excerpt

So, Mike went to the little shack, his kingdom for the next hour,
his isolation for the next hour, and after he fired up the burner and
shovelled some good shovelfuls of sand into the cylinder to let it dry,
a process that would take about ten minutes or so. While waiting for
the ten-minute process, Mike sat on his stool and tried to compose
his thoughts about what he could write for the next ten minutes, a
paragraph perhaps of his novel, which he had been trying to write
since his arrival in this huge country called Canada. Endless subject,
his book, which referred to his experiences in the new lands, what
he has lived up to now and other things that he imagined, images he
usually wrote on a piece of paper out of the roll they used to wipe their
hands, yet that didn’t stop him, since he usually re-writes everything
daily, using an old typewriter a friend of his gave him for free. An old
manual machine, yet good enough for the use he had for it, after all, a
free typewriter was always a good thing since it didn’t cost Mike any
money, which was very small and counted twice before being spent.
He started writing, in Hellenic, of course, still the only language
he could master in this country.
“Both of us were born close to different seas, mine was the blue Mediterranean
and yours the grey Pacific Ocean, yet we bleed the same red blood; we
feel the same inexplicable brotherhood, and we also feel the same grief in front
of sickness and disease. We haven’t walked the same paths, and we have never
worn the same shoes, yet we both follow the same ascent to the mountain top.
I, searching for the land with the asphodels where the blessed ones exist while
you search for your tear and its meaning before the orphan and the destitute,
Yes, we create the same footprints through the dark passages searching for the
song of the wind and for the shaking off the eagle’s wings before he commences
his soaring up in the sky, Yes, the same heartbeat guides us both when we hug
the old man and we love the same torch that lights the dark pathway before the
wind extinguishes it and we both feel the same nostalgia for beloved persons…

https://draft2digital.com/book/4250839#print

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763866
who float in the absence of sorrow…”