Eurotopia; Dive into Greece
Step 1
Lands pour into view beyond, soon to be entered — on foot, by thumb, with luck or without. I’ve an unmistakable feeling of dread, like carrying an abyss in my stomach, coupled however with just as clear a sense of power and purpose. I exit the ferry with my twenty-kg canine companion, Brambles, by my side. A pair of rogues in an unnerving, unsettled world gone nobody knows where, gone someplace nobody dreams to dare. And we’re gone too, out of here, though not merely passing through. The plan is to go to the heart of Europe today, July, 2015; Greece. To cut through Europe — over 4,000 km — from Dublin to Athens, by foot or by crook or any other Goddamn way you like — hitchhiking, training, bussing, car-sharing, whatever else have you — and to stop writing, speculating and dreaming about distant lands from afar — from the stifling, stupefying comfort of our own borrowed homes — and instead to be at the heart of the action, wherever there’s action supposed to be. The plan is to plan, when it seems that for too long we — whether as a nation or as an international community — have blindly trusted and followed nobody at all, only an anonymous, autonomous and spectacular entity known as “the Market”, or “the Economy”. The plan is to regain control over our own futures, and not have them dictated to us by either a marketplace-based-technocracy-neurocracy from Brussels, nor by the capitalist gangbang CEO marshmallow head directors serving the 1%. And right now, within Europe, it seems that the only political party with any power and credulity that’s actually considering to plan anew is Syriza. It’s certainly raising some interesting questions, providing a breath of fresh air. Podemos is in the wings, but we’re all waiting to see what happens first in Greece.
Because Greece is the more, if Europe is actually worth anything more than the sum of its parts. There’s a lot at stake here. For Greece, for Europe, for the whole world. The antagonism that persists between democracy and capitalism, for instance, is crystalizing itself in the Greek situation, the people having time (and time again) voted against austerity. But what? There is a gaping vacuum. You can call it the debt. The deficit. The terms of the bailout. You can call it the failure of the left. To articulate an alternative to an austerity package that serves but a few on-board this sinking Titanic. A vacuum of reason that no Google search result nor college professor can answer for us. We must provide our own answer, we must step into the void and fill it with our own thoughts and actions and systems.
The plan is to bridge the divide that exists and is felt between everything we read and the simple truth — and that’s absolutely an erroneous juxtaposition and the hallmark of every ideology — but nonetheless the plan is then to be a part of the living thing, and not a mere spectator, commenting benignly on the unfolding of history before our eyes, watching our last chance fade before us, waving us goodbye, on this our sinking ship. Time waits on no one. The time has come to recalibrate our route. The time has come to shake up to the realities of our shaken foundations… to openly declare what was worthwhile all along in all of it. The time has come to take sides between a living and a dead world. The dead world reprimands us for dreaming when only a dream can save us all. This is not about survival. It’s about living. In what kind of a world?
In an impenetrable world of inert expert administration? We’ll have faster, smaller, cheaper, cooler phones. And more i-gadgetry. And existence will still be unpalatable. Because we want something else. The market says it will always be there to provide that je ne sais quoi — mobilizing every capable, industrial and enterprising body out there to satisfy the ubiquitous and conscientious whims, needs and fancies of the all-important consumer. Philanthropic capitalists like Bill Gates and supposedly ethical companies like Starbucks are lauded as exemplars of progress and change. But what is unpalatable about life today is that no matter what the market can provide us with, it relies upon a system based on domination, exploitation and exclusion. It’s not possible to compensate for injustices in the very act of perpetuating them. Our economic system forces us all into the everyday violence it thrives upon. We cannot work ourselves out of that. We cannot buy ourselves out of that. We’re trapped, it would seem, given what’s on offer, between a rock and a hard place. Unless of course we believe that another way is possible. Unless we can manage to put something new on the table…
Step 2
I feel a spontaneous affinity with Greece. I’m not from Greece, I’ve never been to Greece, but there are certain similarities I feel unite us, which go beyond the fact that we’re both European. We both struggle with our finances, for instance, and have little money; yet beneath this struggle over personal, national or even international finance, there lies an even greater struggle for independence and community… We both share in a dream of a Europe worth being a part of. We know we need another way to get there, yet we don’t know what that way is just yet. We’re aware of a problem that still has no answer. There are no easy answers. There’s only a situation it seems that one must throw themselves into whole-heartedly; to ride the uncertain wave or tsunami that’s mounting in Greece and being felt all across Europe and the rest of the world. I want to get to Greece because I believe Greece is the beating heart of a political Europe today, faithful to the emancipatory, collaborative project of peace and prosperity amongst its nation states. The bend-over-backwards-to-accommodate-the-market political heart in Brussels stopped ticking long ago, yet continues to jeopardise what is worthwhile in the European political project…
Everywhere I go, people are simply looking for a story to tell, a handle to grasp what’s happening in Greece and the implications that might have for the rest of Europe. Some are playing the blame game; blame immigrants for our problems, blame bankers, blame the Greeks. We could even hop on board that wagon and blame capitalism, but to what avail? It’s too general, like saying you’re a revolutionary. We need to work with specifics to be truly revolutionary. Like Syriza is doing in Greece. Instead of going along with the neoliberalist model of constantly repaying their national debt with more borrowing and more austerity impositions, they’ve succeeded in opening up a dialogue which is forcing people all across Europe to face some tough questions and to really consider where we’re at and where we’d like to be going.
I got the ferry to Holyhead from Dublin, and only got as far as Bangor (Wales) that night after missing potential hitching opportunities coming off the ferry because I was delayed with the dog (yeah, yeah, blame me again!) and opting for a train to London which I soon realized (with the help of a friendly ticket inspector) was way too expensive, so I paid the minimum fare and got off at the first stop… Bangor, just next to Holyhead. The next day, I hitch to Birmingham with a Chilean newspaper delivery man, born of leftist parents who is himself somewhere caught between disillusionment and revolutionary hope. The things people want are so simple and basic. Surely it could be provided another way. I then get from Birmingham to Rugby after two hitches, one by a police vehicle. Don’t hike on highways. — Yes, sir. How do I get to Greece? I can hardly make it through the UK! How do I get a camera (DSLR with video capabilities)? What will I do after Greece? I can’t settle down, yet I need a revolution I can believe in. What could I believe in other than my own self and my friends and comrades.
I make it down to London hitchhiking really without too much hassle, though I do hope that hitching on the continent is better, stay a night at a friend-of-a-friend’s place, now my own friend and comrade too! Getting from Dover in south-east England to Calais on the other side of the channel proves somewhat tricky with the dog. I tried hitchhiking via the ferry with the dog, but to no avail. I couldn’t take him on board as a foot passenger, either. Dogs must be held within a vehicle for the duration of the passing. I was stuck there a long time. And the next day too. That afternoon I went on a stroll with my back and dog. I walked down to the sea-shelled beach in Dover, sore under foot, dropped everything, stripped and raced crashing into the sea, the dog giddy beside me, and looked out into the blue, blue water, next stop Calais, and cried a few bitter tears and absolutely nobody of the hundreds of vehicles that passed me by was considering giving me a lift. I felt like I was stuck in the UK and that I’d have to go turn around with my tail between the dog’s legs and make that dog trip back to Holyhead and return to Dublin. But there was already far too much momentum behind this to allow that to happen. There was far too much riding on it. I had visions of myself getting there in different ways, but as it turned out only a minor change in strategy (from hitching a ferry to hitching a train via the Channel tunnel) paid off and I zoomed away at last from that minor delay with a lovely lady named Avril who lives in France.
The world is a lovely place and I am holy again. When the going’s good it’s great and when it’s poor it’s abysmal! I’m stretching through Northern France as I write this — heading from Calais in France to Dunkirk and on into Germany, apparently. The driver says it’ll take four hours. I’m happy just to leave that spot on the side of the road I’d been on for three gruesome hours in the blazing heat behind! I’m filled with hope at the prospect that this might actually work. I might get to meet with friends and loves and comrades, I might start my own future, I might get to Greece, I might make a living somehow and be independent and be part of a group, a truly great and revolutionary band of brothers and sisters, scribbling clear and truthful writing, being free and exploding our minds together. I want to go and never stop. But it’s a tough road and only rewarding when it works out and revolting when it works not. I want to get to Greece, get dirty, kiss the stars and shine or be smothered out completely. How’s it all working, this economy that we have? This apparently impenetrable trap? The reality is that it doesn’t actually work too well. You’re up against the wall one way or another — on the inside you fester on a blatantly corrupt, exploitative system; on the outside you look on and watch as busy, deserted streets fill your mind and soul. Either way you fade into nothing at all that never mattered like the next gadget that’ll replace the next, that’ll replace the next. But perhaps we all stand someplace else, some place between these two poles of inside and out, of inadequacy and loathing. Some place searching for some place new. Where does that leave us? It leaves us with a choice; to accept a world whose final frontiers are that of a forced economic choice between inside and out, or else to find a third way.
I’m over half-way to Athens now, in Vienna, and it’s basically one highway connecting me then from Budapest to Athens, the E-75. Stay tuned.
DarraghPower/Blackfish_Media_Cooperative
To read the next step of Darragh’s journey, click here.
