May 02 2013
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my line of thought

Living Outstandingly

May Day Wreath

For me May Day is a beautiful, extrovert, yet personal celebration.

If we have made it so far, if we have managed to spring anew through the dim winter and the tumultuous coming of spring, then we should celebrate it and accept our rewards of the season’s sheer light, the saturated landscapes or the floating optimism.

This is what we celebrate on May Day. I personally celebrate this and my mom’s birthday, a day which smells of strawberries. But I make a mental note never to miss to ‘dip’ into this happy mood, these memories and the traditional day events because of my grandmother. So I could say that I also celebrate May Day in love for my grandmother.

Some 15 years ago, on May Day, my grandmother had come over to the house so we would go out to pick flowers together and make our wreaths. I had gone out the night before and when I got up late, I was in no mental or physical state to go out searching for flowers. Coordintation and motivation were too demanding skills. My grandmother waited patiently for me to collect myself. Some hours later I asked her to go on her own. Her reply has stayed with me ever since. She said that some days in the calendar year are symbolic, May Day was one of them. She said that missing the symbolism of such days allows for banality to take over our lives. And that is unbearable. So, she insisted in me getting my act together and gift myself with an outstanding day!

My grandmother suffers from Alzheimer’s Desease now and she has no clue May Day just passed or that it is a special day. It is to her I keep a promise ever since, that for as long as I have my wits or strength, I will be celebrating the beauty of life, the outstanding beauty of life.

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Apr 28 2013
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sciences, video

X: The known Origin of an Unknown Factor

This is a short, fun and informative TED talk by Terry Moore about the origin of the symbol ‘x’ as the representation of the unknown (or variable) in algebra. Reminding us, thus, that it is through its use in mathematics that we took the ‘x’ to commonly mean ‘an unspecified or unknown thing or person’ in our (use of) life.

I thought, this mention on the Oxford Dictionary was also interesting:

“the introduction of x, y, and z as symbols of unknown quantities is due to Descartes (Géométrie, 1637), who took z as the first unknown and then proceeded backwards in the alphabet”

Oxford Online Dictionary definition, under its dictionary entry for ‘x’ as a noun.

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Apr 27 2013
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Art, Interesting People, Quotes Quote

Alberto Giacometti

“The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.”

Alberto Giacometti

(Thanx Kosta for sharing this quote! I had to post it too..)

Giacometti Quote

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Apr 26 2013
2 Comments
my line of thought

Easter in Corfu: My new site is up’n’running

Easter in Corfu // music in the air My new site about the Corfiot Easter

My new site is up’n’running! It is a site dedicated to the Beauty of the Easter in Corfu and it is titled ‘Easter in Corfu // music in the air’.

Greek Easter is almost here! Coming from Corfu this is a very special time for me. So, since I cannot be in the streets of Corfu this year, listening to its music and smelling the beautiful Spring aromas, I decided to create a digital ‘Homage’ to the Corfiot Easter.

I explain my fascination about the Easter celebration in Corfu at length on the site, so I won’t say much here. But in order to make it clear as to why I felt like sharing the beauty of the Corfiot Easter, I post here my ‘Personal Note‘ originally found on the Easter in Corfu site:

Easter in Corfu is popular and crowded and you might think it’s too much hassle because of that. But I beg to disagree. It is absolutely beautiful, therefore I completely understand the crowds that flock in and I put up with it. People are not crazy for wanting to experience this!

I am Corfiot and I grew up in Corfu. I took part in the Easter processions with my school and the girl guides since I was six up util I was an adult. In my uni years I used to fly back to Corfu just to be part of all this. Having been brought up in a non religious environment, I completely missed the fact that Easter was a religious event, up until the age of 12(!), although, as I said before, I was taking part in the processions. I thought the whole things was a Corfiot way of celebrating Spring and the priests and town churches just tagged along…

That is still more or less my impression of the Corfiot Easter and that is why throughout this site the religious aspect of the celebrations is only mentioned in event or day titles. In other words, through this site you will not find out anything more about Greek Orthodoxy or Christianity for that matter.

As an endnote, let me summarise my intention in sharing my love for the Corfiot Easter with all of you:

Corfiot Easter is an event that makes me feel I have a home that I love. It is a longer than a week festivity that uses all the Corfiot ‘peculiarities’ as essential elements in order for Easter to happen. It needs the coming of Spring in this blossoming island, the European influenced local culture, architecture and love for music. It needs the Greek outward ness, community style of life and pride, to people the whole thing. It needs the ancient rituals to translate into religious festivities. It needs a community which wishes to remember its deceased ones and its past, a community which yearns to celebrate life, a beautiful life ahead of us all.

Daria Koskorou (just days before Corfiot Easter, 2013)

 

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Apr 24 2013
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Interesting People, Quotes, video

Stephen Fry: Living a Life

stephenfry

When I first went to England to study I was 18 years old, so discovering and exploring new territories was the norm. But one of the long lasting discoveries I made back then was the persona of Stephen Fry. This witty, versatile, erudite man could not really be anything other than British. A British of the modern world of course. I have to admit though that my instinctual appreciation of the man had a lot to do with his resemblance to Oscar Wilde. Seeing him on TV back then always made me feel that Wilde is still alive! When I found out that he was a good friend of Douglas Adams made me like him even more.

His comedy, acting, articles and twitting allowed me (and everyone else, I guess) to see more of this man. I’m always interested in finding out what he is up to and what he has to say, because he comes across as a rational man, a humanist  and a refreshingly open person to new ideas and advancements, willing to include or try out new things with a kid’s apetite! In that sense it didn’t come as a huge surprise to me,  when I read on his Wikipedia page, that he was the 2nd person to ever buy a Macintosh in the UK, the 1st being Douglas Adams.

I follow him on twitter, which he updates constantly, and I regularly check his website, where all his activities are archived/included.

Here is a 31mins video where he shares with the world what he wishes he knew when he was 18. His view of life. Thank you Monique for bringing this video to my attention!

Kindness, he says, dwarfs all other virtues…

And a couple of Quotes ‘extracted’ from the video:

“Sharing the benefits of life is the benefit of life.”

Stephen Fry

“Authority comes from the validity of information.”

Stephen Fry

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Apr 23 2013
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Art, Quotes, sciences Image

In the Realm of Wonder

Mythology, art or science, all dwell in the realm of wonder…

The Birth of the Milky Way, by Peter Paul Rubens

The Birth of the Milky Way, by Peter Paul Rubens

The term Galaxy is an ancient Greek one.  It comes from the word milk, since the cluster of celestial material is such that colours the night sky with a white stripe, like a milk splash. What a beautiful image that is…. This image inspired so many more images, wordy, musical or visual, ever since…. This is what I love about wonder and curiosity! It gets imagination going to explore both the magic and the reality out there. It helps our growth with the nutritious elements of knowledge and beauty…

Similar to a previous post , where I was talking about the inspirational drive that mythology has put into the arts, here is another great  sample of human creativity par excellence, namely ‘The Birth of the Milky Way“, (ca. 1637), by Peter Paul Rubens. This work of art now belongs to and can be seen at the Prado Museum, Madrid.

But even the etymology of the terms ‘Galaxy’ and ‘Milky Way’ are poetic. Here is what Wikipedia says on the terms’ provenance:

The word galaxy derives from the Greek term for our own galaxy, galaxias (γαλαξίας, “milky one”), or kyklos (“circle”) galaktikos (“milky”)for its appearance as a lighter colored band in the sky. In Greek mythology, Zeus places his son born by a mortal woman, the infant Heracles, on Hera’s breast while she is asleep so that the baby will drink her divine milk and will thus become immortal. Hera wakes up while breastfeeding and then realizes she is nursing an unknown baby: she pushes the baby away and a jet of her milk sprays the night sky, producing the faint band of light known as the Milky Way.

In the astronomical literature, the capitalized word ‘Galaxy’ is used to refer to our galaxy, the Milky Way, to distinguish it from the billions of other galaxies. The English term Milky Way can be traced back to a story by Chaucer:

“See yonder, lo, the Galaxyë
Which men clepeth the Milky Wey,
For hit is whyt.”
—Geoffrey Chaucer. The House of Fame, c. 1380.

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Apr 19 2013
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Art, Interesting People, interesting sites

The Vermeer Project

This post is a reblog from the Aegean Center blog about the  amazing Vermeer project that the amazing Jane Morris Pack is leading at the Aegean Center right now…
… When Curiosity is the exploratory force behind all understanding and advancement, be it in art, the sciences, in life….

 “Sitting in the dark, seeing the painterly vision of light causes nearly all to exclaim at its beauty.”

Jane Morris Pack

The Chronicle

Actual-Projected-Image-(flipped)Actual Projected Image in Camera Obscura (approx. 40×48 cm / 16×19 in)

by Jane Morris Pack

Have you ever painted upside down in the dark?

While visiting Rome this winter I had the opportunity to study several Vermeer paintings in the exhibit at the Quirinale.  They were part of a larger show called “Vermeer and The Golden Age of Dutch Art”  and although there were some other fine pieces in the exhibit, the Vermeers outshone the others. They seem to glow from within and the accuracy of the perceived space is extraordinary. Johannes Vermeer has captured modern interest not only for his dreamy women engaged in mundane tasks but also perhaps due to the mystery surrounding his life.  We know little about his training, his personal life or his methods.  I was intrigued by his use of the camera obscura, which seems to be an accepted fact among art historians…

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Apr 17 2013
2 Comments
Art, Interesting People, Quotes, video Video

Vonnegut’s 8 points on how to Write a Story

Point 7:

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

Kurt Vonnegut

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Apr 17 2013
2 Comments
Art, photographs Image

Some Poetry, Some Art, Some Borges

Maria sleeping

The Art of Poetry

To gaze at a river made of time and water
and remember that Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water.

To feel that waking is another dream
that dreams of not dreaming and that the death
we fear in our bones is the death
that every night we call a dream.

To see in every day and year a symbol
of all the days of man and his years,
and convert the outrage of the years
into a music, a sound, and a symbol.

To see in death a dream, in the sunset
a golden sadness, such is poetry,
humble and immortal, poetry,
returning, like dawn and the sunset.

Sometimes at evening there’s a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.

They say Ulysses, wearied of wonders,
wept with love on seeing Ithaca,
humble and green. Art is that Ithaca,
a green eternity, not wonders.

Art is endless like a river flowing,
passing, yet remaining, a mirror to the same
inconstant Heraclitus, who is the same
and yet another, like the river flowing.

Jorge Luis Borges

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Apr 16 2013
2 Comments
video Video

The Country of Vatican

This is a short, American-style, animated description of the Vatican City, not as a spiritual centre or a world heritage depot, but as a country. Fun to watch and learn:

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