Greek Lessons: A Novel

“From precisely the moment that it arrives at the zenith, language describes a slow, gentle arc, undergoing alterations that make it a little more convenient to use. In some senses this is decline, this is corruption, but in other aspects it can be called progress. The European languages of today have passed through that long process, becoming less

Buildings soar up in the distance, enormous digital billboards blazing from their tops. As always, she stops in front of the pedestrian crossing and looks up at those screens. Faces larger than life move enormous lips to speak inaudible words.

To her, there was no touch as instantaneous and intuitive as the gaze. It was close to being the only way of touching without touch.

The pale green trees undulate as a single mass, their flowers a riot of unbelievably beautiful colors.

Now your CD has played all the way through, the night has grown deeper than it was not long before. Your voice soaks into the quiet, until this quiet somehow comes to feel warm.

There are times when my eyes burn and suddenly start to water. When these tears, which are but physiological, fail to stop for some reason, I quietly turn away from the road and wait for the moment to pass.

Even when she could talk, she’d always been soft-spoken. It wasn’t an issue of vocal cords or lung capacity. She just didn’t like taking up space. Everyone occupies a certain amount of physical space according to their body mass, but voice travels far beyond that. She had no wish to disseminate her self.

Images of objects form in her eyes, and they move, fluctuate, or are erased in time with her steps, without ever being translated into words.

The terror was still only vague, the pain hesitant to reveal its burning circuit from the depths of silence. Where spelling, phonemes and loose meaning met, a slow-burning fuse of elation and transgression was lit.