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| A rose is a rose--even Lucia's rose |
How Hot?
Mid-summer approaches in the
eastern Mediterranean and it is so hot that, lacking a sunshade on the open
beach at noon, one risks utter annhiliation through dessication by around 2
p.m. Hydration and shade are critical components in daily living. More
importantly, any strenuous outdoor activities—gardening, construction, and in
Jonathan’s Herculean task, piling up small mountains of rock from the recently
plowed field—are best accomplished in the early morning. But coming home from
the village at 3 a.m. and waking at 7 a.m., day in and day out, takes its toll.
And so the siesta, the quiet time or more likely full-scale napping that is part
and parcel of afternoons (between 3:00 and 6:00), is nothing less an imperative
restorative, the basic tactic for survival in the summer heat. One is
revitalized—and another impossibly late night is viable.
This part of Greece—Messenia—is
said to enjoy 320+ days of sunshine per year and among the hottest temperatures
in all of Europe. One fools around with summer heat at one’s own peril.
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A few days ago Jonathan had the
great pleasure of playing music, just after siesta hour, with his daughter Lucia’s
friend Christos. A self-taught bouzouki player, in a few short years he has
become a virtuoso—a walking catalog of memorized tunes from all regions of
Greece and islands. (Not unrelated, he and his older brother are fantastic
dancers, and will take part in the Finikounda’s regional dance festival which
will be held on Saturday. The rhythms of traditional Greeke dance—meters such
as 9/8 and 5/4—are largely unfamiliar to Western ears. Concentration and
practice, like most things in life, are essential for mastery.)
Christos showed Jonathan some
basic bouzouki techniques and the two played (bouzouki and guitar, and also
guitar and drum—illustrative of the meter) for an hour or so.
When it was Jonathan’s turn to
call the tune, he chose (what else!) a few Beatles songs. “Norwegian Wood,”
accompanied by bass drum, somehow worked its way toward the 9/8 rhythm but
still held together. “Octopuses Garden” engendered a likely question: “Yianni,
I have speared octopus most of my life. They do not have gardens. They do not
live in the shade.”
Jonathan was sufficiently
inspired to dash to Kalamata the next day to buy a collection of rembetika sheet music. Rembetitka, often referred to as the
“Greek blues,” arrived in Greece in the early 1920s from Asia Minor after the
“catastrophe” that saw the forced exchange of Greek and Turkish populations. It
is, most famously, the music of the the hashish dens of those earlier times, a
genre of sorrow, loss, and longing—and it has a decidedly “Eastern” feel, both
rhythmically and poetically.
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Just Don’t Call Me “Late for Supper”
His given name notwithstanding,
Jonathan’s Greek name is Ioannis or Yiannis. Why then is it that, despite possessing
Greek language skills that are credible, if occasionally imperfect, his village
friends insist on referring to him as “Tson” (i.e., John)? Names die hard, and
“Tson” has stuck.
The German “Miracle”
In all of the debates leading up
to and since the Greek referendum—the primary topic in Greece these days, as it
bears on Greece’s very survival if not membership in the European Union—one
fact is lost on many analysts. That fact is the myth of the “German miracle.”
The myth goes like this: after the catastrophe of World War II, Germany rose
from the ashes through hard work and the steady Lutheran ethic (largely true)
and became the powerhouse that it is today. The myth contends, by contrast,
that the “lazy Greeks,” being Mediterranean people with vastly different
temperaments than their northern counterparts, have taken a different course.
And they alone are to blame for their current predicament.
This myth runs head on into the
reality of European history. Germany’s recovery and dominance was hardly a
miracle, but a fact of happy circumstance: in 1953 all of Germany prewar debt
(substantially more than Greece’s currect debt) was largely forgiven by the
international banking establishment, and their infrastructure was rebuilt
courtesy of the Marshall Plan—this after slaughering, raping, and pillaging
half of Europe. Then German industry, through the guestworker program, enjoyed
the benefits of very cheap industrial labor (mostly Greek and Turkish; more
recently eastern German). The moralizing, the tough talk, the veiled threats—it
is all a bit maddening and disconnected from reality. And the hyprocrisy is not
lost on Greeks and on many of their European champions, but is utterly lost on
the government of Angela Merkel.
No doubt, Germans are exceedingly
hardworking and frugal people, who have charted a highly productive course and
built for themselves a vibrant, diversified economy. The Germans that Jonathan
has met in Finikounda (the largest expat community) are, by and large, very
nice people…if often a touch arrogant (an opinion widely held by other
Europeans, particularly the British) and highly exclusive, living in
mountaintop villas, the preeminent “gated communities” in this area. But let’s
not cast too wide a net—not all Americans are imbecilic sods.
But this history has a very real
bearing on the current debt negotiations—and is a topic that is happily avoided
by Frau Merkel and her finance miniser Schaubel, who are the first to castigate
the Greeks as being the sole architects of their current financial dilemma,
which is now (officially) categorized as a “sovereign default.” But as everyone
knows, it takes two to tangle (debtor and creditor) and in the happy days,
Germany was more than happy to sell Greece useless attack submarines (now
rusting away on land) at phenomenally high interest rates.
Germany now demands, somewhat
self-servingly, that Greek hotels on the islands raise their value added tax
(VAT) to a whopping 23 percent. The Greeks have balked, as such a move will
only further undercut the all-important Greek tourism sector—the only bright
light that Greece has to offer itself and its creditors. What is not reported is that, by and large,
German corporations own most of the hotels along Turkey’s nearby Mediterranean
coastline, where the VAT is, at their insistence, kept at a mere 6 percent.
This may sound like economic goobleygook, but it fits nicely into a pattern of
double-standards and misrepresentation of reality.
It Takes a Village
One of Jonathan’s Finikounda village
friends asked recently, “So what exactly have
you been doing these past five weeks?” The question was largely rhetorical and
the subtext read: “Why aren’t you partying with me every night?” Jonathan
paused and calculated his answer.
His days in the southern
Peloponnese have passed with alarming speed, that much is true, but they have
been far from unproductive. The daily routine goes something like this:
After having slept all of four
hours (bed by 3 a.m., up by 7 a.m.) he wakes, drinks a hot Nescafe, and runs
anywhere from 5 to 15 kilometers. His run usually takes him through the maze of
agricultural roads—there is a nice ethic of open land for everyone—and down the
mountain toward Loutsa beach. There he changes into his “birthday suit” and
swims a parallel course along the ocean, sometimes as much as a mile of slow
crawling, then finds his clothes (note: grateful that they have no been eaten
by a goat) and runs back up the mountain. It is a rigorous routine that is good
for burning the previous evening’s vast intact of calories.
While it’s still relatively cool
(today is was 90 by 10 a.m.) he engages in several house- or property-related
tasks—painting, urethaning, digging out boulders and stacking them as a nascent
perimeter wall—and then, if ambition remains, copyedits for a spell, before
heading up to the local cafeneion, where he listens to the old men complain
about their government (and everyone else’s). Then he heads home and packs up
for the de jure “beach time” (11:00
to 2:00), after which the sancrosact siesta hour(s) approaches.
Reinvigorated by several hours of
serious sleep, he uses the cooler late afternoon to: work more in the pasture;
play guitar; read; and plan the night ahead. One or another person calls about
a planned taverna night, which usually begins at 11 p.m. and continues until
the wee morning.
And there goes another day!
Last night he sat along on the
porch at 3 a.m., the buzz of cicadas finally reduced to a murmur, and watched
the horizon for meteors and the incredible display of stars. Far enough from
Finikounda’s bright lights, the night sky in this mountain village is exceptioa;,
not unlike that of eastern Maine.
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What Is Mediterranean Culture?
To speak broadly of
“Mediterranean Culture” would be erroneous: life in Provence, France, is surely
different than that of Sicily or of the southern Peloponnese. And yet there is
a commonality.
What does it involve? There is
family and friends, food and drink, the rhythms of agriculture and harvest,
song and dance, and a vast horizon of sights, smells, and sounds.
It is pointless—if not
hazardous—to compare places one truly loves. In Jonathan’s case, that is this
incredible place, Messinia, and his own home in Downeast Maine. What one
offers, the other lacks.
And yet, life in the eastern
Mediterranean is everything that life in Downeast Maine is not—that is: warm, friendly, forgiving, light-hearted, garrulous,
socially diverse, culturally rich, poetically deep, and always passionate.
Alas, these many charms are in short supply Downeast, for all its beauty, its
raw natural splendor, for the few good friends, and the sprinkling of foodways
(Whoopie Pies? Fried food?) and culture (NASCAR? Budwieser?).
It is hard to explain—surely it
must be lived, experienced firsthand, shared without reservation with those who
simply do not know how incredible this place caled Messinia is.
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Above all else, stay hydrated!
Jonathan stumbled down the loft
stairs at around 4 a.m. for a big drink of water. On the kitchen counter lay
the many gifts of local friends: bottles of wine, bottles of olive oil, bowls
of fruit. The local farmers, sensible as they are, recycle the standard 1.5
liter water bottle as a vessel to contain olive oil.
And so, when in the darkness he
reached for what he thought was a
water bottle, a large swig of olive oil greeted his thirsty mouth. Oh the
sensation of warm olive oil against a parched throat in the early dawn!
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