Sea Under Cloudy Sky ( oil on canvas 35 X 140 cm)

Sea Under Cloudy Sky 2 ( oil on canvas 35 X 140 cm)

                        GAS   STATION   ANGEL 

The   light  rain   that  fell  made  the  road   slippery  and   dangerous   for  the   old,  black   Buick.   But   this   wasn’t    the   reason   that  it   was   going   so   slowly.   There was no reason to rush.    Everything   was   finished. 

The only thing was left to do, was the final part of the ceremony. After all he deserved an honorary epilogue, since he once used to be the most famous author, full of money, and  awards. 

           He was now coming into the night’s kingdom, where cold,   solitude  and  darkness    prevails.                                                
                                                       Welcome.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Visibility was confined, behind and all around the storeroom.  Monstrous and dumb was standing over imposing behind the old gas station, which now was empty and deserted.

Silence.

The  car pulled over along side the gas pumps.  He turned the engine off, opened the glove box and grabbed the torch and a pair of gloves out of it.

Behind the broken glass of the old rusty pump, you could just make out the last words of the old sign that read

“SUPER   12  GALLONS”

He put his gloves on and opened the door.

With a big effort he pulled out a big long parcel, wrapped up in plastic, and let it fall on the ground, making a dull deep and dark sound.                        
Darkness.

The rain had stopped.   Nevertheless it had enough time to turn the ground into mud. That couldn’t stop him. He took the shovel out of the boot, grabbed the parcel from one end, and started dragging it, across the pot holes now full of rainwater, reflecting darkness.

Darkness full of rusty old car parts, dismantled boxes, thrown out old tyres, with wires and pipes, chopped up corpses, barrels, sheets of metal and a light.   Lightning.

In the glassy glare of the dead the lightning was indelible, while they kept on glaring  with no interest in participating,  from the  stand  of a forgotten wisdom.

He stopped asthmatically  , breathing the thick septic breeze.

The parcel now tangled up with a metal sheet.

He could hear his sweat dripping on the plastic of the parcel, under a moon marking his footsteps, on the road, his own road, that was nearing the end.

He freed the parcel, dragged it a few more meters under the glance of the fierce storeroom, and started digging a hole, big enough to fit all those trusted to him, accompanied with a prayer.

Amen

By the time he dragged the parcel at the edge of the hole, the moon had long gone. He unzipped it, and emptied the contents in the arms of the earthen oblivion.

When the first beam of light poured through the ceiling of the fierce storeroom, he found himself staring into the hole, now full of manuscripts, postscripts, notes, scattered words, corrections, and a white page.  The moral of a story he never got                                                                    around to write.                                                          

Emptiness

He grabbed the shovel, filled up the hole with the earth, and turned around to leave. When he got to the car, the morning dew was half smiling on the faces of the dead.  He threw the gloves and shovel in the back of the car and started.

 The old gas station and the dumb storeroom were now left far behind, to care   for their dead, while he was coming into the other road,  in the opposite direction,    where words never catch up with the reigns of the eternal light.

WINDOW    AT    THE    EDGE   OF  TIME

And it is the wind. The wind that blows furiously and makes the windows creaking and throbbing in a senseless dialect.

And it is true that I tried. I tried every possible way to write the truth. And it’s also true, that I failed once more.

The ink started pouring. It was pouring uncontrollably  from the slashed veins of my page, into black creeks, forming small pools on the floor,  dark enough to look inside them and see what the future held. But I don’t care. I have always liked memories.

Indeed, I have memories I reminisce at times, evidence that I once existed too. At least the photos can prove that, although now faded like me.

Sitting back staring at them, every single one has its own preserving little story. And then I give up on them.

I throw them around, just like I threw away all the years.

And other times, I am sitting in front of my creations just like a kid, a crazy inventor, and admire the magnificence of the perfect failure.

Just like that, I loose myself inside this crazy celebration of this irrevocable silence.

And  I  get lost from this internal monologue that keeps being reproduced out of control,  inside the guts of this place that grows constantly in a suffocating way all around me.

Until such time,  I walk away from everything and approach the window, which in turn starts telling me its own little story.

In the beginning it starts talking about the city which spreads all around, the big  roads,   the public buildings, the colourful flags that are waving proud in the balconies, its big imposing monuments, and how over there, at the edge of town,  there is  a lake, silent with its stunning azure colour.

It talks about the tinny old boats and the fishermen, the shabby old timber huts at the banks of the lake, the cane that bows in the wind, and the kids running barefoot on the piers.

And then how the plains start rolling down the valley, with the farmers in the fields, the sheep and further away the cows.

In the background the tree stands tall and haughty, with the flowers beneath it.   Along side of it, a little girl with her hollow hands overflowing a sea, where the  milky  moon hanging in the afternoon sky, is  floating out in the open, and while the wind blows over to the shore, it washes it out,  and then takes it all back into the open sea.

And it’s true that I tried.  I tried every possible way to write the truth.  And once more I  failed.

And it’s also true that it’s the wind, that  fiercely  blows and charges with menace onto the glass window that luckily hasn’t shattered yet, and continuously keeps on reflecting faded photos,  from the present of an old  forgotten story…

Caravan ( oil on canvas 50 X 40 )

Fenced Dreamland (oil on canvas 140 X 35 )

White Pages

W H I T E     P A G E S

I can imagine it.

I can imagine me.

There, as I am lying dead, myself with my only desire to come back and erase all my traces. Everything I have created everything I have written, or painted. And even everything I said or meant, while things continue on their long journey, as though they haven’t even been experienced by me.

Now I am here, and writing.

I am writing, because I am dead.

At this beach, with the white sand, and piles of sticks, with scattered driftwood, of all sizes laying on it. Further away the sea is pushing carelessly its little waves. In the background the sun, Dazzled, and looking sick. Sunken into cloudy oceans, where they are waving obscured mountain-lines.

The wind is blowing, and every now and again, a narrow strip of light escapes the sky’s dark face and reaches up to here.

The wind is blowing and the sand is whipping my face, but I have stopped listening.

I am simply writing.

The shore is getting quieter by the minute. The light has now gone, and the darkness is slowly coming down from the mountain.

The trees are waving their tallest fine branches, and bidding farewell to daylight, with the old conscience delaying silently, the second last moment, that refuses to face the end of it.

And I am just sitting here, with my back turned against the sea, and a bunch of odd creatures, that have escaped history’s broken door, that has nothing to describe for itself, parading right in front of my own eyes, until they get lost into the white pages I hold in my hands.

And I hold them

And I keep on holding them.

And they are getting more…. And even more.

WHITE PAGES

WHITE PAGES

ΕΝΑΣΤΡΟΣ ΛΟΓΟΣ 2010

Έναστρος Λόγος ( 2010 )

ΓΕΡΑΣΜΕΝΗ   ΜΙΚΡΗ   ΜΟΥ   ΙΣΤΟΡΙΑ

Η   ιστορία   μου   γέρασε   πιά.

Είναι   γριά   παράλυτη.

Σε   μόνιμη   καταστολή    εμπνέεται  

με   μηχανική   υποστήριξη

συνδεδεμένη   με   ορό

που   στάζει   αντιβιοτικούς   στίχους.

Μιλάει   για   την   ελπίδα   σε   συκευασία   δώρου,

την   ομορφιά,   τη   νιότη,    την   παντοτινή   αγάπη

και  την  αλχημική   μετατροπή   τους   σε   μόλυβδο

μ'  ένα   ρίνισμα    λογικής.

Η   ιστορία   μου   δεν   είναι   γριά.

Ποτέ   δεν   ήταν   νέα   για  να   γεράσει.

Δεν   είναι   παράλυτη   ούτε   σε   καταστολή.

Ποτέ   της   δεν   μιλάει.

Δεν   την   αφορά   η   ελπίδα,   η   νιότη,   ούτε  η  

παντοτινή    αγάπη.

Κάθεται   μόνο   και   κοιτάζει.

Κάθεται  πλάι  στο  μεγάλο   μακρόστενο   παράθυρο

απ'  όπου   μπορεί   να   δει   το   μπλε.

Το  μπλε  που   ξεχειλίζει   από  τις  χούφτες  τ΄ ουρανού.

Το  πράσινο  που  τραγουδάει   ξαπλωμένο  στο  χορτάρι.

Το  κίτρινο  που  χορεύει  ανάμεσα  στα   στάχυα.

Το  κόκκινο  που  ανθίζει   σκαρφαλωμένο  στο  περβάζι.

Και  το  άσπρο

Το  άσπρο  που  περνάει  επάνω   σ'  ενα   σύννεφο,

δίχως  να  λογαριάζει. 

MY OLD LITTLE STORY

My story has now grown old, like a disabled old lady, in a permanent

suppression, inspired, by technical support, hooked up on a drip, dripping

verses of antibiotics.

It talks about hope, in a package, wrapped up as a present.

It talks about the beauty, the youth, the eternal love, and the alchemic

transformation, into lead, with a speck of logic.

But no my story is not like an old lady. She was never young to get old now.

She is not disabled, and neither suppressed. She never speaks, and she is

not concern about hope, youth, or even eternal love.

Just sitting there and observes, sitting next to the big long window where

you can see the blue…

The blue that overflows from the sky's hollow hands,

The green that sings lying on the grass.

The yellow that dances out in the field of wheat

The red that flowers up on the window perch

And the white…. yes the white, hanging off the clouds with no concerns at  all... 

ΛΕΥΚΕΣ ΣΕΛΙΔΕΣ 2005

ΣΤΑΘΜΟΣ  ΚΕΝΤΡΙΚΟΣ  
ΗΜΕΡΑ  ΒΡΟΧΕΡΗ



Πυκνά   σύννεφα   είχαν   σκεπάσει   τον  ουρανό.     Έρχονταν   βροχή.   Οι   περισσότεροι   άνθρωποι    είχαν  ταχύνει  το   βήμα  τους.   Άλλοι  δεν  νοιάζονταν.                             
Ο  μικροπωλητής   έσπρωξε   το  καρότσι   με    τις  εφημερίδες  και  τα  περιοδικά   κάτω   από   ένα    υπόστεγο.  Δίπλα   στη   βαριά   σιδερένια  πόρτα   του   σταθμού.   Κι   ήταν   αυτός   ο   πιό   μεγάλος,    ο   πιό   λαμπρός   σε  ολόκληρη  τη  xώρα.   Γραμμές    πολλές   έφευγαν  και   κατεφεύγαν   σ΄ αυτόν.   Κόσμος   χιλιάδες  περνούσε   από   ΄δω.   Κι   ένα   φως.   Φως   σκυθρωπό   έπνεε   από  τη   γυάλινη  σκεπή.     Και   κατέρεε   και  σηκώνονταν   σα   ζαλισμένη  σιωπή.   Σαν αχλή  χλομή  που  μέσα της  έπλεαν βουβές  σκιές σέρνοντας πίσω  τους  δυσκίνητες   αποσκευές.                                                                                                                                         Κάποιο   τρένο   ήρθε   και   σταμάτησε.   Γραμμή   τρία.   Το  ρολόι   χτύπησε   έξι   φορές.   Οι   πόρτες   άνοιξαν  και   οι   πρώτες   σταγόνες   έπεσαν   από   τον   ουρανό.   Κόσμος  κατέβηκε   πολύς.    Κάποιους  τους   περιμένε   μια  αγκαλιά.   Άλλοι   φόραγαν  στολές.   Είχε  ξεσπάσει   πόλεμος.   Δεν   μπορούσε  κανείς   να  μάθει   και   πολλά.  Αυτοί  που  ήξεραν  έλεγαν  πως  δεν   ήταν  μακριά.    Πως  δεν  θα  αργούσε,  θα  'φτανε  όπου  νάναι   μέχρι  εδώ.    "Ο  Θεός   δεν  θ' αφήσει   να  συμβεί   τέτοιο   κακό",    είπε  η  κυρία  που  κρατούσε  ένα  αγοράκι  από  το   χέρι   κι  έκανε  το  σταυρό   της.     Κάποιο   τρένο   ξεκίνησε  να  φύγει.   Γραμμή  δώδεκα.  Μαμά   θα   πάρουνε  και  το  μπαμπά?   Ο   κόσμος   χαιρετούσε   αυτούς   που  έμεναν   πίσω.  Χαμόγελα   και   συμβουλές,   ευχές   και   προσευχές   κι  οι   στρατιώτες  έστεκαν    χαμένοι.                                                                              
Γραμμή   εννιά,   τέσσερα,   δεκαεπτά.   Τα   μεγάφωνα   έβγαζαν   ανακοινώσεις,   οι   εφημερίδες   παραρτήματα  κι   ο   μικροπωλητής   το   ψωμί   του.   Είχε   αρχίσει   να   βρέχει  και  δεν   ήταν   πιά   νέος.    Οι   κινήσεις  του   ήταν   αργές.   Ξεχώρισε  και   τακτοποίησε   τα   χρήματα  στις  τσέπες  του.    Κέρματα  δεξιά.   Χαρτονομίσματα   αριστερά.    Ξεπούλησε   νωρίς.   Δυό   τρεις   εφημερίδες   είχαν  μείνει   μόνο   να   κρέμονται.   Σκέπασε   τα   περιοδικά,   έκλεισε   μέχρι   επάνω  το   μπουφάν   κι   έπιασε   να  σπρώχνει   το   καρότσι.   Βγήκε   στο   δρόμο   και   προχώρησε  μες  τη  βροχή.   Κι   έσβηνε  πίσω   του  ο  θόρυβος   από   το σταθμό.        
 Οι   εφημερίδες   που   είχαν   απομείνει   κρεμασμένες   είχαν   μουλιάσει   από   το   νερό   και   οι   πρώτες  σελίδες   άρχισαν  να  πέφτουν.     Σελίδες   λαμπρές.   Ένδοξες   στιγμές.   Αυτή   ήταν  η   ιστορία.   Έτσι  έλεγαν  τα  νέα.   Σκούπισε   το  πρόσωπό  του    και   συνέχισε   διασχίζοντας   έναν  από  τους   κεντρικούς   δρόμους   της   πόλης.    Αργά   και   σταθερά.    Συνέχιζε   έτσι   να   προχωράει   αφήνοντας   πίσω  του   σελίδες.   Σελίδες   που   συνέχιζαν   να   πέφτουν   παρασέρνοντας   μαζί   τους   τα  χρυσά   γράμματα   της   ιστορίας.     Μιάς   αρχικά   μετέωρης   και   αμήχανης   ιστορίας,   μέχρι    ν'  αρχίσει   να   ταλαντεύεται   ολοένα   πιο   γρήγορα   στο   ρυθμό   ενός   αιώνιου   εκκρεμούς,    ώσπου   να   παρασυρθεί    και  τελικά   βουλιάξει    στο   χείμαρο   των   ορμητικών   δακρύων.   Κάποιοι    διαβάτες    έτρεχαν    να   κρυφτούν    κάτω   από   κάποιο   υπόστεγο.      Άλλοι   δεν    νοιάζονταν. 


CENTRAL  STATION      
RAINY  DAY

Thick  clouds  had  covered  the  sky.  The  rain  was  approaching.
While  most  people  increased  their  pace,  others  didn't   care.
The  vendor  pushed  his  stroller  with  his  newspapers  and  magazines  under  a  small  tent,   next  to  the  heavy  iron  door  of  the  station.  And   it  was   this.  The  greatest  and  the  most  splendid  station  in  the  whole  country.  Many  lines  started  and  ended  there.  Thousands  of  people  would  come  and  go.  And  a  light,  a  gloomy  light   hung  in  the  wind  from  the  glass  roof.  And  it  faded  and  then  grew  bright  like  a  hazy  silence.  Like  a  pale  mist  which  within  stood  mute  shadows  carrying  unwieldy  luggage.
A  train  arrived.   Line  three.   The  big  clock  rang  six  times.  The  doors  flung  open  and  the  first  rain  drops  fell  from  the  sky.  Many  people  rushed  out  of  the  train.  Some  were  greeted by  hugs.   Others  wore  uniforms.  War  had  broken  out.  None  could  find  out  much  about  war.   The  true  reasons  and  the  consequences.  Those  who  knew  said  it  wasn't   far  away.  It  wouldn't  be  late.  It  would  be  here,  soon.     "God  wouldn't  allow  such  a  thing  to  happen",   exclaimed  a  young  lady  as  she  held  her  child  by  the  hand.  Someone  made  the  sign  of  the  cross  while  something  unclear  was  murmured.   A  train  departed.   Line  twelve.   "Mommy,  are  they  going  to  take  daddy?" 
Many  people  waved  their  last  farewell.   Smiles  and  advise.
Blessings  and  prayers  were  shouted.       Soldiers  stood  and  watched  as  the  promises  dissolved  and  disappeared  into  thin  air.      
Line  nine;   line  four,  fourteen  and  seventeen.       Τhe  loudspeakers   made  announcements,   the  newspapers  constantly  published   new  headlines  and  the  vendor  earned  the  bread  and   milk  for  his  children.   He  wasn't  young   anymore.  His  movements   were  slow.  He  separated   and  then  arranged  the  money  in  his  pockets.  Coins  on  the  right .  Paper bills  on  the  left.  He  sold  his  merchandise  early.  Two   or  three  newspapers
were  left  hanging  on  the  rope.   He  covered  the  magazines.  Buckled   his  jacket,  and  began  to  push  his  stroller.  He  walked  through  the  rain.   The  newspapers  that  had  been  left  hanging   from  the  rope  had  been  soaked  and  the  front  pages  had  begun  to  fall  off.   Illustrious  pages.  Glorious  moments.  That was  the  story.  That  was  the  news.  Glorious.  He  wiped  his  face.  And  went  on  crossing  one  of  the  city's  central  roads.   A
bright  road  where  victorious  marches  had  taken  place  long  ago.
And  then  wiped  his  face  again.   Αnd  went  on  slowly  and  steadily.  He  went  on  pushing  his  stroller  as  the  pages  fell  behind.  With  the  fallen  pages  drifted  the  golden  letters  of  history.  An  impetuous  history  at  first.  Then  a  hovering  and  puzzled  one.   And  then  a  wavering  history  grasped  from  the  iron  hand  of  the  eternal  pendulum,   which  drifted  and  finally  sank  from  the  torrent  of  the  unstoppable  tears.   Some  people
had  increased  their  pace,  as  they  looked  for  a  shed  to  stay  under.   Others  didn't  care.

                    

      

 

Gas Station Angel ( oil on panel 80 X 60 )

Nebulous Realm ( oil on panel 90 X 60 )

Untitled ( oil on canvas 60 X 100 )

Mindscape ( oil on canvas 40 X 50 )

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Zone ( oil on canvas 30 X 60 )

Zone 2 ( oil on canvas 30 X 60 )