2024-05-25 11:40:17
My very own copy of Nikos Bilanakis’ e book “Locations clothed in time” on its first web page, below the creator’s dedication, additionally has a date written on it: 4/30/2023. I bought my fingers on it, that’s, a 12 months in the past, when it first started its journey for the lives and locations of its heroes to fulfill the lives, locations and time of its readers. Since then, there was only one presentation of it, in Arta, final summer time – a spot you will not meet (not by identify, anyway) within the e book, however could be very acquainted to its creator. As individuals, locations and time turn into entangled in one another and alter, with out one dominating or one other falling behind, and bypassing the linear, law-ending sequence of time, allow us to agree, with out essentially being arbitrary, that not a lot time has handed since ‘ when the e book was launched. As an example it was revealed a number of days in the past and on Saturday late afternoon it was introduced in one of many locations it talks about: Ioannina. Having learn the e book twice, I can say with certainty that his journey is steady, continually altering and renewing itself. Prefer it simply began.
It is extremely tough to speak about Nikos’s e book with out speaking about him. It isn’t solely private relationship and friendship that dictate this necessity. It’s also the place, as you learn his e book, you meet him within the habits of his hero, in his routes, within the folks he met on his approach and who touched him in a technique or one other, within the angelic flower within the backyard of Sifi’s home in Preveza , but in addition within the phrases themselves, which he takes a lot care of and so artfully chooses, at all times with the identical dedication, both to explain a blue “spacious” sky, or to research and interpret a complete era and the occasions that they marked her, the locations she handed by and altered them by altering herself, the transition to a brand new one and the traces that this transition fatally leaves. And his phrases reciprocate that care. However that is how Nikos writes and speaks. I do not need to say “ecumenical”, as a result of it is too cliche. His phrases – in his writings and in his conversations – are a compass, they’re the information we have to discover the way in which we have now misplaced. It’s a refuge and refuge. What he data and shares in his e book is characterised by an unprecedented condescension, admissibility, an openness and a generosity with out definitely being rambunctious or chattering. Quite the opposite. His speech is so condensed, strong, satisfactory, naturally flowing that the reader typically has the sensation that these are the issues he needs to say himself, however he can’t discover the phrases or is unable to rearrange them, put them in a sequence, to not make sense, however to amass worth, substance and period. Nikos does this so magically for us. And we’re grateful to him. Simply as we’re grateful to him for all these pictures that he creates with such mastery and element – typically colourful, noisy and vibrant and typically in sepia, black and white, muted, darkened. And probably the most magical factor of all is that he has reserved a spot for us, his readers, in them. He locations us within the current of his hero or heroes, takes us again to their previous, which isn’t so completely different from ours, gives us a sneak peek into the longer term.
The e book “Locations clothed in time” is a group of quick tales, however one is related to the opposite, not essentially in accordance with the logic of sequence and succession. In any case, it’s divided into two components. Within the first half, the creator introduces us to faces, acquainted characters, that we have now all met or have been somebody or a few of them in our lives. The second, with a single central hero, Siphis, tells the story of locations and occasions. Locations consultant of an period, that change with it, that may very well be so many others or skilled otherwise for every of us who reads the e book. In these seven locations, in these seven chapters of the second half, the place Sifi’s journey is described in house (Crete, Athens, Bucharest, and many others.) and in time (from about half of his decade 50 to our days and even past), all of us meet and watch the transition of the identical, but in addition of a complete society (the Greek one, on this case) from the period of “is” to the period of “have” and at last the decline within the age of “look”. From the coexistence of individuals and their nearly frequent wrestle for survival to their first separation, when even the locations themselves introduced them very shut, to the start of short-term enrichment, to the frenzied acquisition of fabric items as the only real criterion of social standing and worth and in the long run in a rotation of a picture – of our picture – much like the rotation of flesh, fully and definitively reduce off from one another, but in addition from our internal self. Absent from our frequent current, dragged into an unsure and lonely future, with out high quality contact, lonely. Locations appear to be following the identical, parallel degenerative course underground: abandoned, empty of human presence, or suffocatingly stuffed with it, however dry of feelings. Ruined villages, grey districts, noisy megalopolises with big condo buildings and anarchic (one may name it insatiable) development – apparently developed locations, most of them, basically monotonous and empty. Time – private and collective – is changing into cyclical and repetitive, nearly mounted, because the time and habits of lonely folks at all times are. A loneliness that’s not imposed by the cycle of life and nature, however dictated by the worry of sharing, connecting with the opposite and dedication. Nikos describes us remoted folks, a strategy of isolation that started in fashionable occasions and continues unabated within the post-modern period. And that is how the lonely, spiteful, scared folks of the primary half inject the second half and Sifi abruptly seems on the road. Miltos, the chief decide, Makis, the minister, return for a fleeting second, imperceptibly however catalytically connecting two seemingly unrelated components (the primary and second components of the e book), suggesting on the similar time the frequent historical past, the frequent path, the frequent locations they make wherever they’re, simply because the destiny of all folks is frequent – with some maybe insignificant particular person variations.
On this lonely journey to the tip – of the hero, of every of us who remembers his personal as he reads the e book, but in addition of the collective as a society – wealth and hope are our folks and our locations, in an effort to decelerate his passing of time so long as it’s legally at our expense. And that is exactly what Nikos’s e book highlights. In addition to the subcutaneous must redefine ourselves and reinvent language, in an effort to restore the misplaced worth of phrases, to study to talk from scratch in an effort to talk meaningfully and actually with one another. To share the space that separates us, to fulfill midway. The e book, regardless of how nostalgic, melancholy or bitter it could be, regardless of how laborious truths it data with out indulgence or softening, I believe it shakes us and leaves on the finish precisely this sense: that, towards all odds and lawlessness, there’s hope , that we could have time, earlier than the shell that covers us turns into definitively and irreparably impenetrable, to come back collectively and make new locations.
I’ll shut by describing two factors of my very own path that doesn’t differ that a lot from that of the central hero, besides, as we stated above, within the particular person components. In a comparatively parallel course with that of Sifis, someplace a bit of earlier than the midway level of his personal route, I’m a pupil, right here in Ioannina, within the college library in Domboli, the place I watch Nikos give us a lesson and with a small (or massive, as one sees it) a soar in time, very cinematic and spectacular if it had been depicted on the massive display with the frames of our lives passing in entrance of us in quick ahead, I’m a number of a long time later, right here subsequent to him and speaking about his e book that captivated me ( as his lesson took me then). Each loaded with the years which have handed, with the imprints left on us by folks, locations and modifications. However shut, sima, as my grandmother used to say.
So I learn on the again cowl of this treasured e book that life appears longer for individuals who meet extra folks or stay in additional locations. And I add: or who discover themselves once more in the identical place, nevertheless modified, talking a brand new or the outdated language, extra human and heat, much less afraid and alone…