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“Stella, leave.”“Leave Stella, I will kill you.” This is the opening of the final scene of Stella, the 1955 film from Greek director Mihalis Kakoyannis, starring Melina Mercouri and Giorgos Fountas. Stella doesn’t leave. With trembling determination, she continues to walk towards Miltos, the man she had left standing at the altar the day before.…
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For some time now, I haven’t been into recipes that much. I mean food recipes, but maybe it’s been a metaphor for the other recipes in my life. Cooking from a recipe is like letting yourself be guided by someone else’s hands, trusting him (or her) that he will not let you fall, that he…
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Maybe it is my pre-carnival mood. The diamond grid. It reminds me of Italian commedia dell’arte. Carnival Venice style. Puppets, masks, the mysterious eyes behind. Luring, seductive. I love carnival. I remember returning from the parade with a bag full of caramels. Another time we went to see the “drunken harmonies” playing across the streets…
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Recently, my wonderful Brazilian friend gave me Monsieur Big mascara for my birthday. It came in a black and stiletto pink carton box, Sex and the City captured in a thick black paste for the lashes. A French brand, Émilie in New York. It was the perfect gift, the result of a running gag between…
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I haven’t told you yet about a friend of mine, a beautiful lady, happy, light, colourful. She has lived a life full of beautiful people and beautiful stories that she generously shares with me, writing them down as the words flow into her hand, unedited. I love it. She tells me about her husband, her…
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I had grown tired, so tired in fact that my back didn’t function any more. At all. I was familiar with my back problems and I knew I could stretch them as much, quite far in fact, but no further. I had run out of will power and my back knew it before I did.…
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Rekindling an appetite for life My body started to feel thin, worn out. In a wish to learn something new, I had gone through all my reserves, and it was showing. Stress and the need to suppress my anger had made me lose my appetite, my ability to swallow and digest. I had kept my…
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There it was, in an upper corner stuck to the inside of the window of the bus, just above the entrance door and a collection of miniature buses positioned on the doorpost. A little emblem with the familiar three crosses on top of each other, a church by a canal and above it embroidered lettering,…