“The Tonsorial Lectures”
VazamBam
by Vassily Zambaras
“Close Shave; Mean Tourist; Good Tip”
“You think too much – clever people and grocers, they weigh everything.” —Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek
Socrates, my barber, once jumped ship,
Spent an eye-opening week in the States,
Now knows all about the New World
And how things work in it,
Tells me Taxes was great. Taxes? Hell, I all but blurt out
You mean Texas, you dumb Greek, but stop—
The stropping of that blunt,
Anachronous Old World tongue
Raises a new cut to things
As I settle in, he works up
A timely lather,
I sweat out his tip.
MELIGALAS, Greece—(Weekly Hubris)—3/1/10—Back in 1959, backwater Meligalas had no electricity, no running water, no asphalt roads, two ancient, dilapidated taxis, five or six equally old passenger cars, no banks, no government offices, hundreds of horses, donkeys and carts, a multitude of coffeehouses, tavernes, grocery and produce stores, barber shops, shoemakers, saddle makers, haberdasheries, tailors, blacksmiths, carters and more inhabitants than any of the other villages in the area and nary a tourist, let alone a mean one. Most of the traditional shops have long since disappeared along with their quaint proprietors and customers, and sighting a tourist in seismic-prone, no-longer backwater Meligalas is no longer earth-shaking news, owing to the growing popularity of the archaeological site of Ancient Messene, some nine kilometers southwest of the town. So it comes as no surprise that you don’t find many barber shops like Nick’s (his real name) any more in Hellas—they’ve gone the way of the donkey, almost wiped off the rocky face of the land by the smoother, more fashionable, more expensive unisex haute coiffure beauty salons catering to a younger generation, and you certainly won’t find many barbers like Nick; in fact, his is the only tonsorial left in Meligalas. Operating for over 50 years out of a tiny cubicle with room enough for only one chair for clients and another two chairs and a fold-up table for those waiting their turn (and more than likely having a shot of ouzo in the meantime, courtesy of Nick, who has the bottle in a tiny storeroom in the back), he does not just cut your hair and/or shave you—he offers you a rapid-fire lesson on how to go through life with as few nicks and scratches as possible. All you have to do is sit tight in your chair for the duration, look straight into the mirror, listen to what he and the waiting others are saying and—this is of the utmost importance—do not make any rash, stupid, sudden, unnecessary moves.
Vassilis Zambaras
Vassilis Zambaras According to such reliable inside sources as The Weekly Hubris’s Publishing-Editor, VazamBam aka Vassilis Zambaras is all of the following, and more, in an order no one can vouchsafe as definitive: a publishing poet who writes every day of his life; a hugely successful father (and a not-so-very-successful local political candidate); a professor of English as a Foreign Language, with portfolio; a Renaissance Man of many skills, useful and not-so; a fount of information about his particular corner of his birth country; an unstable and utterly unique mix of Greek and American, American and Greek; and the man fortunate and wily enough to have made off with Messenia’s loveliest and most talented local daughter as his child bride. Besides being all the aforementioned, other more dubious sources have also reported seeing him hanging out at the corner of vazambam.blogspot.com—in the guise of a “new old kid on the blog, with an occasional old or new poem written off the old writer’s block.” Author Photo: Pericles Boutos