Today I woke up feeling like a sack of shit, snot and stress. A lot of s’s. I spent about an hour in the bathroom under the hot water, waiting for the nasal passages to open up. And everywhere else in there, but no need to be gross. Without wifi. It’s springtime in Athens, but the weather is muggy.
April was the best —not the cruelest— month, the redbuds kissed every house in my neighborhood. I am lucky in that respect; in other neighborhoods it is the stink of the broken garbage cans that kisses every crummy cement building.
May is unexpectedly ugly so far, the seven-year long financial crisis is simply tearing everyone apart. I am not depressed simply because I am a writer, though that adds to it, depression is spreading faster than any apocalypse virus here. Almost everyone is infected by now.
It is not like we ‘re starving or anything, this is not Rwanda. Greece is the 44th country in the world in GDP per capita ranking. It is just this common conviction that everyone shares that things will get worse. No matter what, no matter who comes to “power”. Everyone is descending slowly from his hill of lost dreams, one step a day, on all four, one “dontgiveafuckanymore” a day.
Fortunately, the children don’t feel most of that. We always try to hide it from them. I wonder whether children here feel much of anything either. There are no playgrounds, not enough anyway, schools are virtually shut down, there is nothing of quality on TV, nobody buys books. Books tend to be very expensive in small markets where authors still struggle with dead languages and without google ngram.
No valid ngrams to plot!
Ngrams not found: Αριστοτέλης, Πλάτων
Aristotle and Plato are not ngrammed in Greek.
Yes, my company publishes and, on a rare occasion these days, sells books.