My Closet's Flying Heart: Burnt Thursday's Cube

If you don't live in Greece, in Venice, in Cologne, in Nice, in Rio de Janeiro, in Lucerne or in New Orleans, you may think I've gone crazy! If not, please let me know which place on earth you are while reading this, so I Iearn more about places where Carnival is an institution too!

The latin word "Carnival" and the greek word "Apokria", have the same meaning: "Away from meat"!
Apokries for the Greek Orthodox Church, is the three week period before Ash Monday, when the 40-day long Lenten Fast begins and lasts till Easter. However the festivities have their origins in ancient Greece and the celebrations in honour of Dionysus (Bachus), the god of wine and joy, that used to take place to celebrate the end of Winter.

Today it's "Burnt Thursday" or "TsiknoPempti" as we call it in Greece and it's always celebrated eleven days before the beginning of Lent. The "Burnt" part refers to the grilling of meat, a big part of the celebration of this day. If you respect yourself, you have to taste some grilled meat! And of course, dress up! Children follow the tradition but Tsiknopempti is a good excuse for fun for the grown ups as well. There are many home barbeque-parties and all the bars and clubs are colorfully decorated in order to welcome appropriately the dressed up party-goers.

But the real party goes on in the streets. What really amuses me is not the costume-wearing people, but all those who walk around normally dressed, even after they've finished work, having ONE crazy element on them! Serious looking gentlemen with clowns' noses, sharp ladies with an axe struck on their head, grannies with alien feelers...
Somewhere amongst those people there's also going to be me today, wearing the costume I made last year but never went out with it after all. It waited patiently for a whole year and it was meant for you to be the first ones to check it out..