Yasu Ellada: pros osous symeteixan sta "ethnika" t
....kai oxi mono.
EDIT: ACHTUNG: TWRA PROSEKSA OTI I TELEfTAIA LEKSI TOY THREAD EPREPE NA EINAI "THREADS" ANTI GIA SKETO "T".
Yasu Ellada
10/06/04
Xenophon was in midair, both literally and metaphorically. He was in the middle of his transatlantic trip as well as his train of thought; the first had started from Greece, the latter from his early childhood and went on to further images of his life in random chronological order. He had thought about the time when he was around eight years old sitting at the backseat of a car with his parents at the front seats. They were discussing about the Macedonian Issue.
"These bloody impostors, they want their land to be called Macedonia," said his mother.
"What's wrong with that?" asked his father?
"Are you SERIOUS?" his mother shouted.
And so, an epic quarrel started, a quarrel that would reach its crescendo almost ten minutes later with his mother accusing his father as "damn anti-Greek" and his father in turn calling her "stupid and full of complexes". The crescendo covered the sounds of the radio, but Xenophon could not remember what was on it.
He could recall another song though; it was Yannis Parios' "Hello/Hail Greece" ("Yasu Ellada"). It was written to celebrate the National Greek football team's entry in the Mundial of 1992. He remembered a verse from the hymn's chorus: "Yasu Ellada, which people (as in folk/nation) did not envy your wonders?" He remembered how proud he felt to be Greek, to be hailing from the country that “spread the lights of civilization throughout the world, and was looking forward for the team's success - he was sure of it. He remembered the first game, Greece vs. Argentina (or vice versa). He remembered the Greek team's captain, Saravakos (proclaimed as perhaps the best active football player in Greece), exchanging flags with Maradonna and shaking hands with him. The look on Saravakos' face was a look of awe.
Xenophon remembered Greece's defeat by four-nil. Maradonna, being on the decline of his career, had, of course, scored a goal. Xenophon could not remember the other two teams Greece played against, but he remembered the results: four-nil and two-nil. Greece ended up last in the tournament, having scored no goals, followed by Saudi Arabia - “those goddamn infidel barbarians”. What a letdown. What a let down that was, indeed. Parios' song lost its value, its meaning and its appeal on Xenophon. And so did Greece, eventually.
But he was now humming the song's tune as the stewardess addressed him.
"Yes, I could use something to clear my throat and sing a song," he replied.
"Greek coffee, perhaps?"
"HA!"
The young woman looked at him with a puzzled look, turned, and strolled her mini-bar kart, and her self, away from him towards the airplane's kitchen.
"What seems to be the problem?" asked an older stewardess who seemed to be the highest in command.
"Coffee."
"Coffee?"
"Yes, coffee," Xeno replied.
"But why, here in Parthenon Airlines we have got the finest selection of..."
"Greek coffee."
"Greek coffee?"
"Yes," Xeno nodded yet again, "Greek coffee".
"Do you have a problem with Greek coffee in general or is it that you don't like Parthenon's Greek coffee?"
"It's just that Greek Coffee's parent were actually from Turkey and the infant got lost in birth. A wholly sad story, I must admit. Trully. But let us forget about the past and cheer up, shall we? I'd appreciate a cold bottle of Mythos and your phone number," Xeno said as he wore his best smile.
The stewardess was looking frown.
"From Turkey??!!" she asked.
"From Turkey, yes," came Xeno's reply.
She left without waiting for an answer, or serving him or even strolling her mini-bar kart away, cursing behind her teeth, behind her lips.
Xeno had lied to her; he could not forget the Past so he thought about it.
"What is the past?" asked Epaminondas.
"The past is a joke, plus it's crap," retorted Nikandros.
Those two guys were not actual guys, but the two hemispheres of Xeno's brain; Epaminondas and Nikandros is just how he called them.
"And why is that?" Epaminondas wanted to know.
"Duh, cause it's a prison."
"And why is that, if I may ask?"
"Duuuh, be-cause it is binding!" Plus, it makes the present seem to last forever and if that's not a crappy joke then I dunno what is."
The present. It comes after the past and before the future. The land of opportunity, the land of strife. The scepter of the elite, the whip of the underprivileged. The paper on which the blueprints of the future are being carved, the paper on which past is being re-inked. Heritage, customs, ancestry, pride, love, self-determination, reality, hate.
Present.
"I gotta admit it though Epi, if it weren't for you dad would have never given us the twenty grand in order to study in the US," Nikandros praised his friend.
"Logic has it place and time my friend," Epaminondas said and the airplane landed a few minutes later.
It landed on Latin America. Specifically, it landed on a Latin American state. It was a state that had suffered dictatorships, political uprisings, counter coup d'etats, counter-counter liberation and civil wars and had also been exploited by the USA during the entire phase with the counter thingies and all. Pretty easy to guess which one was it, yes?
Does Latin America exist anywhere else except in the confines of the capitulary of Copa America? Xeno asked himself cursorily.
"Yes."
"No!"
That was Epaminondas and Nikandros, respectively.
The truth is that what Xeno had told his parents was a lie. He told them that he would study international relations in the US. He even showed them a list in which he had calculated all the costs for university fees, accommodation and plane tickets. His list featured seven universities in four states. So, the truth, since he landed on Latin America and not Los Angeles, was that he lied to his parents. But, the truth is that he hadn't fully lied to them; he was going to study international relations, just not in the States. If the cozenage would unfold he would tax his parents for having mistaken the two LAs.
So, the truth is...
The truth is...
"Truth is..."
"No! Truth is..."
Oh, shut it. I don't want to get into...
"Truth is a LIE!" exclaimed Nikandros.
"A year went baaa... ...and I kiss you goodbaaa..." Xeno was singing.
Nevertheless, it had indeed been a year since Xeno had arrived in Latin America. He had been working as a text translator for six months now. He had enough days of the week to study for his long distance courses that were taking place via the internet. He even organized small trips to neighboring states whose past was similar to the past of the state Xeno had established his base at. Those trips would last from two days to an entire week.
Xeno had been all this time trying to track Yurushi Love down. She was, as she proclaimed, "a university professor during the sixties and up to the mid seventies, then became an Academic Superhero - with a mask, and a cape and everything - during the eighties and after a decade's superheroic career (including public speeches at universities, public speeches on the street, speeches on National TV etc) she decided to travel the world.
She would post around thirty articles on her website, on a yearly basis. These articles could start from Honolulu and end up to Sarajevo via Atlantis; they were that rich in content. Every article of hers was mesmerizing, enchanting, apocalyptic and hilarious. In each article she posted she would sign by her name and then add the country she was currently at: to make a long list short, she had traveled to at least half of the almost two hundred states of today.
But, for the past couple of years, she would shift between two Latin American states. She stayed six months in each country. And not only that, but she seemed to be posting 6/8 of her year's harvest during the first half of the year and the remaining 2/8 of her articles in the residual six months. That was all Xeno's discovery.
The mentioned 6/8 of her work was comprised by epistemological discussions on political phenomena and how they can be modeled and analyzed through various sexual positions. She had so far covered the entire Kama Sutra and was nowadays advancing towards the sexual positions existing abound amongst nature's creatures. Her latest article was On Nationalism and Rhinocerus Love-Making: The parallel paths. In it, like in all the other ones, she would take the reader to any corner of the human psyche and of the (known) cosmos, she would travel him from the dustier niche of literature to the farthest edges of ontological discourse while maintaining a characteristic sense of humor and a, sometimes distinct-sometimes vague, connection to the topic she was writing on. When the journey would end she would finish her article with this: "what I wrote is completely piffle and thanks for your time."
Her articles constituted an unparalleled attack to all expressions of the status quo, from the political stratum to Academia and so on and forth. She had been overwhelmingly famous - her works were being duplicated and distributed for free in major cultural events around the globe. She was more than a rock star with a low profile, with only her articles connecting her to the modern world.
And Xeno had been searching for her for an entire year. No luck. He had decided to call it quits and go become a monk. At the moment when this decision was taken, Yurushi Love decided to meet with Xeno. He shot him with a dart through a bamboo blowtube on his neck.
Xeno unhooked the fluffy dart from his neck. Its long tail was phosphorescent pink in color and reminded him of some dolls with punk hairdo he used to collect when he was a kid. He then dilapidated in a position horizontal to the ground and dozed off.
Five hours had passed and Xeno had started to come around. He had his feet tied up with a rope attached to a tree branch at its other end. Xeno had started to blink and an existential shock took him over. Why was he seeing everything upside down? Would he have to live forever like that? Why was his stomach roaring? And what was this primitive, masked (not to mention, inverted) figure doing staring at him?
He tried to open his eyes further but they started to burn him at where the two eyelashes are connected. He reached and felt his face with his hanging hands and noticed a thin layer of crust covering it. He then proceeded to smell his fingers but Yurushi Love saved him from the trouble of identifying the smell.
"It's saliva," Yurushi Love said, "saliva and puke."
She then went on to inform him that she had shot him with a dart containing a tranquilizer that could kill him if she hadn't left him suspended in the air in an upside-down position. In such a position his stomach could fight the venom by releasing itself from its contents or something like it.
"I gather you must be feeling a bit nauseated and tad hungry. So, tell me why you're looking for me."
Xeno tried to clear his throat. He had prepared immensely for this day. It's just that right now he couldn't figure what he had prepared to say. Was it perhaps... oh, yes, he wanted not to appear like the usual people that are looking for such cult-status persons like Yurushi Love and he wanted to look serious about his quest so he said, "I'm looking for you because I want you to teach me, but I'm not like the usual people that are looking for such cult-status persons like yourself and I must inform you that I'm highly serious about my quest."
Yurushi Love giggled.
Xeno waited.
"Do you remember that movie, Karate Kid?" asked Yurushi Love.
"Yes, I do."
"Wasn't Miyagi so ridiculous for a sensei?"
"He surely was."
"That's how you will be treated like."
Yurushi Love grinned and cut the rope with a knife.
She accepted him as her disciple and gave him a piece of cloth to clean his face. She then informed him that he would have to go through the initiation process the content of which will be omitted for the sake of Xeno's career, if he ever decides to join the Academia. Once that process begun, they started a discussion that would last fifteen hours approximately. That good of an initiation process it was. Xeno let Yurushi Love on his life and goals, told her all about his hatred for Greece and nationalism in general and how her last article had staggered him, how he had come to despise the corporate world and the West through his studies for a BA in advertising and so on.
Yurushi Love was impressed with how he maneuvered his parents and got to do what it was that he did. She could see a sparkle in his eyes.
"You must become a beacon, not a conflagration," she told him at a certain part. Then she told him that he was required to write one three-thousand words paper per week. Yurushi Love would give him the topic and he would have to write on it.
They spent the next fourteen hours talking about the climate, the nightsky and the rest of nature.
Luckily, Xeno was between his academic semesters, so he didn't have to quit classes - he just didn't enroll for the new semester, he wanted to invest all his energy studying for Yurushi Love's papers. The deal was to study for two years. He would be privileged with asking Yurushi Love a question each quarter of the year and at the last day of his studies she would offer him a revelatory monologue as an answer to his last question. All in all, the eight questions he asked until he graduated (yes, he did graduate) were the following:
1) Why are you giving me such kinds of topic for my papers?
2) Are you sure you've understood what I want to study and learn about?
3) Can you tell me about your past in your own words?
4) Do you think that politics is influenced by word cuisine?
5) Why do you drink coca-cola?
6) Why is stupidity so powerful?
7) Why is stupidity so powerful? Pt.2
Why have you stopped being a public figure?
Now lets see Yurushi Love's respective answers:
1) Yes, world cuisine is important in the study of IR.
2) Yes, you want to learn if and how the world works.
3) You know the highlights of my life. I started off as a compliant university professor. I was disappointed by the world. I started wearing my superhero uniform and give lectures and all that stuff. I enjoyed the publicity I got. I thought it was because of what I was saying, but it turned out that a large portion of my publicity was based on my anonymity gimmick.
4) That, and sex – and the lack of it.
5) It's the people that harm you, not liquids. And, I steal the bottles.
6) Because otherwise the world would be boring.
7) Because if it wasn't you wouldn't have met me.
“Well, alright, I get it now Ms Miyagi, or so I think,” Xeno proclaimed. “You grew up in a conservative family. As you were getting older you felt that you were perhaps different than the rest of the people. Let me make my point clear; many people think they're different, and perhaps everyone is different – in fact I'm pretty positive of this -, but I'm not talking about fingerprint uniqueness or anything that deals with potentiality. I'm talking about the invisible hand you were feeling, pushing you towards a certain direction and you didn't like it - you didn't like this certainty. You tried to evade the hand's thrust by trying to fit in the so-called 'real' world. You became an academic, but you were way too 'liberal' for your time, way too 'subversive'.”
Yurushi, who was standing up just like Xeno, straightened the folds of the tailleur she was wearing. Despite the fact that she was sixtyish she looked stunning and ethereal.
“I'm sure that your change of raiment is supposed to tell me something. I'm guessing that what you're wearing dates back to your teaching days. Nice choice, but I've got to admit that I prefer your jungle-like Jane look. Anyway, back to our story; you got fed up with the system, with the nonacceptance your ideas received by most of the people, academic or not, you dealt with.
So, you became a superhero. In quotation marks, of course. Or perhaps not? It was a rare case when an article of yours was published in the campus' newspaper and your written work was not even close to being as caustic and being perceived as 'extreme' as it is today. Nevertheless, a TV producer...”
“Timmy,” interrupted Yurushi Love.
“...Timmy, yes. Timmy got to somehow read one of your articles and a strong relationship, both mental and physical, between the two of you ensued. He was the one that invited you at that legendary talk show where your new, sparkling career set off. Surely, a big chunk of your success and popularity sprang out of your superhero gimmick and your tight uniform flattering your luscious body, but, all the same, you reached a tremendous amount of souls.
This said popularity brought you in another difficult position; although the conservatives had started to like you, the liberals and the progressivists, the side you were supposedly representing, started to dislike and attack you. You were the equivalent of a nowadays underground punk band with anti-system lyrics signing with a multinational label. They didn't pause to examine your case or your incentives, they instantly thought that you had sold out.”
“I guess I should draw paintings and burn them once they were finished, like Syd Barrett does,” was what Yurushi Love said.
“Yeah, that would have added some obscurity to your cult status, but, anyway, you were devastated. 'How can I change the world,' you must have thought, 'when even the ones who are supposed to be my intellectual peers oppose me?' It must have been around that time when you realized that intellectuality does not exist.”
“Plus, it's crap!”, Nikandros commented.
“And then your traces disappeared,” concluded Xeno.
“Wow, that's a remarkable work you've done there, nice summary of a thorough research of my life,” Yurushi Love said, “but did you find what you came here to find? I'm fairly sure that it was not my biography,” she asked, piercing his eyes with hers.
“Er...”
“Yes?”
“Well... as a matter of fact I did! I learnt how precious is to be an egoist!”
“Is that so?”
“Oh, yes it is! I wanted to know why people hated each other, why they used the symbols of a kinship, a king, a religion, a nation or whatever else to extol their specialness and persecute the 'outsiders'. I wanted to know why I hated them for it. I was trying to come up with a hypothetical model of what could replace the nation in man's desperate quest of trying to find someone to own him. Would the new owner be a coalition of states, a multinational corporation or perhaps a global social movement? I even hoped that man would stop wanting to be owned.”
“I see.”
“All the discussing on politics or on nationalism – the reason, or so I thought, that I wanted to come here -, all the knowledge a person can get, for example if nationalism has a founding moment in history, how it evolved, how did the Renaissance, Napoleon's wars and the German notion of the “folk” shaped it - all of that is meaningless if you are not an egoist, because, if you're not, then you can't know what you're doing. Man is a social animal alright and yadda yadda yay, but he doesn't know himself, he only knows where he belongs to and to whom he's against. In fact, he knows his supposed enemies more than he knows himself because he spends more time studying them than studying himself. 'Don't be selfish, help your neighbor, help your family, help your country,' we're constantly being told. But, who urges us to be ourselves? How can you help others if you can't help yourself? I guess that's what psychologists are here for, right? Right. Anyhoo, this whole thing is like a commercial of a bank that is looking to grant house loans to people. I had seen it in my country around the time I left to come here. In it, a married couple is relaxing at the balcony of their new, impressive, house and they discuss about philosophical issues. After a while of seemingly incoherent discussion the narrator says something along the lines of 'now that you've settled yourselves you've got all the time of the world for vaporings.'”
Yurushi Love burst in loud laughter. Xeno was a bit surprised but he carried on.
“I tried to find everything about you, that's true. And I found out that through your career you found yourself and that's when you came at peace with it and everything that surrounds you. As soon as that realization became obvious to me, I begun to find myself as well. I became so egoistic that I almost orgasmed. At the same time, I became a brother of everyone and everything. I know it sounds...”
“Hey, Xen...”
“I know, I know - it sounds paradoxical but no one can find a better word to describe...”
“No, there's a tarantula on your left shoulder.”
“...SHIT!”
The spider bit Xeno's carotid.
He woke up after a week's comatose slumber. Yurushi Love was there and he saw her looking at him. She had taken care of his poisoning, for the second time.
“Thanks for taking care of my poisoning, for the second time,” Xeno thanked her.
“Don't event mention it.” Yurushi Love smiled.
“I've got to get going in a day or two,” Xeno informed her.
“Sure,” agreed Yurushi Love, “right after the counter-initiation process is being completed.”
And so, they ate and they drank and they smoked and stuff and did what people do in counter-initiation processes.
Xeno was on the plane back to home. The country he was born in, that is. Once again, he was thinking while gazing out of the window.
“So, you think he's going to help people and shape tomorrow's face, Nikandros?”
“Yeah, if he manages to save himself first. Save him from his parents' wrath.”
Xeno smiled as the sun disappeared behind the skyline.
Originally Posted by Mitsmann
