Choirokoitia

Choirokoitia

Original painting.
70cm X 70cm
Acrylic on Canvas and Pebbles

Walking up the side of a steep hill and going slowly slowly the steps up that leads to the settlement of Choirokoitia, you feel travelling backwards in time.

Each step a century. ...... Two ..... three ....... Eighty entire centuries. Eight thousands years. Eight thousands years and the same steps flow like a river trying to reach and unite with the blue sky. To unite the blue colour of the sky with the green colour of nature. To unite Earth with the sky, the stone with the universe and man with the Divine. Thousands years it blends into and alternates with the landscape. The river of time flows with the steps. And you walk the steps of time trying to get tied up with time that has passed and with your ancestors. To feel your roots, your identity, your existence. To feel your origin and what you are.

The entire settlement built with stones. Back streets, smalls alleys led in the circular lodges made with stone, clay and stubbles . A narrow entry door , a small window and the fireplace was all their property. There they lived and there they have been buried when they died.

And the tools, the vessels, the figurines also made from stone. All made of stone! Useful, robust, powerful and immortal! Like Life itself. And the ground, fertile, robust and powerful as the woman.

Woman, Earth, Stone, became one and were worshipped for thousands of years. The view of fertility scarved in Stone symbolizes the woman and the eternal renewal of nature and life.

Once upon a time everything was green. Wild vegetation unfolded everywhere. Pines, stubbles, cypresses, almond trees, olives, carob trees. Wild boars, sheeps, goats, deers, abundant water and flowers filled the nature. People worked in the fields cultivated the ground, they fished, hunted wild animals in order to live. They danced, sang, were glad, felt sorry, lived, died and once again life started .....

Now everything dry and only a few stones show that in the past here lived persons. And their stone tools made by some craftsman remind you the past. A past without beginning and a future with unknown end.

You feel the eternal, the time, and you feel an awe. An endless sunrise and an endless sunset that resembles a moment in eternity.

And you a part of this eternity. A moment! A moment that will finish and restart endless.

Dedicated in the memory of my friend Eleftherios Fousias who made me love so much the archaeological places and astronomy and who left so much prematurely.

And in the memory of my friend Maria Karakosta who was with me in our last visit in Choirokoitia and her last airtravel was to eternity, after she was one of the victims of the air accident that happened in Greece in August 2005.

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