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Greek Almonds and my Childhood Summers

May 8, 2019

This post is a stream-of-consciousness post. If you liked the one on coffee and summer afternoons, you’ll like this one too. If you found that one too chaotic and nonsensical, leave now – because this one isn’t any different. Greek almonds; and childhood summers; and coffee (yeah, I know);

Stream-of-consciousness means I just type whatever comes to mind; or pours from it, rather. I don’t think we, authors, have much control over what pours from our creative minds. At least we shouldn’t, I believe.

Our brains are filtering devices, that try to help us cope with all the brutality out there. The thing is, filtering out the brutality takes some of the beauty with it.

Greek almonds. Coffee. Summer. My childhood. There’s a certain visuality in this photo that is unique to me and me alone. Perhaps there’s another, unique to you – and very different than mine.

What does all this have to do with Greece, summers, almonds, and my childhood? What does it mean? It means what you want it to mean.

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Despair or Apognosis (excerpts from To Cross an Ocean)

January 1, 2018

Fiction

action, book, despair, experience, fiction, Greece, knowledge, trauma

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“Apognosis” – besides forming part of the title of To Cross an Ocean: Apognosis – means something very unique. As you might guess, it is a Greek work (Απόγνωσις), fairly common in Greek. It basically means “despair”, but its etymology is revealing. Apognosis literally means to willingly abandon knowledge. Although I didn’t coin the original word, I would claim its first usage in the English language.

But what does the phrase “to willingly abandon knowledge” could possibly refer to? How can you pretend not to know something? Instead of offering a long philosophical diatribe on the matter, I’ll have two of the characters of the novel do the hard work. That’s one of the roles of fiction, anyway: to make complex issues accessible and relatable.

Despair, apognosis — Come home, all is forgiven…

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