I awoke in Athens and walked through dry, fine dusted streets dazed. Here was history buried not by earthquake or war, but the weight of the history here itself. How much more time can be carried, and here I see it, a weight that is insoluble and grey, carried on the lodes of buildings and shoulders of the elderly. The young scatter on scooters and scratched cars. White washed concrete buildings vibrate gently to the tone of air conditioners.
Here is the crime of time unchecked, moreso than Rome, where dazzling sun crushes the air from you, dust bleaches all tone into a shade of time.A broken light throws me from stark shade to bright light like the tick of a metronome, passing people stare at me. In this lost city only the bereaved wear black, no one walks wears spiked boots, who else is there with silver glimmering across fingers that point at the ghosts of where an empire once fostered civilisation. Now it is a concrete monolithe, a twentieth century mausoleum to its forgotten history.Here is time trapped.Here is a forgotten crime.Where only the relentless heat remembers and dust paints shapes to tease the unconscious.It is also damned hot and I am sweating like a pig on a spit.So I too turn my back on the history of Athens. Inside the grey monolithes are bars with cold beer and that will help me to forget.