remember

i remember this day four years ago
it was sunny and warm, and we were thinking, it can't be november, the weather is so good!
Ricky called me while i was buying my season tickets. panos was looking for our seats and i was just looking at all the pictures. when i saw my caller id, i thought "yes! ricky and tina are here, we're going out tonight!"
when he told me i lost my balance. i fell wherever i was standing, and thankfully there was a chair there. i couldn't believe it, i had to push my brain till it hurt to get myself to believe it. i cried uncontrollably. i still do to this day.
we travelled all night by train. all i would to was try to get myself to believe it. we met ismini by chance on the train. i remember her face swollen, and tracks of tears still visible. we went to the cafe, and noone was speaking. i couldnt even open my mouth to form a word.
the train was packed with people travelling all night to be in athens in the morning. we got off and went to a coffee shop to get some coffee before it all started. i remember my body numb and i remember i could feel a pain, but can't remember where.
i remember what i was wearing. it was this cop copine shirt you always told me how much you liked and a pair of jeans. i thought it was so ironic that i was seeing you out wearing this shirt.
leaving the cafe, we bought our newspaper, to see if they had thought to write a piece on you. they had. 100 words on a black field. i got so angry i threw the paper away. 100 words? on you? tomorrow i'd return and give them a piece of my mind. let them know that it takes more than 100 words to describe someone like you, and to convey the pain your leaving causes. it takes more than 100 words to honor a person that gave light, kindness and smile to everyone unconditionally. it takes more than 100 words to explore how someone whose whole life had been carved by sickness and unbearable pain managed to never show it, but go down her path patiently, quietly, bravely, like the hero that you were.
it takes more than 100 words to even begin to describe the tragedy of someone leaving at the age of 28, when she could have given so much and been so happy.
i remember reaching the church. suddenly i really didn't want to go in. everyone would go but i really didn't want to set my foot in it. panos asked me, please, he said, we have to. i remember dragging my feet, i felt 3 years old again, i did not want to go. we went inside the courtyard and looked inside the room. there you were, lying in a bed of flowers, your hair out of your face, the way you never wanted it. your face so calm and void of expression the way you never were. your mother staring at you, trying to memorize your every feature. i remember thinking don't, thats not her at all. i cried uncontrolably. i still do to this day.
i didnt want to come inside to kiss you goodbye. im so bad with goodbyes and i knew you'd understand. besides, i remember not being able to move my legs. i sat under a tree and waited. i remember seeing george crying like a baby behind another tree. we lost george for months after this day. even today i don't know where he was and what he did.
i remember them moving you to the church for the ceremony. i dont remember what the priests said. i remember i had left my sunglasses home and the whole world could see my swollen face. i remember them taking you to your final place. i remember the thumping of the ground on you. i can still feel its weight on my chest to this day. i remember how much it hurt your mother. i asked them to wait till i was gone she said. i remember her friends taking her away.
i remember ricky throwing a party for you that night. i remember thinking that this would trully be the way youd want us all to say goodbye to you. i remember walking in your home and almost collapsing. i remember pano holding me very tightly cause he knew i would. i remember hugging ricky and forcing myself not to cry. i remember all the songs and i remember that pain was almost a person that night, coming to everyone and hugging us with all his strength. i remember i couldnt stay. i remember kissing ricky and leaving, and then collapsing once again on the street. i remember being angry at ricky for not telling me you were dying. i remember all those things i wanted to tell you before you left. i remember wanting to tell you that i love you, that you changed my life, that i owe you so much, that i would do anything to keep you alive. i remember the emptiness i felt. and the anger. and the emptiness.
i don't remember much after that.
but i remember you

A survivor

Photo a poster by Stephen Morris, taken from www.art.com

The minute he buzzed me in I felt a knot in my stomach. I had done this probably a thousand times, but this one was different. This one was important. This one was serious.

I took the elevator and pressed 6. As the cabin was rising, on its way to the 6th floor, the questions were dancing in my head but I couldn’t decide where to begin. How do you raise a subject like this one, without insulting, hurting, bringing back memories beyond painful?

He was waiting for me by the door. An old man of 81, frail as his age would permit, but still standing poised with a dignity I had never spotted in anyone in the past.

He welcomed me in his home and showed me in his living room. His eyes were the deepest gray I had ever seen. As gray as the photos we see of a time as ugly as humanity itself.

I politely refused his offer of coffee or tea (I did not want to tire him, his wife was not home) and looked for a way to start the discussion. “Ask me anything you want. I feel like I can trust you, so ask away”, he said, sensing my hesitation. “I wouldn’t like to be the one bringing ugly thoughts back into your mind”, I said, completely honest about the way I felt. He smiled, and it was the smile of a man who has seen it all. “It is all in the past”, he said to me. “After all these years, I am not afraid to talk about it”. He lifted his sleeve slightly and showed me his arm. “There is a number etched on my skin that makes me think of it every day, no matter how many years have passed”.

He had been number 115.365 for 3 years. He watched helpless as his mother, father and younger brother burnt in the ovens of Auschwitz. He stood speechless as countless friends, loved ones, acquaintances, neighbors faded away from hunger, malnutrition, illness, eventually gassed to death in the gas chambers and finally stacked in mountains of horror in front of their eyes “to show us what our future was”. He learned of medical experiments done to the person he shared a bed with at the camp, he was beaten to exhaustion, to near death. He learned to live with terror and not succumb to it. “We didn’t pay attention to fear. We learned to recognize it and then ignore it. This is human nature. This is the only way to survive”, he said.

When the doors of the camps opened and they were free to go, he was 18. He weighed 27 kilos (59 pounds). A few months later, doctors removed bone from his leg to add it to his back: it had been destroyed from the beatings.

Today there’s a group of people who question whether the Holocaust ever happened. They claim that it was a Jewish conspiracy to gain the worlds compassion. They claim no Jews ever died during World War II. They claim the concentration camps never existed. They claim that the only thing history can accuse Hitler for is that he started a job he never finished. I met a man who can prove the opposite.

This...

...is how clueless I am, when it comes to this whole technology thing.

I have no idea how to add people on this page, I have no idea how I am ever going to find my friends from Yahoo, unless THEY find me, or THEY add me, and I really hate being helpless, and i really hate Yahoo for doing this to me: giving me a place to communicate with people, like them, make them a part of my life, make them important to me, make me realise how incredibly and painfully much I will miss them, and then take them the hell away from me!

So
I am warning you all

YOU HAD BETTER FIND ME AND MAKE ME UNDERSTAND HOW TO ADD YOU ALL ON THIS NEW PAGE, OR even better COME DOWN TO GREECE AND ADD YOURSELVES UP IN MY PAGE,
OR ELSE I'LL COME FIND YOU, AND YOU HAVE NOOOOOOOO IDEA WHAT I'M LIKE WHEN I'M PISSED OFF LIKE THIS!

oh, and I also can't seem to be able to upload a stupid photo of me! wtf!

Anyways, that's all

I am so happy that Lionel, and Dana, and Daisy, and Missy and everyone is here! I'd better look up Neddy!

twirling in rainbows

I started listening the new Radiohead album, knowing in advance that I could never speak one disrespectful word about it. I belong to a generation that loved the band almost from the very first minute (that very first minute for me was late '92, the song "You" out of the Drill EP a friend of mine had brought from the UK just blew me away) and never changed my mind, not when they took a turn with Kid A, or when bashing them became oh so popular, or even when they were away from all musical things for years.
When i heard of the way the album would be sold, i decided i expected nothing less. In a move that's never been done before (at least in this way), the band allowed us, the fans, to download the album from their site, paying for it whatever we wanted, from 0 - 100 pounds. And, because I know you'll ask, yes, it IS possible to download it for 0 pounds, a friend of mine did.
Some, quite smugly, rushed to suppose that the band couldnt get another contract with a record label, after theirs with EMI expired, and the less than satisfactory for their magnitude sales of Hail To The Thief. I refuse to believe that we live in a world where Posh Spice can get a contract and Radiohead can't. If that's the case, there's something more than rotten in the state of musical Denmark.
Nevertheless, huge people like ex Stone Roses singer, Ian Brown, or ex Smiths guitar player, Johnny Marr, seemed to concurr with Radiohead. Marr said "everyone knows they can get the music online, so now let's see if you'll show the band your appreciation", while Brown thought the idea was "fantastic", and said "i'll support anything that can bring the music industry down".
For the time being, I can't stop listening to the new album, In Rainbows. Every time it starts over, I like it a little bit more, which means that, by now, I like it quite a lot. I can't spot any weak songs, the whole album has more than one layers. Listen to it, let it speak into your heart, and it will. If it doesn't, I'm here to talk about it :o)