One more, sent from the Eagle:
ARE YOU A GREEK? HOW CAN YOU TELL FOR SURE?
1) If you have ever been hit by a 'PANTOFLA' or a 'KOUTALA'
2) If your Holidays include 5 meats and 50 relatives.
3) If others tell you to stop screaming when you are really just
talking.
4) If you light a candle to Panayia on the night before your big test.
5) If you use your chin to point something out.
6) If you have at least 2 relatives within walking distance'
7) If your mother yells at the top of her lungs to call you for dinner,
if it's a one bedroom apartment.
8) If you ever attended, graduated or dropped out of Greek School
9) If during Greek Easter you take off from work for religious reasons,
and attend the Epitafio at NIGHT.
10) If you become sick and anemic because you did not eat meat.
11) If whenever you feel under the weather, you compulsively dab on
> some 'Vick's vapor rub' all over your chest and inside your nostrils.
12) Your mom makes your bed every day even though you've just turned
thirty-two.
13) If you call all non Greeks 'XENI' even if you know their
nationality.
14) If at least 2 other cousins have the same name as you.
15) If you hated fakes, bamias, or fasoulakia as a kid , but started
enjoying them as you grew up.
Send this to all your Greek friends! You can also send this to
your non-Greek friends, but if you have to explain more than three
items, what's the point?
Skopelos and Virgin
-by Skorda
when first you see it
across the water,
rising round and new above the mountain.
Open your mouth and swallow
while youth holds its roundness near,
and you are running fearless in the dark.
Hold it inside, it is still warm
and you will need its light,
there, inside you.
Down the road of time, somewhere
after you’ve aged, traveled,
Explored, discovered.
And the dust around your doorway
has been pounded hard and smooth under your feet.
When you find yourself growing weary and bored,
when your eyes see only ruins,
and your heart is empty.
You may believe, in your exhaustion,
that this is truth, at last.
That the mystery has unraveled,
leaving no wilderness to explore or tame.
All secrets have been shared,
the frontier has dissolved.
Know then, with these thoughts,
you have been swallowed.
The warm belly of the beast
comforts with confining darkness
and lulls with rhythmic sounds
Murmuring to you,
Curl up and sleep,
just go to sleep.
Shake your head,
stretch your legs,
do not sleep now.
Remember what you know.
You swallowed the moon,
you hold it inside you.
Not as a magpie hoarding shiny things,
or wearing the moon for beauty
or bartering the moon for wealth.
You swallowed the moon for this moment.
When you will walk to the water’s edge,
open your mouth, release the moon
and let its light build you a pathway
across the wine dark sea.
©Skorda 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Are you Greek? How Can you Tell for Sure?
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