ON THE STREET OF THE PHILHELLENES

To Conrad Russel Rooks

One day as I was walking down the Street of Philhellenes, the asphalt softened beneath my feet and from the trees in the square the sound of cicadas could be heard, in the heart of Athens, in the heart of summer. Despite the high temperature, the movement was lively. Suddenly, a funeral passed by. Behind it followed five or six cars with mourners, and while the sounds of stifled wails reached my ears, for a moment the movement came to a halt.

Then, some of us (strangers among ourselves in the crowd) looked into each other’s eyes with anxiety, trying to guess each other's thoughts. Then, all at once, like a rush of dense waves, the movement resumed. It was July. Buses were passing by on the street, packed with sweating people - a variety of men, slender youths and heavyset men with mustaches, from stout housewives or skeletal ones, and from many young girls and students, in whose tight backsides and pulsating breasts, many of the crowd, as was natural, struggled to make the usual in such places touches, the ones so heavy and ceremonial.

Yes, it was July; and not only the Street of Philhellenes, but also the Dapia of Messolonghi and Marathon and the Phallos of Delos pulsed vibrant in the light, just as in the arid expanses of Mexico, the cacti of the desert stand straight in the mystical silence surrounding the Aztec pyramids.

The thermometer was continuously rising. It was not humidity, but heat - the heat generated by the vertical sun. And yet, despite the scorching heat and the rapid breaths of those breathing heavily, no passerby felt burdened, not even I, although the road was ablaze. Something like a lively cicada within my soul compelled me to move forward, with light and high-frequency steps.

Everything around me was vivid, tangible, and even visually apparent, and yet, at the same time, almost ethereal within the heat everything seemed - people and buildings - to such a degree that even the sorrow of some grieving individuals seemed to almost completely evaporate under the even light.

Then I, with a strong heartbeat, stopped for a moment, still amidst the crowd, like a person receiving a sudden revelation, or like someone witnessing a miracle unfolding before them, and I cried out, drenched in sweat: "God! This heat is needed to have such light! This light is needed, one day, to become a common glory, a universal glory, the glory of the Greeks, who, I believe, were the first, here in this world below, to transform the fear of death into the impulse of life."