All Greek to Me
άλφα
The first night, buried beneath white blankets, I keep dreaming that I can’t move or speak properly. It went on for hours. I dream this all the time, dragging my legs, slurring my words, so much so that it feels shockingly real at this point. And somehow it is: I spend half my time on Earth under these avalanches, so why would it not be real?
δέλτα
It’s a perfect day for writing at the open window, soft music dripping in from somewhere. A summery laziness lies over things: my pencil, my ceramic oil and vinegar dispensers, my Greek notebook lying still. So many words, I can’t fit them all into my head. In other places, I lack language.
ιώτα
Some things I have almost forgotten: The time I kissed a Greek in his car and a hair of his beard got stuck in my throat all night. A tiny thing, short like a letter, refusing to move.
όμικρον
When I was sitting on a terrace in Athens, sweating and drawing foreign letters into my notebook, I didn’t know my body was already learning the Greek alphabet.
ωμέγα
The first week on my new job on translation, I read that opera was birthed out of ‘an attempt to revive the Greek drama’. Here I am, in the cold grip of a Viennese fall, trying to do exactly that.
