A Balkan Man in the Americas

(Part I – The Four Ages of Snow) For the last three winters of my life I have been surrounded by snow and frigid weather. A completely new experience for me. Before coming to Boston three years ago, I had spent all my life in no-snow zones. In zones where you sometimes get fed up with too much sun: in Lushnje (a small town in central Albania) and Athens, Greece. Even in my mum’s bedtimes stories the presence of snow was scarce. The only “snow characters” I remember from childhood are snowman   and Snow White. The first didn’t figure among my toys. As for the latter I never fell in love with her (maybe because I couldn’t dream of myself as a  P rince; I felt closer to the Seven Dwarfs) . *** In the songs that I hum time after time, snow is almost never mentioned (except for Adamo's "Tombe La Neige"). The first time I came face to face with snow was when I was 13. It happened at a town in Southeastern Albania, called Librazhd. As I was visitin...

Yesterday, I was making my way home, after a nice dinner with friends in Lexington. It was around 11.30 in the evening when I arrived at the Harvard Square T station. I was waiting on the platform for the train to arrive. Usually I tend to walk back and forth waiting the train. Sitting and waiting still like a stone makes me feel nervous. My thoughts circulate better in my brain when I move my legs. The platform was empty; the kind of train platforms I like because they give me plenty of room to walk around. There were two other people on the platform. I hurriedly looked at them and my first impression was that they were both homeless. It was freezing cold and snowing non-stop outside and maybe they had found a temporary refuge against the arctic-like temperatures on that red-color platform. Homeless people usually do this in order to protect themselves from the cold. One of the seemingly homeless people was a young lady who had sat down on the floor, cross-legged, a backp...

Let's make an exception this time - for those who speak french. Here's the first part of an interview in French with Jean-Claude C aillette ( radio Fréquence Paris Plurielle) in his radio program "Le Lire et le Dire". Just download the MP3 ( 325 Europe 1ère par tie liredire 04.07.14.mp3 )  from the link below: http://www.grosfichiers.ch/en/x77vDDi8gJyr98nUSd3pqqts I will post the second part next Monday…

Dedicated to the post-election-Europe. Give me one reason to stay here (with so many pre-modern and post-modern fascists around); or are you going to tell me again that old Galilean "eppur si muove (and yet it moves", this time around?

Last year at Thanksgiving I was in New Jersey. I was invited by Sophia and Spyros, a couple of psychoanalysts and close friends, to share their Thanksgiving dinner. Sophia is one of the child survivors of the holocaust and Spyros a child of Greek immigrants, who came to America in the 1930s. Sophia and Spyros met in Manhattan in the 70’. Sophia was finishing her PhD in psychoanalysis and would often have lunch at a Greek diner, run by Spyros’s family and where he was working as a waiter. This was the beginning of a romance that ended in their marrying after a few months. Spyros decided to quit his job at the Greek diner and dedicate himself to psychoanalysis. He told me how his parents couldn’t understand what “psychoanalysis” was about. They were hoping for him to become an engineer, so that he could go back one day to their birthplace, in the tiny island of Erikusa near Corfu, and build roads there. Spyros remained in Manhattan and became a renowned psychoanalyst. Last year th...