Ποιειν Και Πραττειν - create and do

Lunch and Dinner

by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke

It was a beautiful sky-blue day: there was a kind of madness in the air. Men’s cheek-bones shone like applies just picked and the way youth-flowers were walking made you feel as if you had just been invited to the funfair of life.
Birds were flying in the air like kisses and the sky was all around you, hugging you like a hairy chest. I was trying to remember certain names that once upon a time used to sound like pastoral symphonies and the birthdays of the stars.
Which was my favorite animal? Zodiac? Which fate did I believe would suit me best? Which period of my life would I like to relive again and again?

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Ideas, ideas and impulses: go, write this down or why did you forget those two lines, they were inspired….
But worries made eruption again like a crude landlord asking for the rent, long overdue….And I had to go there and there, I had to call the doctor, ask the chemist, find the lawyer. I had to take care of my everydayness and that of my companion as well. “So, I said to my soul, leave aside the after-life of the imagination and concentrate on things of this life. What is born and destined to die requires a lot more care, attention and sacrifice than what is not yet born on paper and its genes contain immortality…But…oh! The milk over boiled…I left the food burn…I forgot to buy bread and now it is too late, the baker is closed.

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And then there are all these kind and caring friends, polite acquaintances, who stop me in the streets and ask very concerned: “How are you? What are you preparing these days?” And they have in mind something like “Les Miserables” or “Crime and Punishment”…My standard answer is: lunch and dinner. That’s what I prepare and serve daily. Luckily breakfast is prepared by him, the rabbit.

Athens 8.3.2005
Woman’s day

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