We knew our purpose. We love Greece and the Greeks; and if ever there were a time to proclaim that love, it is now.
Continue reading the main story
RELATED IN OPINION
Contributing Op-Ed Writer: Greece’s Sorry ReckoningJULY 3, 2015
Op-Ed Columnist: Europe’s Many Economic DisastersJULY 3, 2015
We each have our reasons. “Greece,” someone remarked — perhaps it was Lawrence Durrell — “gives you the gift of friendship.” That is at the head of my list. I am never happier than in the midst of one of those freewheeling agglomerations of Greeks that form autonomously in kafenia like a flock of starlings over a marsh. If London’s social matrix is continental in scale, then Athens is just a village. How often have I sat in Kolonaki Square, an icy frappé in hand, only to be hailed by a passerby.
And Greece gives you the gift of health. A week spent in sight of the Aegean adds a year to my life, or so I firmly believe. Beauty, too, of course: not just the Parthenon golden at sunset or an island emerging from the blue, but an Athens bookshop named for the muse of lyric poetry where poets are still to be found. The pleasure of small anarchies: Smoking is banned in Greek restaurants, but you’d never know it, Karelias being to Greeks what Smith & Wessons are to Texans, not to be plucked from their fingers by any paternalistic state. Citizens of the surveilled North regard such attitudes as mildly insane, but then we have lost our taste for liberty.
via The Gifts of Eternal Greece – The New York Times.
You must be logged in to post a comment.