The year was 2010, or maybe 2011, I can't remember, but the place was definitely Athens. The tide of life had brought me to Greece and Athens, the soul and cancer of Greece, the concrete megapolis in the middle of its greatest crisis... Everything seemed to decay, everything seemed to fall apart and to burn. Every week a new demonstration on Syntagma square looked ready to engulf for good the Parliament... But no. Athens and Greece are always stronger and more stubborn than what you think. Remember Grexit??? Eventually the United Kingdom is out of Europe before Greece.
And me, newly arrived, peripapetician looking around me with blurry eyes for the ruins of the Hellenistic world, or at least its ghost... Slave by day to the capitalistic machine... And haunting the filthy streets of the capital of the new world order by night, chasing the ghosts of Cavafis, Homer, Aristotle, or Thucydides (i had always been an avid reader of the classics).
This is how one fine day, pushing along the limits of the Kallimarmon stadium, this anachronistic shell of white marble on the edge of the old town, I ventured through the street called oδoς Ἄγρας (Agras Street) and my eyes, used to decypher painfully the Cyrillics characters, stumbled upon a fine copper plaque bearing the ominous but curiously uplifting following verses:
The house was old, unkempt, and its curtains and shutters closes didn't give a clue about who or what was living here. I mean, who or what at the exception of the cats who seemed to be here the real landlords and the real masters. Here, from the outskirts of the Pangrati neighbourhood, these cats were telling me, from the patio and from the stairs, behind those iron doors, that they would not be bothered by anything from the human world, because the human world had no dominion here.
It was a real find, and was immediately a mystery, an enigma, which I never managed to uncover. A quick search informed me that a few of the lucky people who found this place on their peregrinations were thunderstruck just like me by that strange place and its feline inhabitants, but no one could really explain that place. But does it really need any explanation?
Since then, every time life becomes harder, or more enigmatic, I like to tell myself those three verses - who, as far as I know, are unic and have not been quoted from any poet or any book - and Life recovers its unfathomable balance. For me, it means that everything passes, and that you should not try to drive yourself crazy mastering something which is not worth it.
I just wanted to share that with you tonight. I wanted it for a long time. I regret not having taken good picture of the place, so I rely on what I found on Internet, but these three verses and this house will still be behind my eyelids and on my lips until I die.
Sources:
http://www.my-favourite-planet.de/blogs/cheshire-cat/2011/cheshire-cat-blog-10-2011.html
http://mycat.e-steki.gr/showthread.php?t=24028
http://llogopedia.blogspot.com.es/2010/12/blog-post.html
http://lexilogia.gr/forum/showthread.php?7686-The-cat-I-remain