The continuation of the article
The years have flowed, they flow, sometimes like tears on the face or rain on the windowpane. I grew up and the centuries are still there at the base of Mount Dikti, growing with the chamomiles, blooming with the apple trees and the handkerchiefs and the sages and the thyme. The place smells of nostalgia. The teacher was right, the centuries neither grow nor age in the end. They haunt everywhere with their stories, you can even find them under the whitewash if you scratch a little and peel it off with your fingernail.
Through the fairy tales I wake up and a string of serpents and stars are Jordan on the summit, not to let the girl who guards the eight silences of love ascend, not before she weaves the golden rope, not before she swears on the first kiss and the full moon, before she catches up and ties to the last ray of sunshine the hairpins that will become rings. How beautiful everything is!
The teacher passionately completes all my stories. “I’m going crazy listening to you, I’m going crazy,” she tells me and then adds something of her own thought. She knows how to go beyond all those words that Aunt Doxa leaves in the middle to continue the lace she’s knitting. She also goes beyond what Aunt Chariklia stubbornly refuses to reach the end of the red thread of the fairy tale because she wants the ending to be mine. But also those half-hearted and short ones that the old ladies sell me in the afternoons when they sit with Grandma Garifalia and tell, tell, tell, not stories from the pile, but a pile of stories. She adds colors and songs and laughter and tears. That’s how she gives meaning to my imagination.
The eyes, one on the stars and the other on the abyss and then lowered the gaze full of dew leans to the ground. "Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow..." Her voice, inside me, sounds. I learned to illuminate the present with the lamp of tomorrow, just as she told me: "With the lamp of tomorrow shining in today, you illuminate what you want and what you feel and to hold your pencil tightly, to show trust in your hands and to write with your heart..." And something else, a wish "that love may find dreams and dwell in our days and nights, we with this dream call the moon and with the same we worship the sun".
My relationship with the teacher had an unexpected intimacy right from the start, another beauty, leaving me with a taste like a spoonful of sweet. Sweet quince with a cinnamon aroma. Yes, I felt that it was an inappropriate friendship due to our age difference, but deep down she was also a child. Like a child she laughed easily and like a child she cried just as easily. She holds my hand. I feel her touch cool and her caress velvety. This makes me proud. I boast. I dare and ask again with the same expression of wonder and eyes wide open behind the butterfly glasses, but in my imagination now. I want to listen to her and I succeed, when loneliness overflows some nights, those when the sky lowers and it rains.
"What is kindness, ma'am?"
"Our actions and only our actions, thoughts are not enough on their own, they light the way, lit candles."
"And innocence, ma'am?"
"A garment embroidered by kindness, the one we wear in the flesh so that the soul does not grow cold."
"And what does the sun do at night?"
"It steals the sparks that remain outside the closed eyelids of children so that the light can continue its journey."
"When will the time of love awaken, madam?"
"When no child will go hungry and the only war we will know will be the paper war."
"Dream war" I think to myself, I don't say it. But I imagine how nice it would be to throw colorful dreams at each other and have a dance and a confetti-filled mess until the time of love awakens.
The air of memory is filled with colorful little pieces of paper that swirl and dance before falling to the floor, or before being hidden and forgotten in the most unlikely places, even in the spider's web in the corner of the awful white screen of punishment that we all fear when we see Mr. Alcibiades, the school Principal.
The teacher allowed me to dream, perhaps she also taught me the art of dreaming with a plan. What she said marked passages and roads on the unwritten map of the mind and took me on a journey further, beyond the classroom and the schoolyard. And when I couldn't do it and cried, she wiped away my own tears with her clean handkerchief and told me that she was lucky because I gave them to her, those little tears, while she bought some others, I don't know which ones, and even "very expensive".
When the heartbeat becomes the march of life and the poppy declares its omnipresence, then life has one more demand... To remember, to remember everything clearly and not through muddy, murky waters. Better to remember through tears. Better.
They say that sometimes the souls who loved you knock on your door, always at night, as long as half a moon hangs in front of your window.
They say that when the wet earth trembles, it is the souls that dig into its shell, begging for a look, a smile and a tear...
You kneel on your grandmother's woven red shawl. You worship the memory, reverently. You are from that place where people honor the day of the Kneeler, the day when souls are closer to you than ever, maybe a breath from your neck and they wait for you to look into the glass of memory, now that you are no longer illiterate of love, now that you know... You feel their anguish in the rustling of the leaves and the silent flight of the butterfly. And the walnut leaves withered on the tombstone, an old custom, continue to leave their bitterness in the soil symbolically, like tears at partings, but you have kneaded the sweet bread for the new reunion, in this you believe, the great new reunion tomorrow in the light.
You rub a slice from the middle of the bread in your hands and scatter it like crumbs on the ground. Your eyes water, but you smile nonetheless. You spell out names. That's how it happens. And then you tilt the clay pitcher and pour the wine drop by drop. "May the souls partake," you say with the same emotion that your mother, your grandmother, the women of old used to say. You fill the cup, yours. You stretch your arms, raise it to the sky. "To the bottom," you wish. You bring it to your lips. You quench your thirst with wine. You kiss it with gratitude and refill it for your neighbor. He repeats the same thing. May everyone partake. May everyone quench their thirst. The circle dance begins. Rhythmic, quick steps, you step with your toes on this peel that resurrected you, may the earth hear, may the souls know us, may the sky protect us.
The doors you want open from hugs. I open hugs and windows. Spring is here loaded with poppies. At night the moon looks like a chandelier above my house in Corfu. The darkness began to smell of jasmine. Her figure, the teacher, somewhere there in the depths of the horizon sometimes leaves, sometimes comes, sometimes stands and waits for my mother, grandmother, grandfather.
I do what he advised me, I fold the best dreams in the shop window of the mind. Yes, that's how he taught me, but he never told me that sometimes a stray stone comes where we least expect it and breaks the glass of the shop window and then the foreign wind threatens, and takes the good dreams and seeks to scatter them far away on the edge of the world.
I open my arms and the window wide again. I wait for Ostria.
After years, some, by exercising memory, develop a more loving and more painful relationship with it. My humility also belongs to this minority, to those who believe that man's need is to understand, to interpret and ultimately to recognize and learn about himself first, starting from where he took his first steps, in order to perceive the essence of life and the beyond of human things before he becomes water and salt.
Dusk. Something from nature entered the memory tonight and the ruins bloomed again, a time when the old stones acquire touch and the words that have sinned begin to confess. The desolation of the landscape is an old habit.
Sometimes words become small, when they want to save thoughts, memories, dreams...
But when so much light fits inside a child's drawing, when in a verse you write you suddenly feel like you're hiding in the shadow of its shadow...
When the now becomes necessary and the truths of the soul are written, then you ask again as if you were a child.
"Is goodnight written in ink?"
"No, that's not enough."
"In a whisper perhaps?"
"And the world's hatred?"
"What if the rain brings it?"
"The soul awaits..."
Yes, you know that the soul is waiting for you to move forward, to go forward. Walking upright facing the light. The hand to the sun. You have no right to fall low, none. You who embroidered wings on your shoulders and taught you how from a handful of clay you were born, you can escape the crack of time and be free tomorrow...
I am fascinated by the game of memory, I love words. I wander around the schoolyard, in the rose garden, looking for her. The fence is blooming. The ivy is full of birds. Two doves coo happily beyond. The children run, run to catch the moment, the magic, the joy, the life. Sometimes they stumble on the gravel. She takes one step at a time, I hear her heels on the paving stones. She wears a blue dress with a small white bow on her chest. Her smile is unspeakably sweet, honey. Her carefree movement overflows with enthusiasm. She spells something. The birds get scared and fly away. I turn my head, open my arms, wait to hug her.
Suddenly, a cold wind blows from somewhere. Outside, oblivion blows, far away, but it blows. It's oblivion's fault.
"Forgetfulness is poison," said Grandma Garifallia. The trees shed their leaves, the nine-winged birds of thought run and hide. It's getting dark. I see my innocence scattering, disappearing. I remain pale for a while, motionless in front of the white glue and this invisible threat, oblivion. Fortunately, only for a while. Then I pick up the pen again, I stand up defiantly. Her black eyes tell me nothing. No, no, I won't please her. I let her, oblivion, pass by me but without touching me, without wrapping me in her veils.
The night spreads its black laces full of curiosity and promise over the grassy tiled roofs of the old town. The lanterns in Liston are all lit. The same in the upper square. The singers sing in Mouraya. In Solomos' house a candle lights the window. In these neighborhoods, old souls still live. They are the ones who sow words and miracles on the cobblestones.
"Come here, you who used to buy words...", the voice of Regina Leza, comes from further away, from Zakynthos.
Rain, the feminine principle of creation. You know, rain leads you, not where you will meet people of power, but on the contrary, where you stumble upon simplicity and wisdom, in narrow corners. The rustling of the soul mysteriously arrives first, before the footsteps here. Rain is a protest against oblivion.
Natin, Mrs. Antigone is walking in the rain, there, Natin in the people's garden. I see her umbrella. She must be looking for me.
Strangely calm, the heart continues to turn pages from the notebook of Zoe's early years. Memory is and will remain an impregnable castle.
The teacher goes up to the Gallery. I run to catch her up the stairs. I extend my hand without hesitation. With hers, the teacher smooths her black hair. Then she lets herself be excessively proud, dancing in the air above the Old Fortress…
"A sweet farewell to give /
adorned with white stone/
with a clear voice to embroider /
"a wish for you to endure"
No, it's not the teacher singing, no. It's Doxa Kagiouli, a voice full of rain.
And then... It rains slowly and gently inside me. The heart beats with gratitude. Old souls remember with images. It dawns.
I love the rain and Corfu because they allow me to travel. The East has risen for good. I catch up with the godmothers in the cantounia, in Kampiello, from window to window.
-What if I have distanced myself from matter and am seeking the spirit when the whisper of Ostria has stopped so that the eternal dance of rain can begin?
-You are doing well, well, soul of my soul, the beautiful Science.
-What if now is the call of the time of love and the return to the first essence of life becomes more necessary?
-You're doing well, my dear. Let's go, get some fresh air from the toilet, breathe, Siora Yolanda.
-And if I seek to sink into solitude somewhere, why can't I stand the bad taste around me?
-Nausicaa, my soul, Nausicaa, whatever you say, the beautiful Nausicaa.
-What if it's true that souls remember their old identity and become melancholy when they talk about love?
-Amiti, my joyful daughter, the beautiful Agiolina.
-What if I rein in my mind and control my thoughts so as not to betray my words?
-Affitivamente, the beautiful Philomila.
-What if freedom ultimately means listening to my heart, going where it takes me without a second thought, without having to?
-My eyes are full of tears, my eyes are full of tears, the beautiful Polymnia.
-What if I learned to dream with a flutter in my heart?
-I'm bursting to hear you, I'm bursting, the little Amaryllis.
-What if it's true that nostalgia has the power to take us on a journey into imagination beyond the falsity of reality with a ticket of a tear?
-My eyes are dripping, my joy, even if this is a ghost, my soul, the poor Figalia.
With this something of the magic of Corfu, it dawns, it dusks, it nightfalls.
They say that good morning is a journey and good night is an opportunity for silence.
So good night...
From the book "A clove-throwing and a cinnamon-remembering",
Tomorrow, in the name of love
Life of Diktao
photo mdnirob121, https://pixabay.com
