Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress

Okay boys and girls, the sharpest knife in the kitchen drawer in Felia is back. No arguments. Shaun may be more thorough but the incisive quality of this tool is without peer. This blade is like the finest Japanese steel - takes and holds an edge better than any other. Self promotion over.

The guv'nor told me not to do this. Shaun counseled against it. Both vehemently. Eddie and Frambot are in favour though I have to ask would I take their advice if they disagreed with me? Of course not.

I am going to show you a part of how my pieces are conceived, gestated, and finally born. There is nothing altruistic about it. It just appealed to me and since the piece in question is unlikely ever to see a live birth I am not really giving anything much away. This is a piece that has consistently failed to mature - it will not gestate to term. It is incomplete and fundamentally damaged. I cannot bear it to term.

This particular piece has suggested itself to me three, no four, times in as many weeks. And each time a little more substance accretes to it but as yet not enough. Every time it refuses to lend itself to a final and complete form. So let us begin our exagminations.

The germ or seed or kernel or spore is as follows: how does the almost universal adherence to the Greek Orthodox religion in Greece jibe with contemporary Greek lifestyle: with its anarchistic, relaxed, and almost animist beliefs?

Let me show you what I have so far, here is a roughly organised list of materials that has accreted on this topic:

Greeks: religion 98%,
no orthodox fundamentalism,
the great schism.
trinitarianism,
tritheists,
East vs West - politics and power,

Religious intolerance,
lived under the yoke of Islam,
Armenian genocide

the excessive interfering nature of Catholicism brought on reformation,
Orthodoxy therefore escaped Protestantism,
avoided industrialisation.

Separation of state and church?
democracy and the plebiscite,
if democracies express the wishes of the people then India?

anti-intellectualism
papas as wise man
a married priesthood

cohesive
shared past and values


OK, that's enough of the grist. You can see how the topics and points have clustered into usable groups (not necessarily in the correct or final order) that can lead each onto the other. There must be 2 or 3 thousand words in there. And a few very sharp insights and lateral thoughts but ...

The big but is that it doesn't actually go anywhere that makes any salient point. And it is that alone that dooms this thing over and again. It's annoying but that is how this calling sometimes treat with its practitioners.