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| Tο τελευταίο σημείωμα (The last note) |
On May 1, 2019 I was flying from Athens to Denver on an United Arab Emirate flight that was completely full. As usual, I flew economy and was a little distressed that my surprisingly petite "B" seat was located between an African American couple ("A" and "C")--distressed not by their race (I hasten to add) but by their size. Those who know me personally are aware I wear size double X shirts and am embarrassed to confess that I'm "morbidly obese" according to dietitians. My mirror assures me I'm not that fat--and I was considerably more svelte than the very polite--but truly enormous--couple between whom I was sandwiched.
There was no way I could take out my laptop (or even a tablet if I had had one) on this rather long flight (just to New York or Dulles--can't recall which). I think it was 10 hours duration. I don't always watch movies on a plane, but that was obviously going to be the best way to pass time (although we somehow managed to jostle meals en route). I don't want to brag, but I am an unusually good traveler. Not many things faze me when I'm traveling, and I do remember I even managed a pretty good snooze at one point during this flight...but it was a very long flight indeed!
I did squeeze in two movies. I am always amazed at how many movies they manage to make available on flights. I am a lover of movies--and what surprises me even more is despite scrolling through dozens and dozens of flick promos, surprisingly few have any interest for me (I hate movies with gratuitous blood, almost any "action picture" I find boring, let's skip the cartoons this flight, then there are those sincere, heartfelt dramas that turn my stomach and finally a few old classics I occasionally like to revisit). One of my recent flights had a Wes Anderson movie (I was thrilled outta my mind! "Moonrise Kingdom"--loved it btw). Emirates had the usual vast store of unacceptable titles--I scrolled through. Somehow I'd managed to miss "Ghostbusters" when it first came out in 1984. I watched it...watchable at the time, although I have no residue of memory about it (bad sign). Perhaps because I was too focused on finding the ghost "Slimer" who my good buddy Bill Adams told me decades ago looked like an albino Scrophularia macrantha flower [there! I did it: snuck in a botanical reference!--the inclusion of this little essay in my very chlorophilic Blog is now justified!]
It's a long flight...I scrolled the endless list of English-speaking mediocre films again and again. This WAS an Emirates flight after all--and sure enough there was a vast array of OTHER film offerings: dozens of films in Arabic (obviously), a whole section of Japanese movies, Chinese, Korean, French, German and by God! there was a section of GREEK movies. I'd just spent two weeks in Greece--and I speak Greek for Heaven's sake! I'll watch one of those...
I picked The Last Note
You can read a synopsis and even watch the trailer for this movie here. The storyline is an echo of Sophie's choice, only here the protagonist must choose another prisoner to replace him or join the 200 who were sent to the firing squad. He chooses to join the 200. Among whom was also my uncle.
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| Panagiotis Kornaros (painting in my home) |
Not long into watching the movie I realized, of course, that my uncle might well have been part of the plot--and as I saw the group shots of the prisoners in the concentration camp I imagined him among them--I kept wondering if he (or a actor portraying him) might even be granted a cameo.
The final scene where the doomed are being marched from Haidari to Kaisairiani to their death, I looked intently, intensively at the marchers, as if I might have caught a glimpse of him among them.
In the credits, however, all 200 martyrs (the cream of the progressive Greek intelligentsia of the time) were listed by name. And I spied his there among them.
I don't think that outwardly I showed the shock and agony I experienced inside myself as the film drew to a close. I sat there stunned for some time. Somehow the date, May 1, 1944 was evident--perhaps in the description of the movie, or in the closing scenes. It didn't take long for me to recall that my flight was taking place on May 1, 2019.
There's something fatidic about anniversaries--the 75th being somehow more resonant than had it been the 72nd or 83rd, say.
I am not particularly superstitious, nor prone to conspiracy theories. Although in a vague pantheistic fashion, I can be accused of being spiritual. My life, however, is rife with uncanny coincidences--this being a particularly succulent example., Something I attribute more to a sort of Nabokovian temporal patterning rather than true Fate or the Master's hand.
Who knows, maybe I'm wrong?
Postscript.
I posted a link to this blog post on Facebook where it was subsequently barred--because it alleged I was trying to solicit "likes"! I did enter a protest and hope they change their minds.*
*Follow up to that postscript: Facebook recanted and posted my link to this blog (to give them credit): the protest worked!
Thank you...I had no idea about your wonderful uncle...Thank you for sharing this wonderful person with us...The history of our planet is filled with brave people who stood up against tyranny and injustices...and I'm grateful to you for your outlook which makes me hope for our future. It's always important that we speak out ...and care.. Again many thanks!!!
ReplyDeleteFrom East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, Chapter 34
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught–in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too–in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well–or ill?
Herodotus, in the Persian War, tells a story of how Croesus, the richest and most-favored king of his time, asked Solon the Athenian a leading question. He would not have asked it if he had not been worried about the answer. “Who,” he asked, “is the luckiest person in the world?” He must have been eaten with doubt and hungry for reassurance. Solon told him of three lucky people in old times. And Croesus more than likely did not listen, so anxious was he about himself. And when Solon did not mention him, Croesus was forced to say, “Do you not consider me lucky?”
Solon did not hesitate in his answer. “How can I tell?” he said. “You aren’t dead yet.”
And this answer must have haunted Croesus dismally as his luck disappeared, and his wealth and his kingdom. And as he was being burned on a tall fire, he may have thought of it and perhaps wish he had not asked or not been answered.
And in our time, when a man dies–if he has had wealth and influence and power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments–the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil?–which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come from it?”