Monthly Archives: December 2011

Promenade III: Reference to Lord Byron’s 1rst trip to Greece between 1809-1811

I am reading an extract from “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage” by Lord Byron

XLV

Ambracia’s gulf behold, where once was lost
A world for woman, lovely, harmless thing!
In yonder rippling bay, their naval host
Did many a Roman chief and Asian king
To doubtful conflict, certain slaughter, bring
Look where the second Cæsar’s trophies rose,
Now, like the hands that reared them, withering;
Imperial anarchs, doubling human woes!
God! was thy globe ordained for such to win and lose?

Panos Charalambous, Ambrakia Mia, 1994

reference

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I am reading an extract from Rebecca Solnit’s “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”:
“Not to find one’s way in a city may be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance-nothing more,” says the twentieth-century philosopher-essayist Walter Benjamin. “But to lose oneself in a city-as one loses oneself in a forest-that calls for quite a different schooling.” To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In benjamin’s terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. And one does not get lost but loses oneself, with the implication that it is a conscious choice, a chosen surrender, a psychic state achievable through geography. That thing the nature of which is totally unknown to you is usually what you need to find, and finding it is a matter of getting lost.

Urban Void; Action in the bed of the river Kifissos. Noisy march. 1999

Promenade II: Reference to Martin Heidegger; Aufenthalte

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(I am reading an extract from Martin Heidegger’s Aufenthalte)

“Die morgendliche Ankunft bei schwachem aber frischem Wind im kleinen Hafen von Itea, die Fahrt durch den alten weiten Olivenwald bei Krisa, der langsame Anstieg zu dem karger werdenden Hochtal am Fuß des Parnaß erschienen wie eine vorbereitende Meditation für das Betreten des Heiligen Bezirkes, wo tempelverborgen nach Sage der Alten der Nabel der Erde gehütet wurde”.

. Dimitris Gizinos. Landschaft (Olivenwald bei Krisa)

Διαβάζω από τις “Διαμονές. Ταξίδι στην Ελλάδα” του Μάρτιν Χάιντεγγερ: “Η πρωινή άφιξη με ασθενή αλλά δροσερό άνεμο στο μικρό λιμάνι της Ιτέας, η διαδρομή μέσα από τον παλαιό μεγάλο ελαιώνα της Κρίσας, το αργό ανηφόρισμα προς την όλο και φτωχότερη κοιλάδα που βρίσκεται ψηλά στους πρόποδες του Παρνασσού, όλα αυτά έμοιαζαν με προπαρασκευαστικό διαλογισμό για την είσοδο στον ιερό χώρο, όπου κρυμμένος στο ναό φυλάσσεται σύμφωνα με το θρύλο των αρχαίων, ο ομφαλός της γης”.

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Vangelis Gokas
I am like a pelican in the wilderness, I am like an owe in the desert, 2010, λάδι σε καμβά, 18I am like a pelican in the wilderness, I am like an owe in the desert, 2010, λάδι σε καμβά, 185Χ2155Χ215