Today I finished my book, the outlandish, most colorful, creative stance against war and religion that may every be written, and I left Mrs. Ellen Cherry Charles painting and all of Salome's seven veils on the ground. I have to admit I'm a bit sad that it's over.
But by far the best part of my day was after a good solid hour of bitching about the state of things (there is a bus strike tomorrow and so many airport employees will be on strike Wednesday that the planes will not even be landing in Athens) George employed me to help peel pigeon poop off of the Black Mercedes Minibus parked just behind Syngrou Avenue as he won't have time to wash it before his 4am transfer tomorrow.
Something about the directness of the task, the immediate gratification of transforming what was white and crusty to black and smooth, it was therapeutic. Perhaps they should prescribe it to patients with anxiety and depression.
I would like to say that I'm being positive about this "crisis." I can honestly say I'm being more positive than most everyone around me, my housemate included, who believe it to be some direct result of grand puppetry by the NEW WORLD ORDER, a reorganization of power. In fact if any of them read this I think I would get a real earful, if not lose some friends altogether. But I believe the NEW WORLD ORDER is being used the same way God is used, a single-headed target to channel all of your emotions into one, identifiable thingy which is in this case, passive aggression.
I do not think that if the NEW WORLD ORDER really exists, it gives one pigeon shit that Greeks talk nasty about it. I don't think they're having meetings in their office in some giant skyscraper that is towering over the world, veiled by the clouds, where they examine their popularity rates among countries, and unfortunately not small, broke, Mediterranean countries no matter how important they are to the story of civilization.
One friend who we will call "Spiros" kept using this word, "THEY," and finally no longer to ignore it I said, "WHO??"
"The banks! The world leaders! The credit lenders, Paige! Who do you think is controlling things? Keeping the wars going, keeping these natural disasters from being prevented?"
I'm not saying it's not possible. Maybe there are some children who, because of Daddy issues or being beat up on the playground, grow up to be power hungry bureaucrats that want nothing but to stomp out small nations and let the dumb masses take over so that everything can more easily be controlled, but the very convenience in this theory is the reason I believe it to be discredited.
Nothing in this world is easy, not even its destruction.
But if I'm wrong, let those monsters sit up there in their 4,000 Euro recliners made from the tanned leather of endangered Manatees, sipping their gin from diamond low ball glasses representing a village in Africa cut down by warlords. Let them do it and let the Universe take care of them, for I believe far more in her than I do in even ten million angry people shaking their heads and shouting at the headlines. She will shake her back one day and they will go shooting into the nether regions of outer space like fleas from a dog.
Maybe they'll take us all down with them, but me, today, I won a battle against fecal matter, and it was satisfying. Tomorrow maybe I'll take a crack at painting and feel doubly satisfied.
They can't take that away from me.
