SOLAR SMILE TOWARD PLACA-MONASTIRAKI

-text and photos Andrei Dorian Gheorghe;
design Florin Alexandru Stancu-

In June 2013,
getting closer to Athens through an industrial zone,
from the speed of the bus I saw a complex atmospheric phenomenon.

When your road is accompanied
by friendly sundogs and a tangent arc,
although you don’t know what life is,
things seem to be… not quite dark!

Arrived in Athens
I had to follow the fascinating obligation to visit the Placa-Monastiraki zone,
at the foot of Acropolis
(chosen as the most representative cultural symbol of humanity).

So that first I saw from the distance the Lycabettos Hill
(with the Saint George Chapel),
then I passed near the statue of Lord George Gordon Byron
(the great English poet who died in 1821 for the independence of Greece,
the “hearth of light” for Europe),
and near the Arch of Emperor Hadrian (made in 131 AC)…

Then, in the Placa-Monastiraki area,
I saw other superb mixture of ages
(Pagan ruins near Christian buildings,
and even a Christian Orthodox church
harmoniously co-existing with a Muslim mosque)…

I went to Placa-Monastiraki
(the older zone of Athens)
soon after the summer solstice,

hoping to find from Plato,
Aristotle, other thinkers and various things,
more about what life is.

In Placa-Monastiraki
I simultaneously felt myself
like a disciple
of Euxodius’ constellated treatise
and Aratus’ constellated poetry,
and like a student at
Plato’s Academy,
Aristotle’s Lyceum,
more Byzantine schools,
and the university of modern Greek renaissance,

avidly learning more
about constellated things
and other celestial openings.

And finally
in Placa-Monastiraki
I understood that culturally,
after the night falls,
Acropolis becomes a nocturnal sun
and its surrounding historic parks
become specific tangent arcs.

Sometimes with the agreement
of the Full Moon!