Lockdown.

 Lockdown: the final lexeme says it all. It is horrendous to know someone who is suffering from covid-19 - perhaps even fighting for life itself. But though we may have been spared that, daily bulletins reporting rising cases, deaths and the hardships experienced by front-line workers cannot fail to produce despondency.

                                             

From our reduced vistas, our focus is more on restrictions being imposed on us, their repercussions and our responses to them. The initial lexeme, ‘lock’ – in its plural form - is an issue for many of us ladies. It does make a difference to get out of trackies for a change, and a fresh manicure feels better. But, oh, how I long for a trip to the hairdresser and in that I know I am not alone!

In the early 90s the British Council sent me to Belgrade to inspect a state-school  which was setting up an English teacher training course as part of an aid program. It was spring and the arrival of fresh greens in the market was a source of great joy for people who were slowly emerging from the deprivations caused by the Balkan Wars. When I remarked how well-groomed and chic the lady teachers were, I was told that was a survival strategy: to go about one’s life as if the horror wasn’t happening around you.  

                                              

 Of late, Thessaloniki has become a red zone, with soaring numbers of new cases and deaths recorded. The other day, a local radio station played the 1988 Dusty Springfield and Pet Shop Boys’ recording with the repeating line in the chorus: ‘How am I gonna get through?’.  

                                                  

 Good question, I thought, and resolved to run a straw poll among some of the members of the select  group I call my Lady Buds to see what they do to try and get through this dreadful state of affairs.  Though some did own to going through periods of negativity, they were happy to share their strategies, a distillation of which can be seen below.

 Many friends felt privileged to be living in the country-side and for them it seemed business as usual since walking and gardening figured largely in their daily lives, weather permitting. One was relatively unaffected, as she lives in New Zealand, while a city-dweller admitted that somehow my question had saddened her a little as she realized how much she enjoyed her lockdown freedom from non-preferred social interaction obligations!  

 Some talked of deriving joy from spending more time with their children – others were looking forward to that. Pets were also a source of pleasure, though the lady who takes the biscuit in that category could claim to have 2 cows, 17 sheep, 4 horses, 2 ponies and 2 chickens. And, yes, her husband is a vet!  

Reading, listening to music, watching videos, film clips, etc. are regular distractions. One stated that she often used the library facilities, but it is closed to the public. So the procedure is she makes a request, then does a curbside (sp.? – she lives in Santa Barbara :) )  pick-up which she feels is very-self-indulgent.   

Language learning featured as did cooking, baking along with  consequent weight-gain and there was even a 20-year-old cross-stitch resuscitation! Coffee, chocolate, wine and g’n’ts have all seen an increase in consumption. :o

One, interestingly, made a comparison: in Lockdown 1 she was more dynamic, planning several projects, while in Lockdown 2, her energy had dissipated.

Two responses tugged at my heart: one, England-based, said she felt lucky to be ‘trying to get through this’ , given that thousands haven’t been so lucky. The other, from Sweden, simply stated that she was suffering from covid-19 but was upbeat about it and confident she would pull through.  Amen to that!

                                                 

One valuable piece of advice was that we should appreciate what we have and not bother about what we don’t have. And the one common factor was how much we value communication between our family members and our closest pals.

The local radio show ended with the number made famous by Sheffield crooner, Joe Cocker: With A Little Help From My Friends. Now that’s an apposite note to end on.

Stay well, stay safe, stay in contact!

 

Aristotle's Lyceum

 My account of Aristotle is not quite in chronological order: we looked at his birthplace and where his ashes were buried – now it’s time to fill in some of the in-between times.  We know Aristotle was educated by Plato at his Academy in Athens. This was a place of worship, a place for military exercise as well as a centre of education.

Aristotle followed in his teacher’s dialectic mode of interaction with his students but his thinking was to diverge greatly from that of Plato and for that reason, he founded his Lyceum in 335 BC. This was set in a lush, green area and was also called the Peripatetic School since Aristotle and his students often carried out their instruction while walking in these peaceful grounds.  Following the same schedules as Plato’s Academy, at the Lyceum, philosophy was taught in the morning, rhetoric in the early evening.

                    In 1996, as excavation was going on to clear a space for the new Museum of Contemporary Art, the original site of The Lyceum was uncovered. The excavation was carried out by archaeologist, Effie Lygouri and the site was opened to the public in June 2014. Right is an artist’s impression of what the construction would have been like.

  Beautifully landscaped, it covers a large area of over 11,000 square metres and is an ideal place to explore this rich historical find, the area where Plato and Aristotle strolled in the groves in bygone days, as well as to enjoy a charming oasis in the city centre.          

Plato was exceptionally interested in establishing what was understood by Truth and the Ideal; he searched for the immutable in terms of morals in society and in nature. His understanding was that there were two worlds: the Material World of substances which is temporal, and the World of Ideas which is eternal, containing the concepts, or moulds, if you like, of all contained in the Material World.  He believed that man, being of substance, with no direct access to the World of Ideas, can only have partial understanding. Similarly, he concluded that man cannot aspire to having an ideal political state, but that the Constitutional State is the next best thing.

We must appreciate that Aristotle was very interested in nature, in fact, he can be said to be Europe’s first great biologist, intent on classifying living objects around him. He felt that Plato, with his World of the Material and his World of Ideas, was unnecessarily doubling things!  Aristotle believed that the concept of ‘horse’, for example, was not in another world, but was in our consciousness - a product of what we had heard and seen around us. As a biologist, he classified objects according to their characteristics. In the same way, man constructs the concept ‘horse’ by classifying similar characteristics as common to one set of things.

Quite a complexity of thinking there! Just as it never fails to astound me that toddlers can see many different types of dogs, yet readily accept that quite different characteristics still belong to the same animal set. So this little person, with limited life experience and undeveloped reasoning faculty, can see a poodle and a Great Dane together and have no difficulty in assigning them to the same taxonomy of animal, have no doubts in comprehending their shared concept of ‘dogness’! And there they were, then, these philosophers, struggling over how to explain that phenomenon of sameness but difference at the same time! Man’s mind is a wonderful thing!

I end on a relevant, artistic note.  Below we see a part of the oil painting entitled ‘The School of Athens’, created by the Italian Renaissance artist, Raphael, between 1509 and 1511, now decorating a palace wall in the Vatican. You can see Plato making a point, while Aristotle and the other students listen intently.

                    

Next  painted on a shop shutter in central Athens, is an amazing piece of graffiti of the two main characters.  The Banksy-type artist has helpfully written the name of each philosopher below, and rather irreverently now has Plato effortlessly balancing a football on his index finger! Respect!!