Hello lovely readers, friends, of friends, lovers, fighters, and truth seekers.
Hey. It’s me. If you’ve read my words in the past, or I’ve forced them on you at some point during the last 10 years of publishing my blog posts; so welcome back. I must apologize for my absence. (for those who liked what I did in the past and urged me to do more) I fell off the writing wagon. Life happened, with all it’s ups and downs. That being said, I love writing to you dear reader. I have missed this interaction.
And I’m glad I’m back.
This past year, I’ve been somewhat engaged with the everyday rollercoaster of life. I just got off a mad ride and am now catching my breath. The dizziness and nausea have subsided, but it left me wondering how many others are dealing with the same uncertainties. It seems that life has been nothing but “that kind of ride” for a lot of people. I am certain there are a lot of us who have felt the same, and continue to do so. I hope through this 27 day experimentalchallengebirthdaypostextravaganza, to open up discussions, curiosity, and connection.
This year, for this dedicated writing experiment, that became ritual, that became celebration, I have a few tricks up my sleeve.
I invite you into this 27 journey with me. It’s going to be a wild( ish) ride.
With the sounds of the Smiths in my ears, I’m thinking about truthful, honest, compassionate, emotional, beautiful ways in which we can connect with ourselves and others.
This is not a trial run. It’s the main course, the only life we are given. I am smitten. We owe it to ourselves to be a beam of light cutting through the clouds. Take notice. What works, what doesn’t. Holding on to shit you don’t need may seem comfortable, familiar, safe.
Safety is an illusion.
Our time on this earth is minimal, I’m not being subliminal. These are the facts. We act out the parts we thought we could play. We stray away from what we really want instead of plunging into the unknown and trusting what we know to be true. Think about the impact you want to have, the thing that will stay long after you’re gone. That is the sliver of light. Who you are in the cloudy sky.
I know it’s not fair, years may go by and all you focus on is the misery the monotony in your heart. Stand apart from the crowd, dare to wear red in an all gray life.
Fuck them. War isn’t the answer. See above the clouds.
Paying homage to the women who have shaped, fed, loved and nurtured me over the years.
“If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it. The men better let them.” Ain’t I a woman – Sojourner Truth
The kind of woman I always wanted to be didn’t come into view until my late 30’s. I was not aware of my strengths, I didn’t know how to harness my femininity, my passions and my voice. There were and still are many aspects of the woman I want to become that have yet to reveal themselves. I have since found there are a lot of women who are and have similar experiences finding their true identity. Although I have amazing, friends, guides, and teachers in my life, up until recently I didn’t know how to embody the woman I could be proud of. Who was that woman to me? How did she reflect herself to the outside world?
The woman I have now come to love, I owe to the countless women who have given me the thread to continue to honor my ancestors, my guides and my mentors along the way. Everything I have I owe to the women in my life. Sharing who I am openly here and in my poetry comes from the continuous support of my mothers (biological and adopted), grandmothers, friends, sisters, aunts, mentors, witches. Powerful, loving women, held me up when I was collapsing, held me accountable when I was being an asshole, trusted me with their hearts and helped my connect with mine. Loving and being loved has been shown to me by the careful guidance, of countless women over the years.
The strength I gather from the women around me, our common and no so common experiences, started at a very young age. At 5 I observed my grandmother in her infinite wisdom and strength give me life lessons I was only to understand later in life. My voice teacher in grade school ignited my passions for writing and singing, encouraging me to unabashedly find my voice. My wild artistic and uncompromising side was encouraged and celebrated by my close friends who knew that an untamed heart was better than a closed one.
These amazing accomplished, courageous women, saw me for my potential, raised me to be strong and independent and taught me to think for myself. I was drawn to their wisdom and their complexity. Women defined me and shaped me as an artist in school, a writer in college and a performer in my late 30’s. My sisters have encouraged me to be myself, speak my truth, show my vulnerability, share my experience, in ways that will always humble and astound me.
To celebrate the women in our lives is to celebrate life itself. To honor the women who have given before us, we honor our place in her-story. In the next few posts I’ll be sharing small stories from the women who have and continue to be my backbone.
Two years after a global pandemic – The new normal is anything but.
After taking an extended hiatus from my daily posts during this pandemic, I’ve slowly come back to establishing a forum for reflecting and discussing the issues, thoughts and ideas that have stuck with me for the past two years. I don’t think I’m alone in the creative conundrum that was born out of these times we are all living in. I’ve made small efforts to ignite thoughts that mattered, ideas that stuck, words that felt right. Now, it’s time. Of course the events that have unfolded since March 2020 are so life changing; they significantly impacted every single part of our lives. The world has been turned upside down and inside out, and I’m grateful to be alive at a time like this.
The past two years have been an immense opportunity for self reflection, global awareness, re-evaluation and re-calibration. In other ways a revelation in grasping a renewed sense of purpose. Dealing with the fear of the unknown, trusting our instincts, understanding what works and what doesn’t in our lives; is a lifelong experiment. The images, feelings and thoughts of the events that shaped those first two weeks of March 2020, felt like tectonic plates were shifting under our feet. My then daily posts felt trivial, and unnecessary in the grand scheme of the survival mode we were globally thrust into. My world became my Brooklyn neighborhood. The mental exhaustion of times we are all living through, had stigmatized any real creative juices from flowing. Growing, moving, changing cities (again), packing up my life in New York, and experimenting with a life that’s new, different and strangely familiar; are some of the things that I will be sharing with you all during the next 27 days.
now, the time has come.
There are too many things that have sparked my attention in the past two years that it seems ripe for the picking.
Join me, and welcome to my stories from the Edge (again)
Metal gods loomed over the skyline, reminding me to be free instead of locked in up in my head. I didn’t know any better. Letting the isolation sink in, it cut to the bone, sapping my very existence. I learned quickly. Pretence isn’t looked upon kindly here. Here you make it because you ate shit for breakfast and it really doesn’t matter what anybody thinks.
“What the FUCK are you looking at!”, she shouts as you quickly avert your gaze, as she hits you with daggers of anger and fear. Imagine how hard you have to become in order to survive this grind and still plant trees of love and understanding, but now they’re rebranding Gotham City into a Monopoly Game. Property moguls eating up land faster than pacman ever could.
You once stood tall, but now.
Game Over. Move over lady this isn’t for you any more. Dark alleyways, dimly lit, covered in the wheat paste dreams of momentary and permanent art gods. The grunting sounds of kitchens working to feed a city that never slept. But now silence. As you hear the footsteps in front of you disappear.
Kindness comes from places you hardly expect. Even though they say no one cares, you get the stare of recognition of common pain. She knows what you’re dealing with as you fight back tears on a Brooklyn bound F train. Get off a stop early to collect yourself and, put on your dark glasses so others don’t see you strain. Suck it up, pull it together. There will be good days and bad days but this place makes a Human out of you with a capital H.
You walk up second avenue, conjuring up images in your head about how you got here in the first place. Will you triumph over your fears, or cower in self defence? Condensed dreams in a flash, sweep by you, bringing you to an intense euphoria as you realize it’s all about to end.
Walk a block up.
Freeman’s Alley – LES
Those moments of quaint rarity and clarity bubble up into the Manhattan Skyline. Right across the way, under the PepsiCo Sign, sublime afternoons overlooking the Hudson, moments of chaotic oneness, undone through the blaring sirens of cop cars. Bars overflowing with lonely boys trying to get your attention. “Hey pretty, wanna grab a drink with me?”
Nah I’m good.
LIC- Queens
I remember how I once stood, alone wondering how this would all turn out.
Fade to black.
Sirens, lure me onto ancient lands that are far more about fiction than fact. The dream is intact even though we are packed in like rats. 5 Million souls and counting, and everyone is in your damn business.
Monastiraki, Athens by night
A village, A rock, An ancient ideal now lost in the cement crevices of the mind. We are strangers here. Nomads. Others. Coming and going and finding our way out of the darkness. Slowly trying to prove to every passerby to look up at the skies, instead we limit ourselves to what’s available, attainable and nothing more.
That isn’t my game.
I came here to create change. No matter what. Lingering in the dimly lit passageways of my fatherland now lost in its ugliness and disrepair. People here stare at you as if trying to find the answer to their own insecurities and grief. Knee deep in regrets they never knew they had, they stand tall against the creeping fear mongering and laundering of hope.
I smile gently urging you to invite me to your ceremony. My tears shed in apotheosis of a dream long deferred, but no more. The allure of Athenian mysteries becomes clear, a litany of a city long demolished & rebuild on repeat.
I stand still for a moment to take it all in. The clouds of doubt have dispersed once again, to reveal the softness within.
Sometimes the things we planned for are the same things we had no plans for.
March 22, 2020
This past march marked my 3rd annual 27 day writing challenge. The month of March marks a personal turning point, a shift, a place of transition from what was before to what is after, a very introspective, somewhat lonely winter season. March has also become a reminder of a dark time, an anniversary that we never thought we would be reflecting on. Last March, we entered into a contract we thought we would quickly come out of. The authorities said three weeks tops; then a lockdown, a pause in New York, that brought the city to a halt. I spent my 42nd birthday quarantined with my flatmate in Brooklyn. 14 days into a global shut down New York was the most quiet it had EVER been. It was post apocalyptic how silence and New York just don’t mix. My world became the 4 block radius around my apartment. My anual 27 day writing and post challenge was for lack of a better word, challenged. My love of writing however never wavered, I made countless notes, wrote small poems, and elaborated on thoughts. Ideas cropped up in my writing journals, my pen however had better days. I am feeling the urge to share my viewpoint a year on, as I’m entering into my 43rd circle around the sun.
In those early days of the lockdown like pretty much everyone around me, I felt panic and fear that for the first time there was no plausible way out of. There was no explaining or theorizing a way out of it. Patience, writing, meditation, more patience, rinse and repeat. I’ve since blurred the memories from the seismic shifts, big or small and now post aftershocks upon aftershocks, there are times when I’m still in shock. I blink my eyes everyday in gratitude to be alive. March of 2021 seems like a decade and a split second has gone by. The collective and personal thunderstorms that uprooted our lives, have somewhat passed and now we collect what is dear to us and reconnect in ways that we may have never explored before this past year.
This year the challenge continues, beyond the constraints of the 27 days of March. Writing, commentary, poems, thoughts, and discussions are refreshed in a way that goes beyond the limits and constraints of a formula. The bar has risen, the lines have been blurred, and the content will explore the ever changing and shifting world that reveals itself to each and every one of us. I choose to write because it’s a way of making something unique out of something mundane. I choose to share because we’re not alone.
Thanks to all who’ve supported, read, commented so far.
Home made bread slathered with olive oil, goats cheese and honey makes life worth living.
I am Greek, in every possible way, I love my country with its immense flaws, Athens is my city and I have fallen for her, despite her pretty ugliness and chaotic living.
I’m not only a Greek. An amalgam a blend, a mé·lange, a mixed grill, a greatest hits, a combo platter, a hyphenated soul.
I’m not old… yet.
Being skinny and fit, has been replaced with being strong and healthy.
I have stopped giving any more fucks.
I give all the fucks.
Loving and being loved is really all that we’re all out here to do.
Working better is the new working hard.
Everything is art.
Trust, self-respect and Integrity are superbly sexy.
A hot bod is too.
A balanced person is constantly adjusting and learning.
What have we learned, what have we yet to learn and what fundamental changes have taken place a year into a global Pandemic?
The second week of March, marks what has become a transforming, revealing and overwhelming year. March 13th will remain the day life completely and irreversibly changed. It’s 22.24 on a quiet Saturday night and despite all we have gone through; I feel the trials of this year were not in vein. I almost can’t bring myself to reminisce of what was before. There is only what has become, and will come after. We are all forever transformed.
A necessary awakening has taken place. It started with uncertainty, panic, fear of the outside world, anger, more panic and then a slow realization, that this tragic year gave us a once in a lifetime opportunity to stop, listen, understand, create, let go of, build on, comprehend, and quantify our lives in ways never before available to us. We paused. We had to. I lost my shit once, badly. After talking to a dear friend in Athens, which was going through its first severe lockdown, I sat on the corner of my street on the edge of the curb and felt my chest collapsing. I came to the realization that if I’m going to be strong for others, I had to be strong for myself.
I threw all my creativity into cooking nourishing food, and yes I made a lot of bread. I spent the better part of March wondering how I could see my family without putting them at risk. I spent my birthday self isolating with my flatmate and a bottle of wine. We were catapulted into a growing social justice movement that up until march was not in the collective consciousness of every single person with a phone and an internet connection, and then… Breonna Taylor, then George Floyd. The voices of those who were and still are marginalized, went from a whisper to a deafening roar. The world didn’t have a choice any more but to shut up and listen.
Traveling to Greece was not an option, It felt like luxury to even try, and staying put turned out to be the wisest and safest solution. I managed to create a little kingdom out of a small sunlit bedroom. Brooklyn became my universe. Daily meditation, chanting, yoga, stretching, long walks, daily check in with my parents and my beloved friends, forced silence, and time for reflection.
There were countless blessings. A safe home, a beautiful multicultural and multi ethnic proud Brooklyn community, a park I could have taken for granted became my entire world. My solace, my microcosm, my place of laughter and joy, my space became the everyday walk to Prospect Park. Writing didn’t come easy. Images were imprinted for later. Mental and emotional balance was a daily effort, purpose, goal. Meditation became my rock. The Pandemic was a stopping point for certain patterns that no longer served a positive purpose, giving space to a starting point for self realization, motivation and fervent self care. Making a cup of coffee became a practice, a ritual, a starting point.
Movement, breathing, meditation and even chanting has become the cornerstone of my balance and sanity; it is now an integral part of who I am and how I navigate the world. The biggest blessing of this tumultuous year, was the beginning of my online teaching, sharing, breathing with friends, strangers, old friends, and new ones. On the morning of March 14th, I turned on my live feed and started sharing my yoga and movement practice, with no expectation or thought of how long it would go. Self care, mental health care, community care, global care became integral to this new world order.
I am grateful for my health and the health of those I love. I’m grateful for the community that so effortlessly built itself around those that needed it the most. I am grateful to this pandemic for forcing me to take the reigns of my own life. All our lives moving forward were not going to be the same. Nor should they be. If we have learned nothing else, it is to take absolutely nothing for granted.
On the eve of March 14th 2021, this was one for the books, let’s make it count this time round.
How to acknowledge a milestone such as a year in the Life of a Global Pandemic
Photo : E. Kouneli East Village, NYC February 2021
For the third year running in March; I launch a 27 day posting challenge to celebrate among many milestones, the coming of spring, my birthday, birthdays of very dear and close friends, and above all, my celebration of writing. These are and have been peculiar times. For 12 months now, we have been served something in between a subpena a blessing and a curse.
For (more than) a year the tight grip of our reconnings, came hand in hand with cripling uncertainty and fear. Our circles got tighter and tighter, and the strangeness of this new reality aproached like a title wave. I felt stuck. Unatached like many of us. Not knowing where exactly to run to and how to stand still.
We all stood still.
Still photo by E.K May 2020
There was no way of getting out of this without some serious damage. We went from what seemed to be everyday life, to life interrupted and then back to attempts to “a new normal” (I personally hated that phrase). The mojo all of sudden vanished. I like many of us I went on a collective overdrive. There was so much to be said, and a lot of not knowing where to begin. All my desire to write about anything seemed futile in the grand scheme of things. Words take their time, they listen they form into our minds like sand inside an oyster. This anniversary is a painful reminder that we sometimes have to stop, and take a good look at ourselves. In retrospect, I’m actually glad I took a (forced) step back.
Some things are worth the wait.
Some dishes take longer to prepare.
Some words appear when we need them to.
Sometimes tragedy is the birth of change.
Photo E. Kouneli : Awaiting Spring Feb 2021
What I’ve come to realize is that writing, reading, and moving have always been part of how I see the world. Despite the hikkups the delays, the injuries, the life interruptions, writing and moving make life normal. The muscles have been dormant. In this prolonged winter, many of my passions felt secondary. I would start on a thought, an idea and just stop. Personal and family matters came first. Survival, mental claridy, mental focus, just the facts ma’am. We have all been trying to keep our collective shit together. We have failed (badly) at times. We have broken, cracked, and obliterated the old paradigms, We have a lot more work to do.
This one year anniversary feels like the collective red pill. We don’t know how deep this rabbit hole will go. We have seen the Matrix we have been given a chance to be free of it. This is our last chance. The anniversary of this year is our chance to recon with our role in the choices we make, the words we use and the lives we truly wish to lead. The reality is not pretty. What this year above all others has shown is that a perfect storm is needed to unvail the truth about who we want bo be.
We turned to things outside of ourselves. We cooked, we made bread, we coped. We zoomed everybody and their mother, literally. We were (are) scared, frustrated, tired, worried, fearful, angry, bored, fed up, high, low, indiferent and we kept going.
We keep going. I kept going . With the help of many many others who were in my corner, just as much (if more ) as I was in theirs.
What this anniversary has made me come to terms with is that when shit hits the fan, humanity is at the mercy of a virus. The virus mutates, we keep fighting it and then it comes back stronger. We have had for some a rude awakening, to others what has always been there in plain site. This has been a hell of a year. One that has forever changed us, we are all affected by this anniversary. One which will be a hard one for many of us to grapple with for many more years to come.
September 2020 LES, NYC
This year on my March daily post challenge, I hope to take you on a different journey. One that finds the strands of humanity that connects us more than divides us. I hope to bring you into a world that isn’t so unfamiliar and distant as we all would like to believe. I invite you to join me.
American Beliefs and how they are shaped in the era of Trumpism
As I write this, America is entering its third day of tallying votes after what has been one of the most historically charged elections in American history. I don’t write about politics, it’s not my expertise, but one cannot deny or fail to realize more and more, we all have to take part in this conversation. I’ve had several discussions in the past few weeks with Americans who have or voted again for the current regime (regardless of their race, class, or religion) and they have one tragic thing in common; the sheer lack of proper education and information regarding the politics, and social structures in their own country and even more so the rest of the world. America was always a place of assimilation but what is more and more apparent, in the current political climate, it is now increasingly about creating isolation and widespread misinformation. Your average voter, the citizen is absolutely clueless as to how the rest of the world actually works.
Driven either by improper education or sheer lack of interest in the facts, conservative and current republican voters pipe on about the big words they have been driven to fear (socialism, immigration, open borders, closed borders, those countries over there with all those problems, they all want our freedom, etc). All this perpetuated not only by conservative-leaning media or right wing mouth-pieces, but primarily by the mountain of factually incorrect information the current administration has fabricated over the past six years. Lack of facts, outright lies and purposeful misinformation repeated, over and over until it sticks. You hear something often enough you start to believe it.
It all starts with Education.
Bernie Sanders, said it again and again. The uneducated masses, the foot soldiers of the rich ruling class are doing their bidding; with absolutely no knowledge on how the economy works, how trade works, how their blood sweat and tears have been manipulated in order to cash in on fear, prejudice and outright racism.
The education system in this country is broken, and it is that way on purpose. The voting public votes with their misguided and misinformed fears of how socialism is bad, even though probably most of their family members get a social security cheque each month, their kids get school lunches and their parents are on medicare or medicaid. They talk about people being able to make an honest living, even though most administrations; most recently the current one, have made zero progress to support small businesses, fund and publicly support freelancers, and basically import everything from toothbrushes to car parts from China. They talk about those other scary places over there that are shit hole countries that suppress their people, but hardly recognize or understand that the regime they vote for does the suppressing and the dividing around the globe for the sake of capitalism and the all (not so) mighty dollar.
Intelligence has left the building.
The viewpoint of the average American voter has drastically decreased over the past four years in ways I would not have fathomed even during the dreaded Bush years. The level of disinformation is staggering, frightening, and worrisome. Cognitive, analytical thought has all but disappeared. I don’t think all of the voting public out there are spiteful, vindictive or vengeful, but there seems to be an increasing lack of knowledge, understanding of history, and general common sense. I would like to think (or hope) most Trump voters, deep down are loving, caring individuals, who really want a better future for their families, however their access to proper information, on the one hand, and vehement opposition to finding it on the other, makes me think that willful ignorance is systemic and cultivated on purpose. It’s to the advantage of the current regime to breed mistrust, self-doubt, and fear. Divide and conquer politics is what fascist and totalitarian regimes are built on, and Trump used the playbook of much smarter figureheads than himself. However…
American Politics are World Politics
As I’ve written before and will write again, the American election defines and affects the world stage. As America votes, the world is affected. The only difference now, after four years of a deeply divisive, and polarizing regime; with a leader who quite plainly lacks leadership skills, lacks empathy, and knowledge, lacks humility and understanding of how the democratic process works, the way America votes has given other countries and economies a massive headway. China, Russia, India to name a few, have surpassed and will leave behind America in technology, education, and innovation. The shithole countries so colorfully described recently by the demagogue in chief, actually have a leg up on microeconomics, have elected more women in leadership positions, and have better education systems than America has had in a long time.
So where does this upcoming U.S election leave us?
The rifts and deep divisions created by the past four years (and lets be honest way before that), are even bigger and more destructive than before. The seeds of ignorance, hate, white supremacy and nationalism are alive and well. People have been fooled into thinking those others are at fault for their plight, and only one man is capable of fixing it. But as the famous saying states. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. True change is painful, messy and difficult to swallow. Which pill are we to choose ? The red pill or the blue pill. Do we continue to ignore the obvious, and look the other way while regimes like this one claim they are supreme leaders who won’t relinquish power? or do we take the dive into the uncomfortable reality that if we really do want change we have to fucking fight with passion and conviction.
Only when we absorb these horrific lessons from the past can we prevent them from happening again. So far it seems that the lessons are doomed to be repeated. We failed first grade, again and again, writing needlessly on that blackboard, “I’m a bad student, I’m a bad student”, over and over again. I’m an optimist at heart, but my skepticism has grown over the years as I hold my breath for what I hope will be a turn towards unity, rather than a quick dive into the flames of hate and fear.
This man child in chief never cared about his country, or the people who he tricked into voting for him, this was clear from the beginning. Those who voted for him, not once but twice, falsely believe in lies because this regime has told them over and over again something they want to hear rather than what they should be hearing. Elections that are compromised (and we’ve heard of all of them from afar) were compromised due to corrupt leaders who wanted to hold on to power much more than to be true leaders of their electorate. This is demagoguery, (Greeks invented it, it seems to be in fashion again all over the world), this is not a surprise. He knows how voting works, what he doesn’t know is how to sit down, shut up and accept that not everyone likes him.
Till then we have to sit and wait, and hope that the fiasco that is American society and politics will get its shit together and grow the fuck up. Our planet, our young people, and our lives depend on it.
Eleana Kouneli 