Kefalonia – Greece

Whilst I was in Greece and spoke Greek and English only, I remarked how much influence the Greek language had on other languages, not only English, but French, German etc., too. As far as I heard, about 12% of the English words have a Greek provenance. Another friend of mine was claiming that 40.000 words were of Greek origin. I have collected a few words that have a Greek origin to illustrate it to you. Maybe you never thought about it using them. You will see that all these words have a high value, dealing with medicine, physics, mathematics, philosophy etc.

Of course, Greek philosophers, mathematicians and physicists like Socrates, Plato, Aristoteles, Epicur, Thales, Democrit and Pythagoras have found out a lot of very interesting things already several thousand years ago, that still have a value today. I am glad that I grew up within such very old culture and hope that this interests you, too.

Here are some words with Greek origins and some photos from Kefalonia/Greece:

 

Alphabet, algorithms, algebra, autocratic, auto-immune, audio, archeology, anthroposophy, anthropology, automobile, apocalypse, autonomy, aesthetic, androgyny, autobiography, angel, aphrodisiac, aster, astrophysical

Bible, bombardment, biological, butter

Catastrophe, charity, coffee, character, claustrophobia, clitoris, chronology, chaos, carrot, curtain

Democracy, demography, dictator, dermatologist, dynamic, diagnosis, diaphanous, dehydrator, dyslexia, disharmony

Empathy, encyclopedia, ethnic, ephemeral, encyclopedia, erotic, Europe, eurythmic

Fantasy, fibromyalgia

Gynecology, geography, gymnastics, glucose, gym, geological

Histology, harmony, helium, history, hydroxide, hypochondriac, hysteric, Hellenic, hydrant

Ichtiology, isotope, ion, icon

Krypton

Logophobia, logopedics, lexicon, lithograph

Macroscopic, microscope, metamorphosis, mathematics, museum, magnetometer, magic, monastery, myoma, mythological, mathematician

Narcissist, nautical, numismatic, neon, neurotic, nymph

Orgasm, oxidized, oregano, olive, ocean

Psychology, paradise, photo, polychrome, pathologic, philosophy, philharmonic, polyglot, photosynthesis, poem, pneumonia, paragraph, paradigm, psychopath, parasitic, palliative, physics, polygamous, polyp, physicist

Radiography, radiophone, rhythm

Skeleton, sympathy, symphony, symbol, synonym

Triptych, telephone, therapy, theology, theory, taxi, television, telegraph, thanatophoric, telegram, tavern

Umbrella

Vasectomy

Xylophone, xenophobia, xylography

Yoghurt

Zoo

Evening mood

I have been in Greece for some weeks and couldn’t work on my blog. I have made a lot of photos, which I am still processing. I will post today some photos with evening moods and a story I have written in Greece. Hope you are all fine and enjoy my story:

The sun was setting in reddish colors, from salmon to dark-red and then purple against the still dove-blue sky. Every minute the firmament turned darker blue, periwinkle-blue and furthermore black. The afterglow slowly disappeared behind the stark mountains, only a few frayed cirrostratus clouds were moving slowly and idly, still lit by the sun in light salmon, looking soft, sweet and billowy like sugar candy. I mingled into the enchanted twilight and looked up into the sky awestruck. How beautiful and moving it was! How divine! Only angelic music would have fit to accompany this pageant.

Myriads of stars inflamed a candle, with a peaceful and calm grandeur which they have since millions of years. The earth lay motionless and silent as if it was waiting for a sign, like an orchestra waiting for a maestro’s baton. A dog was barking somewhere and some birds shrieked a last goodbye to this wonderful day. Their songs sounded somehow sorrowful and plaintive like a dirge. It seemed, they were as lugubrious as me that the day was dying. I could very well understand their sadness, as my heart was void, only filled with loneliness.

The full moon had risen in milky white and looked at me gleaming with astonishment, with an open mouth, but very kindly, like an old friend. The mountains in the background seemed like huge irregular papers cuts. The little villages at the steeps were glittering like diamond necklaces by their lantern lights. The violins of the cicadas played a perpetual, monotonous melody, some sort of a melancholic ballad. There were no other sounds now, only some owls were calling mockingly or even plaintiff in the opaque darkness from far away. Unexpectedly one of them was flying up in the brightness of the flood lights, mysterious and completely silent. Little cats were lurking around the garbage containers with glowing eyes as if they had swallowed two candles. At the gulf, gazing between the silvery branches of the olive trees, the moon painted reflections on the sea in fluid quicksilver. The water looked viscous and sullen. The sea was dead calm, like oil. A distant ferry boat crossed the fluid mirror image of the moon and divided it in two pieces. Huge planets appeared close to the moon in competition with the Milky Way. It reminded me of an old German childrens’ song „ do you know how many stars there are in the firmament? Do you know how many clouds there are in the sky? God has counted all of them so that none is missing..“ It somehow consoled me that someone had counted them all. To look into the starlit sky is one of these wonders that leave me completely overwhelmed and stunned behind.

The night-shrouded reed was crinkling faintly and mysteriously and swaying in a short, soft evening breeze, bowing like an old woman in front of an altar. It sounded like the flapping wings of some huge beetles and then it was dead silent again. I felt like the little prince being completely alone on my star.

Bats were dashing around the very few street lanterns to catch insects. The warm, soft air was like a lover’s caress, and filled with the intense, yearning odor of jasmine and wild herbs. I thought, my heart would burst. I wished that this evening would last forever, for an eternity of my own. My life is just a blink in the universe, only love can make it an eternity, I thought. I wanted to share this beauty with somebody I loved for an eternity of love. Thus it would have made a sense. Shortly after, the fairy of the night was coating me with her black, warm, velvety veil. I put my head into her lap and slept without dreaming in gratitude for what I had seen and experienced.

 

 

Old doors Kefalonia, Greece

Ajar door, double leaf door,  unhinged door, wide door, single door, hinged door, grating door, banging door, dead door, hidden door, armored door, toilet door, slamming door, double door, adorned door, closed door, colorful door, wooden door ……old doors Kefalonia….

Serendipity – snapshots

Walking and roaming through Argostoli and Lixouri/Kefalonia always gives me a lot of inspirations. I’m an observer and see a lot of things and details others don’t see. All my antennas are out when I’m roaming around and I always find a lot of strange, funny, crazy, sad, weird or beautiful things that I want to show you here, be it a cat waiting at the harbor for a share of  fish, be it a dead cockroach that looks quite innocent and even graceful in death and which would have made me scream if it would have crawled around, be it a cactus outside of a hairdresser shop, be it the wonderful sprayed picture of an old Indian on the backwheel of a motorbike, be it a beautiful exotic unknown flower, be it an effigy, be it a blooming cactus in a backyard, be it an adorned trunk in front of a library, be it a snake somebody had formed out of sand, be it a tourist that gave some love to a stray cat before the ferry arrived, be it a war memorial with two cannons, be it some very old columns outside of churches that have withstood the earthquakes, be it a fisherman with a first customer etc. All these are snapshots from Kefalonia, my island in the sun.

 

When the last roses are blooming…

 

When the last roses are blooming in withering colors and their buds don’t dare to unfurl anymore, the world is slowly getting sad and grey, and my heart is filled with wistfulness as if a witch had pulled a night blue veil over my head. Summer gives a feeling of eternity, but autumn and winter a feeling of decay and death which weighs heavily on my heart.

Bright colors are leaving the earth like the God of the sun is drifting away in his carriage to give place to the moon and the darkness.

The sun loses its brightness and lightness and gives a melancholic touch to the earth. Dew drops are clinging at rose petals like my tears for the gone summer. The colors of decay adorn nature with resentment and opaqueness – a beauty in decay.

I photographed these last roses in Kefalonia in our landlord’s garden.

The Goddess of Dawn

EOS – the Goddess of dawn

When I woke-up the last morning in Kefalonia, it was still completely dark and calm outside. After a short while a very faint blueish light appeared behind the stark mountains and let them look like huge paper-cuts. Some minutes later the mountains were slightly illuminated from behind in a tender salmon color, and then the sky changed from minute to minute, getting more and more beautiful, colorful and impressive. I took out my camera to photograph one of the most spectacular sunrises I have ever seen. It seemed as if this was a goodbye-present from my island. It was really the divine birth of a new day.

I remembered that the old Greeks had a lot of Gods and Goddesses like Artemis, the Goddess of hunt, Hermes, the God of thieves, commerce and travelers,  Dionysos, the God of wine and ecstasy, Nyx, the Goddess of night, Selene, the Goddess of the Moon and Helios, the God of the sun.  They were not infallible like our Gods nowadays; they had very human character attributes: they were cruel, they had love affairs, they started wars etc.

The old Greeks had a Goddess of dawn, too, named Eos, and she was supposed to wear a tiara out of rubies. That’s what I saw at this moment. It was overwhelming.

Eos was the sister of Selene (moon) and Helios (sun). What a nice family.

Eos‘  throne stood at the spring of river Oceanus. With her horses and carriage she appeared every morning out of river Oceanus. She drove in front of her brother Helios (the God of the sun) with her own carriage when he travelled heaven’s tent from morning to evening after she disappeared.

She was supposed to be very graceful, beautiful, had curly hair, rosy arms and fingers and a saffron-colored dress (according to Homer).

Once Eos had a love affair with Ares, the God of war. Aphrodite (the Goddess of love) was very angry about her and took vengeance by giving Eos an insatiable demand for young men. Since that time she had to look for young men on her way across the firmament. This made her blush, and the sky blushed, too. She was said to have had a lot of love-affairs…  I must admit I really fell in love with these nice allegories and mythologies because they were very logical, vivid and metaphorical.

I guess, this morning Eos had found a very attractive young man and she blushed a lot. I wish I had seen him, too.

Views of decay – Kefalonia/ Greece

I don’t know why I’m so attracted by decay but for me it has even more beautiful colors and transfers more feelings than new and modern things. All these old things have some kind of a soul, a story to tell, a history; they have been used in good and in bad times and that’s noticeable. People have vanished without a trace but some old things are still there to tell their stories. The music that would fit these photos would be the blues because some of these photos are very blue, but still very honest. These old things don’t pretend to be new or young like some people, they just show their “wrinkles”, having gone through sun and rain, storm or even earthquakes, and I feel respect for every year they have lived, endured and enjoyed their lifetime – if one can say so about objects.

Mediterranean flowers and plants

Whenever I’m in Kefalonia/Greece I like to see the different kind of greenery. Wonderful and colorful flowers and plants are growing in the warm Mediterranean sun and they get along with very little water.

On my photographs you can see the following plants and flowers: a fan palm leaf, the fruits of an opuntia (some are edible), zinnia flowers with visitors, a jaccaranda tree in bloom, a yellow poppy, cyclamen and iris, a ziziphus tree with fruits, which are called “Chinese dates” (they are edible, very tasty and healthy, but quite rare), a tecomaria, an amaryllis belladonna (which is poisonous), a podranea and a datura.

Sitting here in the dark grey November weather in Hamburg I love to look at the photos from Kefalonia because I can remember the wonderful warm sun in Greece. I’m looking forward to going there next year. I wish you all sun in your hearts.

Excursions in Kefalonia – Greece

I’m driving on narrow roads through little villages that cling to the mountains like swallow nests. The road is leading higher and higher until I reach a piazza where it goes down again in endless serpentines to the sea. Suddenly I’m falling into the deep blue; the sky and the sea unite like two people making love. I immerse into this blue color like diving into the sparkling eyes of a lover, falling and falling into death.

The landscape is very remote and lonely, no sounds except the bells of sheep and goats. I see Cyprus trees upright like candles in the sun. Unknown birds are flying away quickly and shy. The air is soft like a stroke with a feather and smells like wild herbs. Two enchanted swallowtail butterflies are tenderly circling around each other in a late summer yearning. There are some few tufted clouds like a necklace of cotton wool hanging at the mountain-edge in a soft, silent sadness that fills my heart with speechlessness. Suddenly the sun is squinting over the mountains and sends some sun-rays down to the earth to warm my heart.

When I come down to the beach, a Goddess has poured fluid turquoise, emerald and lapis lazuli colors into the sea and finally threw millions of diamonds on top to glitter. The warm sun caresses my body like a velveteen veil in an endless hug. I close my eyes and see orange and purple colors and feel like in the womb of a mother. There’s complete silence, only a bird is singing a short little love song. The sea is calm, there’s only a faint smacking noise from the crystal clear little waves running ashore like two lips finding each other in a cautious soft first kiss. I dive into the emerald sea to clean my body from all the bad in order to emerge from the foam like Aphrodite.

While driving home, a man with a mournful voice, accompanied by a shepherd flute and a bouzouki is singing in the radio “I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for you, I loved you more than you loved me”, and it’s so blue to see all the beauty in sadness because nobody is singing it for me.

I’m looking into the blue, endlessly blue sky and ask myself: where does this blue end? It only ends every evening, when the sky gets salmon first and dark afterwards, and the stars are starting to sparkle like they did millions of years before me and will do millions of years after me.

Wild and domestic animals in Kefalonia

Right now, shortly before I leave again to Kefalonia, I would like to show you some wild and domestic animals from Kefalonia.

Every year we usually see a lot of stray cats and dogs which I pity a lot. But slowly people tend to have these animals at their houses and treat them more or less well.

In the last years we never saw Greek tortoises on Kefalonia, but last year we found three of them on the street. We quickly stopped to put them a bit further into the wilderness. We remarked that it were 2 males and a female. The guys were fighting for the female. It was interesting to look at. Two years ago we found a huge marginal tortoise on another street and stopped again to put it somewhere else. In the main city named Argostoli you can see 5-7 loggerheads every day at the harbour bassin. These animals are very huge and impressive and not very shy. They are waiting at the fishing boats for the remnants of the nets.

Of course you can see a lot of sheep and goats all over Greece which provide very healthy and delicious sheep and goat cheese, which is so good in a Greek salad.

I felt very sorry for the grey horse. It was fenced in at a very remote place, completely alone and was so happy when I came to stroke it and to feed it with grass.

I will fly to Greece in some days. I’m looking forward to the sun. It might be possible that I cannot work on my blog in the next weeks, but in my thoughts I am with you all, my dear friends.