Fifteen days in New York! Not too many or too few! Before and after the elections. I am writing from the plane on the way back. I started with a simple list of pending matters that await me in my motherland. Not a good idea at all..

by Labis Tagmatarchis

Don’t worry! I will write to you about what I did and what I saw. It seems easier and maybe more interesting. New York. The city of cities! Here where “the heart of the world beats”. Here where new ideas are tested, trends in fashion, arts, science, architecture, artificial intelligence are produced. New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Brooklyn, Soho, Astoria, Manhattan. The city, where nothing can surprise you in it, except the city itself.

Visit to the UN Security Council.

Mainly to determine the degree of readiness of our country in view of assuming its duties as a Non-Permanent Member of the Security Council, on January 1, 2025. This election is extremely useful and very honorable (for the second time in the history of our country), since Greece received a vote of confidence from 182 countries out of a total of 193. Friendly countries and eternal enemy countries coexist on the same benches, countries that are at war, poor countries that we have not heard of, nor where they are, very rich and powerful countries. Among the purposes of the Council, I read that it is “the maintenance of international peace and security”. I thought that it must be the most failed organization in the world. No one listens to it, no one takes it into account and almost all its decisions go straight to the trash… As a country, we have experience. The counter-argument from diplomatic lips is: “and achieving only 30% of its goals is something very important. And a small crumb of peace for humanity to gain is worth it. The political condemnation of a state is of enormous importance. History records the states that respect the decisions of the Security Council. Countries are judged, which ones deserve to be members of the World Community and which ones don’t”. Excellent tour by a great Greek woman working there. Not to bore you, MANCODE found that the Greek delegation is fully prepared to handle the challenge. Don’t worry!

I get on the subway.

There is a wedding party in the wagon. The newlywed in her wedding dress and heels, the groom in flip-flops and the best men in tuxedos… The in-laws of Asian origin… I couldn’t figure out exactly where. They opened champagne and treated the surprised passengers in plastic glasses… From every corner of the world, each dressed in the colors and stylistic traditions of their homeland. Surrealism in everyday life. They treated me, I couldn’t refuse. I drank and felt bad for being at a wedding empty-handed. Without a gift! I wished “have a nice life” in Greek, I missed the station where I was supposed to get off, and I muttered… “if the bride and groom want it, even a poor man will throw a reception”. Everything went well! Don’t worry!

You can see a bride on the subway, you can see a guy praying in church with his bike under his arm, you can see young people in the middle of the street smoking, not just cigarettes. Smoking is prohibited even in certain outdoor areas. You can see shop windows displaying works of art, you can see buildings transformed into luxury handbags and electric cars, you can look up and feel the effort of man to reach God. I am talking about a collective decision to overcome the “boundaries” of urban space. To have a picture of heaven you have to turn your head 90 degrees backwards, and even if you manage to do so. Either because the place literally does not fit them, or simply to exploit every inch of land and air, or to demonstrate their strength, power, ability, or simply to satisfy their vanity….

A couple of days before election day…

Nothing indicated that in a few twenty-four hours the future, democracy, institutions, wars, international trade relations would be decided there – according to many – not a single poster, not a horn, not a rally in the street… Ah! my sweet homeland, what do they know about election campaigns?

The roar of the city was disturbed every now and then by the sirens of ambulances, police cars, fire engines… No, there weren’t that many. The sirens there can be heard for miles. And since the drivers are certainly not deaf, perhaps in this way the state declares that it is omnipresent!

New York. Here everything is big, the trucks, the cars, the taxis, the restaurants, the department stores, the universities, the art galleries and the traffic chaos. I’m not talking about the buildings, we said that. But we didn’t say that each of them is like participating in an open architectural competition. Straight lines, curved lines, circles, semicircles, all of these together or separately, facets-artefacts, facets that change if horses at the time and the light… The light they steal from the streets. Especially, there in the famous “slum” dominated by Wall Street, to see the sky you have to look harder. Extremely narrow streets, you could easily call them alleys, nightmarish heights and a permanent childish wonder. But how did they build this? Who climbed up there and how? The optical illusion makes the skyscrapers converge in the sky, as if they want to kiss in the heights. Of course there are no balconies and the windows -if they exist- do not open. They must know something. Some rooftops -oases- host curious tourists who you empathise with when they struggle to photograph infinity with their mobile phones. Mobile phones with the wide-angle lens you need to achieve this, do not exist.

MANCODE was present on election day, at a celebration organized in the conference room of the Board of Directors of the American Stock Exchange.