The Queen is Indian!

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Rose Jam

My mom loves (or should I say loved) roses. Since I was little I remember our dining room table adorned with bouquets of roses from May to September. Not those store bought perfect and somewhat tame ones. She always put together big, juicy and wild bunches of colorful and sweet smelling roses that she cut from friends' gardens and later on from her garden in her house in Eidomeni. One of the first plants we put in that garden 30 years ago were rose bushes.
And since my mom loved to cook, every summer, while others made appricot, strawberry or sour cherry marmelade my mom made rose jelly, a recipe she learned from her mom who was from Istanbul.
Once, many years ago when we went with Max, K and G to Thassos and visited Litsa and Jean Marie they treated us with rose jam that my mom had made for them. Every year up to 4 years ago she made her delightful jam. I have the last jar in the very back of my refrigerator that I am sure it is no longer edible but I can not through away.
Last summer when I visited Elsa Exarhu in Romania she had her own home made rose jam and exquisitely scented scarlet rose sirop that had made from the roses of her garden. That small detail was enough for me to include her in my cyrcle of beloved friends.
Last Wednesday morning I was having breakfast with K and Luis in their garden in Cologne and one of the jams was a rose jam made in Turkey.
Then on Thursday morning in Thessaloniki, I opened a kitchen cabinet looking for marmalade and found a jar of rose jam from Kastoria, Max had bought last summer.
And the best of all my mom is still alive and lucide enaugh to give me her recipe.

Marine Life of Dreams

I come from the sea; three fourths of my grand parents come from Istanbul, Silivri, Epivates, my dad lived his childhood in Rodosto and I was born and raised in Thessaloniki. Only one grand father came from the mountains.

Now I live on the rolling hills of Missouri after having spent 6 years in the valley of Arno.

Inevitably my dreams usually take place in fictional sites by the water.

Εδώ παραπάνω χταπόδια με τις βεντούζες τους παίζουν στο μεταξένιο σώμα της νέας, γύψινες φάλαινες γίνονται ερωτικοί κρυψώνες στον Άγιο Λουδοβίκο, χέλια γλιστρούν ανάμεσα σε κοιμισμένα πόδια.
Και στο φουστάνι της τρικυμία, να πάλλεται το νήμα το φτιαγμένο από μεταξοσκώληκες μεγαλωμένους στον κόρφο νεαρών γυναικών

Getting ready to fly

In two nights I'll be on a plane going for the summer in Greece. It is the first time I feel a lack of enthusiasm going overseas. I look around me in St. Louis and I enjoy the trees and the gardens, the easy life, the evenings with live music, the party season just starting... Usually I would scorn at all this, and would be impatient to set foot at the tarmac at SKG airport feeling the excitement of nostos.
This time I am going solo, not knowing what I will have to deal with, without being able to make plans since it is all depended on my mom's health...
Never the less I am looking forward meeting old friends, spending my birthday at home, meeting new people, going to outings, gallery openings, museums and all there is to be seen in Thessaloniki. I am going to try hard not to fall under the spell of the end of a personal era, the end of the line where I come from.
I am taking along, as a security blanket, my art work that I will show this summer in Greece, a small book of unpublished poems I can work on, and the urge to get my self out there. May the wind blow my direction and bring fulfillment of my dreams.

Η καρδια μου, γιατρε, στην Ελλαδα βρισκεται

Looking for the original poem by Nazim Hikmet that I have paraphrized for today's title, I came across this one:

Because

They'll go to the moon

and beyond,

to places even telescopes can't see.

But when will no one go hungry

on earth

or fear others

or push them around,

shun them

or steal their hope?

Because I responded to this question

I'm called a Communist.

The aesthetic of decay