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.
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