘Enceladus’ would strike again. An aftershock in the morning woke me up in terror, but sleep was irresistibly sweet to relinquish the comfort of the bed. In the fascinating limbo of a half-asleep state, my mind was still alert in anticipation of another tremor.

Next day we heard in the news that an old apartment building by Hippodrome Square, close to the city centre, collapsed and many of its occupants tragically died, crumbled under the rubble of its eight-floors. Professor Papazachos, of the city’s university, became an instant celebrity, but he divided the public opinion of Thessalonians. A large percentage of them, who mainly comprised mainly the broader uneducated or semi-educated strata of the city, pointed a figure at him, at the ‘fool’ or ‘idiot’, who, despite the warnings of pre-earthquake activity, he appeared on the media reassuring people that an imminent major earthquake was highly unlikely. But did he say ‘probably’ or ‘unlikely’ or ‘with certainty’? I don't remember, and it doesn’t matter. How could a scientist be blamed, the child’s mind wondered, when any statement regarding the probability of such an event happening lacks practical significance? It would be even incomprehensible by the common folk, whilst a supposedly seismological authority even alluding to the possibility of a major earthquake would have serious consequences in the life of the city -psychological and political, and it might have caused unrest and even panic. The few faithful to science, like patients who expect a cure or, at least, a substantiated opinion from doctors, hung daily on the lips of Professor Papazachos and the other seismologists who were paraded in TV studios: as to what may or may not follow, as to what we should expect in the post-earthquake period.

An expert among them, with the assurance of an authority in the field stated that within the next thirty years an earthquake of the same or greater magnitude would occur in the Thessaloniki region. I was impressed by his weighty statement at that time, although on what grounds he could make such a remarkable statistical estimation not too many questioned. Life only for a few city inhabitants did change materially in the months and years that followed· for most it carried on as before. The seismologist’s ominous prediction was forgotten, and so did the traumatic night of the great earthquake. In the summer months of 1978, however, the city was deserted to an unprecedented degree by many of its inhabitants, who fled to the countryside and villages and towns of their ancestors and origin· the wealthiest to seaside resorts for a long summer holiday.

Seismology in the years that followed would raise its hands, as far as reliable predictions of earthquakes was concerned· it surrendered, to speak, to the randomness of the frequency and intensity of the potentially devastating natural phenomenon, and devoted itself to observe and collect and analyse the data from its observations. Somehow, in Greece, professors and experts were seemingly under some form of pressure to demonstrate the scientificity of their judgement and shine in front of an expectant public every time Nature trips us up -and, perhaps, in chasing national stardom. Temporary hopes from patents for supposedly reliable earthquake prediction, such as the much-heralded BAN, at the forefront of scientific news and national media for years in Greece, did not convince the broader scientific community and were quashed· the technique was abandoned as unworkable or inapplicable or unreliable. Thessaloniki, nearly half a century on, has been spared by another major earthquake that its likely occurrence was predicted within thirty years from the first one -in that unforgettable statement by one of the experts of the time.

I would spend the first year of Lyceum in the more modern building of the ‘Euclidean Technical College’, in three-shift crowded classes due to limited room space, but this made me and many others happy: the facilities were better and it was closer to home. The building of our old, historic High School, sustained structural damage and deemed unsuitable to house our classes until its reconstruction, which in Greece’s paces would take many years. Our apartment building, more than decade old when earthquake struck, withstood the impact apparently unscathed. The builder proved conscientious and Father was vindicated for the faith he inexplicably harboured for builders, in general. He was duly praised by family and the rest of the occupants of our block. A few days after the earthquake, a civil-engineer carried out an inspection and stuck a yellow sticker on our front door, signifying minor damage, capillary cracks in the plasters, nothing to worry about. The concrete structure survived the impact of the horrendous tremor.

Two years later after the earthquake we left our apartment on the second floor for a more modern block, built by a most trustworthy contractor and family friend. The old one, more than sixty years after its construction, and nearly fifty years after the great earthquake, still stands; a sorrow, ugly and fading block overlooking the small alley. Its gloomy sunless floors are still occupied by human souls, most of whom did not experience the great earthquake that shook the city. The fatal building of the Hippodrome Square, the only block of apartments in Thessaloniki that was raised to the ground not by a demolition bulldozer but by an earthquake, was replaced by another on the same plot of land, along with a monument to commemorate the perished occupants. The longevity of the tall concrete structures, architectural trademarks of Thessaloniki and major Greek cities, after relentless post-war construction, does not cease to amaze. The old city's skyline will never change.   

11 - The Sudden Death of God

 God, along with my faith to the dogmas of the Greek Orthodox Church, the official body of the Christian religion for proselytising and catechising on the gospels in the country I grew up, I rejected without much deliberation and well before I acquainted myself with the works of Marx, Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, et al.  The renunciation of God and religion was a relatively simple logical step taken easily and spontaneously in the first phase of adolescence.

Venial sins of childhood, adult vices, atrocities by one people or state to another, seemed to be occurring unnoticeably and unpunished by that invisible god we were indoctrinated in his existence from birth. He was clearly a weak and impotent observer, whether we prayed and asked for forgiveness for ourselves or intercession for others or not. I was hearing about wars and disasters, deaths of as innocent as a young child can be, of the ‘virtuous’ and ‘sinners’ alike regardless of faith, in the same cauldrons of history and life. Injustice, misery, poverty, death existed and appeared in each direction we turned our heads and senses. Grim spectacles of peoples struggle for dear life that moved me as a child and sometimes made me cry. God’s hand and intervention to correct the wrongs and fix this world were nowhere to be seen. Was it, perhaps, because God Himself created ex nihilis this crooked world ‘in His image and likeness’, as we were told? That much was obvious; real and indisputable for a child who was sensing and feeling the world and begun to think rationally.

After all, despite my spiritual immaturity, it need not much thinking before reaching the conclusion that even if there was a being which created our world, surely this being is not equipped with the qualities my church at least had attributed to it: of the omnipotent, the all-good and merciful, the omniscient being. The grandeur of nature and the universe, its phenomena puzzling and often beyond our powers to explain, the complexity and reach of the human brain and its functions perplexing, the inconceivability of human consciousness and how it mysteriously emerges from within, all of those were there to awe and inspire and motivate us to search deeper for better understanding. Decades later, I would stand with the same awe and bewilderment in the face of phenomena that far exceeded my grasp, the hitherto knowledge still insufficient. In spite of the limited understanding of much of the world surrounding us, contradictions and logical fallacies surrounding theology, the philology about the existence of God and the creation of nature and man, the frivolous bypassing and disregard by the agents of religion of attempts for rational and scientific explanation of the seemingly inexplicable, the discarding and excommunication of scientific approaches that contradicted the religious dogmas, seemed incompatible with the human being, its conscience and existence, my existence, and would have nullified its purpose on this earth. Religion was becoming a burden that had to be bypassed, at least for the sake of progress and consummation of a unique life.

I ceased expecting punishment from the hand of God for those who blasphemed, those who wronged, or even those who committed blatant evil acts (no matter what the moral thresholds of our society were, regardless of the period and geography we live). Against evil by all accounts acts nothing more than resistance, rebellion and retribution from the people themselves and their societies should be expected, in this very world and this very life.

One night, I stopped praying and crossing myself, as I used to do before going to sleep until the last grades of elementary school. The fears of God and divine punishment and from the loss of eternal life in heaven disappeared overnight. God’s spirit that (we were told) would be revealed from his saints’ icons and vulgar adornment of the modern Orthodox churches, through incomprehensible Byzantinisms, nonsensical parables and vacuous hymns, and the sermons of theologians at school, were lost behind the noise of too many words, too many incoherent phrases in ungainly ceremonies, and the myths of incredulous miracles. In short, religion turned into a great fairy tale and made no more sense to me. On the other hand, the high moral ground, the ‘Good’ from an ambiguous love and the humility of Christianity as proclaimed by the Church, was not only in blatant contradiction with the practice of many of its agents (relatively insignificant in a broader context, since priests are endowed by the same ‘human nature’,  Heidegger's Dasein, as any layman mortal), but also in daily confrontation with reality and every attempt to rationally justify it –at least that part of reality that concerned me and which I was experiencing as I was growing up. I came to believe that Christian love and humility were of no practical use and not applicable to our daily lives.

Fear of death is perhaps the main reason that historically brought (and still does) us mortals under the wings of a religion and its promises of future life. The spectre of death came and went fleetingly and superficially in my teenage thoughts; it still stood far away in a distant future. The afterlife, the paradise a sinless soul would conquer and enjoy in an eternal, as my religion promised based on an arbitrarily drafted protocol for as long as I kept faith and remained devout, the preparation for the ominous and imminent Second Coming (where each one of us would take a stand and judged by God), in short, the main attractions and baits of my religion (and most religions for that matter), although they troubled me for a short period as a child, in the end, despite scanty concerns about the void that would follow a finite and short life, they looked to me like a foolish bet on the present and given life and at its expense, an irksome obstruction to joy and freedom. At best, they are hypotheses de facto unprovable and which one either blindly accepts or bravely rejects.

And the mind was wondering how the particular religion into which I was baptized, grew up and was nurtured with, one of several in our world, how this religion is concerned with those ‘innocent and ignorant’, who lived and died before the Christian God was revealed to humanity in one of its historical junctions, with people of other geographies and faiths on the planet. There was no clear answer, nor, of course, any proof of after life and heaven and the like. Could then be that promise, one granted under arbitrarily predetermined ad hoc conditions, was at the end an old ruse serving the ruling classes and cliques of interests and, after all, we are in this world on our own?

The medieval dogmas recited incessantly by theologians and priests until the very end of high school, I did reject outright by the end of year one. Fairy tales and stories of the Old and New Testaments, tirelessly analysed by our teacher of ‘Religious Affairs’ for the uncanny hidden symbolisms, so that they could be assimilated by ‘common sense’ and a mind that insists on rationalising, the constant repetition in classes, liturgies, religious celebrations, occupied a place in memory that could otherwise be employed in a more useful and productive manner. I consider my early scepticism towards everything theological, and the eventual rejection of my religion and its dogmas, as a first personal revolt of the spirit and mind against the mainstream. Abandoning God and adopting atheism was a credence hidden from teachers and family until the end of school. Both grandmas retained their faith unshakably; the church comforting to them as they neared the end of their lives. I did not criticize them, neither did I want to tarnish a faith that kept a hope that there might be something somewhere where their souls would rest after death.

Yielding under the pressure of future post-school ambitions, I had to demonstrate, even in sterile subjects such as religion, a rudimentary conscientiousness, even if I feigned, even if I was coerced – for the sake of ‘showing some interest’ and the grades, as Mother urged, at the expense of a temporary, although always desirable and welcome personal freedom from the shackles of a tedium. The grades in those courses, as well as several inconsequential others taught at school, were a small perhaps factors, but ‘it would count’, as Mother, constantly stressed out about my future, repeatedly reminded me. It would be a stone, no matter how little, for building a ‘better’ future, albeit still vague and foggy. The prayer to Holy Father God in morning school assemblies, which I often picked by the headteacher to recite, the mandatory attendance of masses in church on Sundays in school years and the great feasts of Orthodoxy, the arduous memorising of nonsensical and incomprehensible religious texts, continued throughout my teenage years. I had to compromise, temporarily. My rebellion against the divine and the ultimate rejection of God manifested itself conspicuously after the end of school, in the small revolutions of our student days, in the denial of everything divine and supernatural through a stubborn life-long atheism. God will never gain me back.