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.