Mix Fix Reflections
Prose on Change
There’s a spot at the port of Thessaloniki, where you can sit on the most outer part of the city land, with your feet just above the sea. As it is a sunny and bright day, in front of me I can clearly see the profile of Mount Olympus. I stretch my back to look behind me: with just one gaze, I can embrace the whole seafront. Thessaloniki is a city that resisted many events, and its architecture has been here to witness it. Every time I look around, a new detail appears: I challenge you to focus on the buildings and not to think “Wait a minute! When did they add this balcony?!?” I spot a façade of some building from the 20ies, and it gets all of my attention: such buildings are so rare, as the city almost got destroyed back then. In the following decades, new edifices were erected to substitute the previous ones and satisfy the
population growth. Further, I recognise Aristotelous Square’s carmine columns, and on the very right, the White Tower. Once – it is common knowledge – it was called Red, a reference to the colour of blood, as it was a place of pain and torture. Now, in White, it has become the symbol of the city and the background for pictures and happy faces.
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by Chiara Parrucci
I assume a more natural position and continue
to look in front of me: it’s easy to get stuck focusing on the small waves that ripple the sea whilst a mild wind blows from the city. The shapes the waves take are similar to one another yet different all the time, they remind me fractals, and I can’t help but dive into my thoughts. It’s a Thursday afternoon and, as a personal rule, nothing special happens on Thursday: too soon for the weekend, too late in the week to pick it as the day for a “fresh new start”. It’s okay, I have learnt to accept Thursdays as a necessary evil to take time and reflect on what to improve in my life «starting from next Monday». Amazingly enough, we are told that there’s always room for changing
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Ode on a Grecian Urn By John Keats
