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Wednesday, 22nd January 1997
New year, new (hopeful?) start: Despite the relative improvement of my social life in the last two years, I can't say I feel satisfied. Why, indeed? Maybe because all those friends I've found during this period are rather bereft persons. Moreover, they are isolated from the rest of the human race -just like I am; therefore, they can't help me in anything.
Not knowing what else to do in order to improve my social life, I have decided to quit gyms and start taekwondo lessons at Nicky's school, which is only a five-minute walk from my house. Physical exercise is certainly much harder here, while it requires special suppleness which -let's face it- I've never had. I often have the impression that my inability to perform certain moves correctly has been noticed and commented by the rest of the pupils.
I have also started to take yoga lessons at Janus, right before my class on Monday afternoon. I don't really know why I do this; yoga is very boring here, let alone I have to carry my gym outfit all the way from home, in a plastic bag. This evening I asked Mary, the receptionist, if I could leave the bag with my clothes somewhere in Janus, so as not to carry them any time from Glyfada to Kypseli and conversely. She smiled and answered: “There is a place for that, under the kitchen-sink!”. As I found out soon, under the kitchen-sink there is place only for the rubbish bin. Mary's message was clear: Your place is with the rubbish, since you are nothing but rubbish...
Friday, 24th January 1997
However, what bothers me most is that shrew of Lucy Parissis: She is a wayward old-maid who has come to Pangaea recently. She is a professor of Religion, she is here to edit “The Unknown History of Christianity”, she is considered to be a very important person and she obviously hates my guts -without a reason whatsoever.
By the way: The computer I work on has been upgraded too many times and, as a result, it breaks down every now and then: Sometimes the screen turns black, or the program fails, or the printer doesn't work properly and so on. Naturally, Mrs Parissis can't understand it is not my fault that my computer is faulty. She is constantly slandering me to everybody, grumbling I don't know how to use the computer and that's why it always breaks down. It is a mystery, though, that all problems appear when I type her texts!
This morning, as soon as she stepped into my office with some new texts in hand, the screen suddenly went black with a ''system error'', without my pressing a single key! What the heck, has she got a magnet or something? We called for a technician, as usual, but in the meanwhile the fair lady fumed and fretted at me and started shouting about my incompetence.
I suspect many of my colleagues believe her, although -as I often hear- I am “the best typist this company has ever had”. The problem is that day by day the atmosphere around me is getting less and less friendly, which makes me feel more and more stressed...
Thursday, 30th January 1997
Night Adventure: The comic book “Arion and the King's Sceptre” comes alive. Arion is a charming revolutionary with red hair, who robs the king's shipments, coaches and trains. He is strong and brave, he often fights alone against many opponents. Finally, he manages to steal the king's sceptre in a train. He has to fight with many enemies and he gets wounded. In the end, he is stabbed in the back, he gets arrested and decapitated. Verification: In the evening Alice invites me to watch an adventure film on video, together with her children and her new boyfriend. The plot of the film proves to be very similar to the plot of my dream.
Sunday, 2nd February 1997
Night Adventure: Aliens have reached Earth and they secretly occupy the planet. A man discovers their existence but before he does anything about it, a female alien absorbs him inside her. Then, her body falls into pieces which, when they unite again, they form a creature that looks like her victim.
The hybrid arrives at a sunny beach. None of the sunbathers can recognize his extraterrestrial nature. I am there too. I find out that the water can destroy the hybrid's body, as well as the bodies of other contaminated humans. They all look like skeletal zombies now and they start chasing me through narrow pathways among the cliffs.
Later I manage to escape from prison but I accidentally send a wrong message to space, which results in more aliens invading the Earth. Soon, beings from Saturn begin to experiment systematically on human beings.
In the end I reach the airport, aiming to take the plane to Boston. However, I soon find out my enemies have been waiting for me and they start launching “explosive cones” against me. I catch them in the air with my hands and hurl them at the extraterrestrial invaders. Yet, more and more dangerous cones are launched against me and it is too difficult for me to dodge them all...
Saturday, 22nd February 1997
Every other Saturday I pay a visit to my friend Lena (married, well-to-do, boring, with two infants who never get an inch away from their mother) from 4:00 to 6:00 pm exactly – as if I had an appointment with the doctor.
This afternoon I tried to begin a conversation regarding the necessity of human communication, but she interrupted me abruptly:
“All those who like parties, long chats and outings have nothing better to do, they are complete failures! Such persons have no aim in life!”
I pretended not to have taken the hint.
A little later, we started talking about Ivy, a serious and sedate forty-year-old single woman we occasionally meet on the bus to work.
“She has been learning how to play the organ lately; she also goes to a dance school,” I informed my friend, who suddenly frowned.
“I don't understand what's the meaning of this all! Frankly, I can't understand why this woman lives! She goes to one place; she goes to another place; so, what? All this is nothing but nonsense for people who have no reason to live!” she concluded, full of contempt for old-maid Ivy. That was certainly a clear insinuation about me too; and I, as usual, kept on acting the fool lest I should lose that great friend.
Nevertheless, the question is still here and it is still unanswered: What am I doing in this bleak and hostile world? I am virtually alone in a society of monsters and -for some strange reason- I have to survive...
Thursday, 27th February 1997
After last night's dinner at Janus, which hardly lasted an hour, without any communication among us, with the guru complaining that he had not been previously notified and that he was doing us a favour by allowing us to gather around that huge board we use as a table (which seems to be specially made to isolate dinner guests) I took my final decision: I am leaving Janus -for good this time.
All things considered, lessons at Janus are nothing but a waste a time: Actually I am dragooned into going there, because they make me think I were lost without it. For quite a long time we've been learning nothing new, maybe because Alexander seems to have become too skeptical about anything: “There are no spirits; spiritualism is fraud” … “(Self)hypnosis is harmful to the human mind” … “There is no such thing as magic” … “There are no astral worlds” … “There is nothing beyond matter” … “Telepathy requires a perfectly clean subconscious, so it is unfeasible” and so on. Alexander has always deified the subconscious but we don't talk about it either. Only once, in a rare demonstration of sincerity, he admitted that the subconscious affects human behaviour only by 2%. The rest 98% is affected by the unconscious, which is genes, as well as other external imponderable factors. However, this truth is usually revealed to the advanced disciples only; the rest of us delude ourselves with the fairy tale of self-improvement – and we never get anywhere.
As for the rest, the only things we talk about in class are delayed monthly fees, extra contributions we ought to offer every now and then, or how little progress we've made -and we are always to blame. No, I can't put up with such inanities anymore, I can't waste my time. It's not that I disapprove completely of Janus, but there is nothing to learn in there anymore...
Chapter 10: Life (?) goes on...