Elegy

( Today would've been my father's 75th birthday.  )

 I had to do the math a couple times, as I couldn't believe he'd died so young.  He seemed to have packed a lot more living into his 70 years than seems possible.  Of course, 70 years was also far too short a time for him to live; he was one of those rare people gifted with both the desire and ability to enjoy life.  He paid attention to his senses, he formed opinions, he used his considerable intellect to philosophize on what he experienced, and his artistic skills to render an even truer version of the world.  He never stopped learning.  He never stopped trying to, as Georgia O'Keefe said, "Fill the space beautifully."

I think of him every day.  Since Mallory was born, I dream of him every night.  In my dreams he calls to talk to me, or we go to take Mallory for a visit.  I see my father in my son (Mal bears my dad's name as his middle name), and I hope I can raise Mallory to be like my father: tough, competent, unafraid of physical labor, enjoying competition, appreciating things aesthetic.

At the family service for my father, I read Poe's words (the singer, not the author) as a poem:

If you were here
I know that you would
Truly be amazed
At what's become of what you made
If you were here
You would know how I treasured every day
How every single word you spoke
Echoes in me like a memory of hope

When you were here
You could not feel the value that I placed
On every look that crossed your face
When you were here
I did not know just how I had embraced
All that you hid behind your face
Could not hide from me
'cause it hid in me too

Now that I'm here I hear you
And wonder if maybe you can hear yourself
Ringing in me now that you're somewhere else
'Cause I hear your strange music gentle and true
Singing inside me with the best parts of you
Now that I'm here
I hope somewhere you hear them too
Now that I'm here
I love you

But this poem by Tolkein seems apt also - my father wasn't given to sitting by the fire thinking too much, but he was the one who told me that there are more shades of green in the world than of any other color.  And he would've much preferred the company of friends, wife, and family to telling over old thoughts.  And for me, I listen for his feet and his voice at the door.

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer
in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

Jackhammer

The demos of Papagou has decided to jackhammer up the sidewalk across from our house. This is the only sidewalk for blocks, and while it's, like most Athenian sidewalks, largely unusable, it's all we've got.

The reason they're removing it is because it's "dangerous." The workers gave 2 reasons:

1) It's uneven and broken. Well, yes. But since any new sidewalk will still have trees planted in the middle of it, it too will be uneven and broken over the roots.

2) It's slippery. Again, yes. More so lately, as the park's sprinkler system saturates it every evening, and that freezes solid by morning, so that you absolutely cannot walk on the pure (combined with #1, figure a terrain where every square foot is canted a different angle, some jutting 5-6 inches in the air, all peaks and valleys...now ice that). And yeah, pretty much all the sidewalks here are slippery, as they were made out of slippery concrete.

So they are putting in non-skid concrete. Woo-hoo. We still won't be able to walk on the sidewalk, because you have to slalom around the trees, and the trees (mostly oranges, some olives) are so short you have to duck a good 5 inches while slaloming. While doing this you have to avoid the occasional car parked on the sidewalk between trees and the fence put up to prevent just this. You also have to step over tree roots. And dog turds. The sidewalk is coated with dog turds. And of course I can't take a stroller on the sidewalk, even if it were flat, as it's only 10 inches wide.

I suppose I should be glad they are trying to improve the neighborhood somehow, but I would spend the money somewhere else. Some technology beyond a broom made of sticks for the street-cleaners, maybe, or building an actual dog park. Or rounding up the strays. Cleaning up the graffiti. Putting money into a waste disposal plan so that the landfill (only one for all of Attica) isn't too full, and trash would stop piling up in the streets.

Ah well...I can't even communicate why I think stoplights should be on the opposite side of the street from where the cars stop.