Row Footage from Greece – Δεβελέγκας Γιάννης

Περιγραφή

A PART OF THE BOOK:

It all started on a grey morning in the adjuntants’ office of the Boot camp when the phone rang:
“Yiannis, Nikos is gone in a road traffic accident! A cab has run down Nikos and his fiancée as they were walking on the pavement outside Uncle Thomas’ restaurant!”
I hung up the phone, being unable to believe that! He was just twenty-eight years old!
In the very next seconds I completely reconsidered my life choices and attitude towards everything that was happening all around me.
Besides the shock that I experienced due to the so unfair loss of my best friend, I also realized that I had so far been living and distinguishing myself in a fictional reality, that I was paying a huge value at facts and circumstances that all of a sudden seemed totally pointless. I woke up, for the first time, to the fact that I had been isolated in a miserable microcosm, peremptorily formulated by the conditions of my working environment.
A microcosm that was being constituted by four desk phones that were constantly ringing, perfectly arranged on my desk, as well as by dozens of documents and folders. My microcosm included also an endless line up of militants, officers, parents, suppliers, politicians, contractors, priests and police officers, who were waiting to meet the Commander, either to apologize for some omission of them, or to gain his favor over an issue they were concerned about. My so tiny little world was being desperately completed by a huge list of staff procedures and dates of accomplishment (deadlines). A duties’ list that was following me like a shadow everywhere, like it was meant to bring me down and ruin my happy moments.
That tragic news was the reason I admitted to myself that I had passively accepted as normal the enormous pressure that the devious bureaucratic system was forcing on me. That I was unintentionally girdled by an explosive device, threatening my health and the welfare and bliss of the people that surrounded me, and who I loved and loved me back!
I had to take action, to react!
I left the office without wasting any more time and without informing anyone. I headed to the nearest bookstore and bought myself an eight-color pen and a notepad. I took the decision that since that moment, everything that was going to happen in my working miscrocosm should remain in the office. They should not follow me home, or in my free time and torture me. And, the truth is that, in a certain degree, I managed to do it! I was writing down in my notebook all my tasks, coloring them according to their priority, so whenever I left from work to go home I was feeling careless. I just knew that on the next morning they would be there, laid down on my desk, waiting for…the further actions!
As time was passing by, I started to use another notepad, something like a diary as a matter of fact, in which I used to register and write down certain worth mentioning events or personal thoughts, not only from my working environment, but also things that were taking place in the country in general. That second notebook has been the trigger for the creation of the book that you are actually holding in your hands. A book full of short stories, through which, messages and lessons not coming from me but from life itself are emerged.
These are short stories, free of pointless chattering, so that you are able to read them slowly on your own pace, without having to employ the…quick reading techniques.
It is all about pages filled with independent episodes of life, scattered in time watching! We could say these are somehow like…raw screen shots, taken before and after the burst of the social and financial crisis in Greece. A crisis that might have touched it but didn’t bring it down!
Since: “Greece is destined to live and will live”…