02/05/2020
H.K was a married man with two children and used to work as an electrical engineer professor at the university. He remembers giving lectures to his students talking about readings that can set the mind free and broaden the horizons and critical thinking. However, there comes a time he decides to abandon everything as he feels betrayed and unable to handle with situations that make him lose himself and his real sense. His mind keeps wandering over humanity problems that could also explain his own. It was these problems that made him go out once and for all and live in the street.
He starts writing down his thoughts in a notebook he discovers in rubbish. With a sharp wit and after reflection he interprets the world around. His high education and aesthetic awareness is depicted in his well- written Greek; it is obvious that he is totally aware of what he writes every time. Ηοwever, he does not write at length. We have to see his notes as a confession. After all, his living conditions as well as these only few notebook pages left give him no space to write long. Although he lives in an ever- ending present, he loves History. He considers his life up to the present, he pays attention to his free- association thinking, the unconscious world that comes in the surface through his dreams. He looks for omens and signs to predict the result of implicated situations that may sometimes bring our being and soul to a standstill. He tries to control his body needs with the power of his mind; instead of a blanket he wraps himself with his imagination and asks for a sun that can keep his cheeks, back and bones warm. He stands in the breadline for food, he feels sad that cannot get some rest, he observes the ever- increasing number of homeless people and feels happy to see them gather.
The diary notes of H.K relate to the (previous) financial crisis of Greece and cover a period of six years, exactly the time that H.K was homeless wandering in the streets of Athens. For H.K, writing can offer you “an all of your own home” where there is no danger of homelessness, eviction and auction. Writing is his shelter and a way to put in order all these philosophical viewpoints that ask to find out that time in history that the world was not so unbelievably ugly.
Homeless
Alexandra Deligiorgi
Published in Greek by: Agra (2014)
Alexandra Deligiorgi is a professor of Philosophy at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
