DocHeart
06-15-2011, 02:47 PM
This isn’t a post about politics. It doesn’t attempt to look at the situation here from any particular political angle, or through any known political ideology. That’s not because I’m apolitical, but because I cannot think of the catastrophe that Greece has been facing (and is materializing minute by minute) in political terms right now. I could six months ago. I could last week. But not now.
Now it is a post about what one feels when one is inside an airliner going through extreme turbulence. The fuselage moans and groans as it is bumped violently by the rough air inside the seemingly endless cloud. Thunder and lightning make the plane shake like a rattle in the hand of a baby. A sound like a shotgun, and impossibly strong wind is felt creeping through a cracked window. And another, this time on the ceiling. You see sparks flying from exposed wiring and lights flickering and before you can think “I hope power is not cut off” you are immersed in darkness. People in there with you start screaming. But there’s nowhere to run.
It’s going to take a hell of a pilot to land this thing.
You know what we have lots of? Theories about why this is happening. Each and every one of us has cooked up their own cocktail of explanations. Choose from the following, throw in tall glass, stir or shake as per preference. Overspending and overborrowing. Being unproductive. Being poor negotiators when faced with our European partners. Lacking in entrepreneurial spirit. Having and paying for too large a public sector. Being cheated by the governments of the last thirty years. The failure of the education system. Banks, Greek and foreign. Capitalism, trade-unionism, liberalism, too much control of the market, too little control of how much democracy we should really be enjoying. Blame is handed out generously, left right and centre. With politicians, of course, slap-bang in the eye of the storm. And rightly so.
But this still isn’t a post about politics. Politics, which I have always followed enthusiastically wherever I have lived, is about the future. It’s about planning.
For over three weeks thousands of people have been gathering outside the parliament and protesting peacefully. Syntagma Square is packed tonight, practically everyone has gone downtown (even my cousin with his wife and kids, who are the quietest, shiest people I know when it comes to crowds). The Prime Minister is about to address the nation. We’re being told we’ll now have a global government with at least one cabinet member from each party in the parliament. And it doesn’t look like anyone’s willing to keep lending us, so the state will fail to pay wages on the 1st of July.
It’s impossible to think of the future at moments like this. You just brace, and hope that you miraculously survive the massive collision of the aircraft with the mountain. The being hurled about strapped in your chair. The violent shaking of your spine. The ensuing fire. There is no planning. So this is not about politics.
Let me tell you a few things about myself (I don’t know why I’m even posting this here). I’m the proverbial poor boy done good. I’ve been running my own business for six years, successfully if I may blow my own trumpet. But I still feel out of my depth most of the time – boys from where I grew up aren’t supposed to run their own business. They’re supposed to work as waiters, or as taxi drivers, or as pizza guys. I love my old neighbourhood, where my parents still insist to live, even though I have offered to move them somewhere better suited to their old age several times. It used to be a happy neighbourhood. We kids could play football in the street. One of the mothers would nip her head out from time to time and check on us, and give us a glass of cold water with a spoon loaded with hard vanilla paste inside it. It was always a poor place, but most men worked, and did so with pride.
Most of my mates in my old neighbourhood are unemployed now. Very few have left to seek their fortune elsewhere – not really an option in Europe these days. The blocks of flats they live in look worn and rickety. And today, for the first time, I saw an old guy I think I know looking through the rubbish bins.
I mean, I’ve seen old guys (and younger guys, for that matter) looking through rubbish bins before. Over the last few months it seems to be happening more and more. But I’d never seen them in my old neighbourhood before. And I really wish I hadn’t driven through there today on my way to work.
But, yea… You know how we always think “it won’t happen to me” when we think of serious illness, or of a plane crash, or national bankruptcy? Well, what do you know. It could happen to me, and it is bloody happening. So this is not a post about politics. It doesn’t matter who the guys searching the rubbish have voted for in their lives. Not right now. Right now it would be good if they found a half-eaten tin of luncheon meat, or a discarded pair of knackered flip-flops.
It is now half past nine in the evening. The Prime Minister was supposed to address the nation at 8. I mean, talk about fashionably late.
I’ll tell you something else that’s funny. Being at work today, putting together a spreadsheet that sets Q4’s sales targets. Q4 starts in October. I might as well be putting together a spreadsheet for how I will respond when aliens contact me.
I know this post is disjointed. I’m sorry. However, it attempts to discuss a political matter without being about politics. And it’s not. It’s about life. It’s about experiencing a historically dark moment.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs just broadcast an SMS (?!) to all TV and radio stations. The Prime Minister will be on in a few minutes.
My cousin and his wife and kids are down there, protesting outside the parliament building. Some other people I love, I’m sure, are also down there. Mates from my old neighbourhood, I bet, too.
I think I’ll head down myself. Thanks for reading.
http://www.otheos.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/absolutathens.jpg
Now it is a post about what one feels when one is inside an airliner going through extreme turbulence. The fuselage moans and groans as it is bumped violently by the rough air inside the seemingly endless cloud. Thunder and lightning make the plane shake like a rattle in the hand of a baby. A sound like a shotgun, and impossibly strong wind is felt creeping through a cracked window. And another, this time on the ceiling. You see sparks flying from exposed wiring and lights flickering and before you can think “I hope power is not cut off” you are immersed in darkness. People in there with you start screaming. But there’s nowhere to run.
It’s going to take a hell of a pilot to land this thing.
You know what we have lots of? Theories about why this is happening. Each and every one of us has cooked up their own cocktail of explanations. Choose from the following, throw in tall glass, stir or shake as per preference. Overspending and overborrowing. Being unproductive. Being poor negotiators when faced with our European partners. Lacking in entrepreneurial spirit. Having and paying for too large a public sector. Being cheated by the governments of the last thirty years. The failure of the education system. Banks, Greek and foreign. Capitalism, trade-unionism, liberalism, too much control of the market, too little control of how much democracy we should really be enjoying. Blame is handed out generously, left right and centre. With politicians, of course, slap-bang in the eye of the storm. And rightly so.
But this still isn’t a post about politics. Politics, which I have always followed enthusiastically wherever I have lived, is about the future. It’s about planning.
For over three weeks thousands of people have been gathering outside the parliament and protesting peacefully. Syntagma Square is packed tonight, practically everyone has gone downtown (even my cousin with his wife and kids, who are the quietest, shiest people I know when it comes to crowds). The Prime Minister is about to address the nation. We’re being told we’ll now have a global government with at least one cabinet member from each party in the parliament. And it doesn’t look like anyone’s willing to keep lending us, so the state will fail to pay wages on the 1st of July.
It’s impossible to think of the future at moments like this. You just brace, and hope that you miraculously survive the massive collision of the aircraft with the mountain. The being hurled about strapped in your chair. The violent shaking of your spine. The ensuing fire. There is no planning. So this is not about politics.
Let me tell you a few things about myself (I don’t know why I’m even posting this here). I’m the proverbial poor boy done good. I’ve been running my own business for six years, successfully if I may blow my own trumpet. But I still feel out of my depth most of the time – boys from where I grew up aren’t supposed to run their own business. They’re supposed to work as waiters, or as taxi drivers, or as pizza guys. I love my old neighbourhood, where my parents still insist to live, even though I have offered to move them somewhere better suited to their old age several times. It used to be a happy neighbourhood. We kids could play football in the street. One of the mothers would nip her head out from time to time and check on us, and give us a glass of cold water with a spoon loaded with hard vanilla paste inside it. It was always a poor place, but most men worked, and did so with pride.
Most of my mates in my old neighbourhood are unemployed now. Very few have left to seek their fortune elsewhere – not really an option in Europe these days. The blocks of flats they live in look worn and rickety. And today, for the first time, I saw an old guy I think I know looking through the rubbish bins.
I mean, I’ve seen old guys (and younger guys, for that matter) looking through rubbish bins before. Over the last few months it seems to be happening more and more. But I’d never seen them in my old neighbourhood before. And I really wish I hadn’t driven through there today on my way to work.
But, yea… You know how we always think “it won’t happen to me” when we think of serious illness, or of a plane crash, or national bankruptcy? Well, what do you know. It could happen to me, and it is bloody happening. So this is not a post about politics. It doesn’t matter who the guys searching the rubbish have voted for in their lives. Not right now. Right now it would be good if they found a half-eaten tin of luncheon meat, or a discarded pair of knackered flip-flops.
It is now half past nine in the evening. The Prime Minister was supposed to address the nation at 8. I mean, talk about fashionably late.
I’ll tell you something else that’s funny. Being at work today, putting together a spreadsheet that sets Q4’s sales targets. Q4 starts in October. I might as well be putting together a spreadsheet for how I will respond when aliens contact me.
I know this post is disjointed. I’m sorry. However, it attempts to discuss a political matter without being about politics. And it’s not. It’s about life. It’s about experiencing a historically dark moment.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs just broadcast an SMS (?!) to all TV and radio stations. The Prime Minister will be on in a few minutes.
My cousin and his wife and kids are down there, protesting outside the parliament building. Some other people I love, I’m sure, are also down there. Mates from my old neighbourhood, I bet, too.
I think I’ll head down myself. Thanks for reading.
http://www.otheos.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/absolutathens.jpg