Snippets of escape
Writing freely after a strange internal tumult in a busy life does not come easily, especially when setting out to express a certain set of emotions so difficult to grasp and so innately personal. As the cold and pleasingly dreary weather of Brussels seeps into my bones, no better time could be selected to reflect on the epoch of lockdown and subsequent release in a very different land.
As the pandemic continues to evolve and as life becomes continually complicated for young people feeling slightly helpless and disconnected, I thought it appropriate to dig through the photographic archive and relive last year’s contrast between emptiness and liberation in Athens. We’ll start on the stage of an ancient city driven empty by the virus, accomplishing what the Persians did millennia ago. And then will come the snippet of escape, Sounio.
Words alone are not enough to convey the truly strange nature of that time. To my assistance I bring photographs taken with a Hasselblad 500C produced in the early 1950’s and a Nikon F3 press camera. The film was developed with patience in a newly constructed darkroom in my home in Athens. Scores of negatives still need to be scanned, but alas, I am far away from the red light and aroma of fixer, missing it evermore as the first snowfall reaches Brussels.
It is amazing also, what the written word can chose to say and remember, and what it can chose to omit and forget — very much unlike a photograph which captures all in its path
It has always been my belief that photographs are not only visual representations of the past, they are the past in physical form. For especially in a film negative, the silver crystals suspended in the emulsion itself, capture the photons which have traveled time and space immemorial to be frozen and beholden perpetually. As such, photographs can well be considered time machines rather than tapestries of light.
Prologue — A silent city
Before dreaming of the calls of ring-necked doves and the symphony of crickets in hot summer fields and other natural beck and calls of freedom, a contrast should be struck by remembering the image of an ancient city, in a state of sede vacante (prima facie).
Arriving from Leamington Spa for Christmas in Athens in 2020 allowed a for view of the city both cocooning itself and then subsequently reopening in the early spring. It was within that first, most sad period, that we shall make a start.
I remember, vividly, coming to own my first car in that period. It’s a small two seater Smart which I adore and which would help take me on many adventures in the wonderful countryside later on in Summer.
The last day shops were open, I had driven to the centre to buy chemicals to develop film from Skiadopolos, in the university neighbourhood. Night had fallen over Athens, and tuning the car’s radio to ERT 1 (the national broadcaster) to listen to the latest coronavirus health measures laid out by the Minister of Health, left me unsurprised — separation from liberty was to come. For then, on that December night, I knew that the rest of Christmas, and likely the rest of my academic year, would be spent in another round of isolation and lockdown. It was not over yet, and I drove home with a distinct scent of petulant lament in the cabin.
Measures would only progressively get worse over the winter period. At one point in February, I remember distinctly that we could not travel outside of our neighbourhoods for any reason, except for medical emergencies. And if you did want to drive past the borders set by decree, you had to avoid the police patrol cars stationed in the major arteries of the city. So the winter passed, erasing traces of time.
Sounio— The snippet
In his great Nobel Prize speech in 1957, Albert Camus remarked “la liberté est dangereuse, dure à vivre autant qu’exaltante” (liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating). And with this in mind, the first steps out of lockdown in April took their pace. Still with no access to vaccines.
As a first breath of freedom, I elected to visit Cape Sounio, on the outskirts of Athens about an hour’s drive in light traffic. No other place can bring nature and mythology closer together than Sounio, doing so through the device of King Aegeus’ story from the 8th or 9th century BC.
The Hero Theseus, the complex son of King Aegeus of Athens, set out to defeat the Minotaur in Crete. He had promised his father that if he was successful in this feat he would hoist white sails upon his return to Attica’s shores, and if he had perished in the trial, black sails would be put up in mourning. As King Aegeus stood on Cape Sounion’s cliff edge he saw black sails, and plunged his body into the sea below — giving his name to the blue waters we love today, the Aegean. As is well known, Theseus was successful in his quest and simply forgot his promise. Much grief would have been spared of both parties if only promises were remembered, but, the beautiful myth would have perished instead.
Centuries later, the great Greek historian and philosopher Plutarch wrote the story of Theseus as it had been passed by voices through Time.
Τῇ δέ Ἀττικῇ προσφερομένων ἐκλαθέσθαι μέν αὐτόν, ἐκλαθέσθαι δέ τόν κυβερνήτην ὑπό χαρᾶς ἐπάρασθαι τό ἱστίον ᾧ τήν σωτηρίαν αὐτῶν ἔδει γνώριμον τῷ Αἰγεῖ γενέσθαι: τόν δέ ἀπογνόντα ῥῖψαι κατά τῆς πέτρας ἑαυτόν καί διαφθαρῆναι. καταπλεύσας δέ ὁ Θησεύς ἔθυε μέν αὐτός ἃς ἐκπλέων θυσίας εὔξατο τοῖς θεοῖς Φαληροῖ, κήρυκα δέ ἀπέστειλε τῆς σωτηρίας ἄγγελον εἰς ἄστυ. (Plutarch, Theseus 22.1)
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It is said, moreover, that as they drew nigh the coast of Attica, Theseus himself forgot, and his pilot forgot, such was their joy and exultation, to hoist the sail which was to have been the token of their safety to Aegeus, who therefore, in despair, threw himself down from the rock and was dashed in pieces. But Theseus, putting in to shore, sacrificed in person the sacrifices which he had vowed to the gods at Phalerum when he set sail, and then dispatched a herald to the city to announce his safe return.
For Aegeus, who feared not great Love.
Why reflect?
I suppose then what has pushed me to write again is not a naïve sensation of random nostalgia under the ruby haze of port. Rather, it is a true feeling that as Omicron slowly starts to take over, we are entering another alienating time in Europe, and that this Christmas will bear some of the aftertastes from the last.
Reflecting on the myth that brings colour to these black and white images gives a certain weight by connection to my most serious philosophical interest, the passage of Time. This myth sews together in parallel two totally different worlds through Time.
Remembering the feeling of pushing the accelerator down and having the tiny engine of that Smart roar on the highway for the first time is gratifying as a true experience of freedom.
Thinking of the passage of Time as a concept is fulfilling and immeasurably interesting. To have experienced the first steps of freedom after lockdown at a place so striking in the annals of Civilisation was, at the core, a humbling experience. This sense of awe in the face of an unchanging and indifferent power, Time, is indescribable. My only hope with this work is to have, somehow, awakened this awe in the minds of any reader and made it accessible to anyone’s experiences given the time and strength to explore in bewilderment.
Let us hope then, that after this hard winter has passed, that snippets of escape fall within grasp.
O.D.
Brussels — Βρυξέλλες
