Temenos 2015--Epilogue

Temenos 2015—The Epilogue

Just six short days have passed since that final morning swim in the Mediterranean, where an azure sea laps the long stretch of white sand on Mavrovouni beach in Finikounda.

In the last week, Greece met some sort of accommodation with its European creditors and it appears that another (short-term) solution to that nation’s dire financial morass is at hand. But as with all things capitalism, there is a severe price to pay for the bailout—the German dearth of compassion extends, for example, to the new proposal for taxing basic food items at 23 percent, further cuts in pension payouts (already eviscerated after five years of austerity), and the "stripping" of Greece’s national assets (E50 billion worth) by the bankers, who hold all the cards. On the hopeful side, Greece’s own banks are set to reopen and there is some suggestion that Greece’s unsustainable debt load and repayment schedule might be revisited. But economic growth and optimism will remain in short supply for years to come.

Are there a few choice words to describe Greeks themselves? A disparate vocabulary comes to mind: anti-authoritarian, resistant, resilient, magnanimous, generous (even in the face of want and desolation). The compare-and-contrast with their overseers to the norht is also illustrative: Greece (intimate, neighborly), Germany (peevish, faceless, arrogant, mean-spirited)…

Many of the very things that make Greece special and “different” (the Ottoman-bazaar, the independence of bakeries, casualness, to name just two examples) will end forever because of the economic-cultural changes being foisted on the nation. But, surely, many things need to be changed (opening professions, streamlining the bureacracy) and so there may be some kind of silver lining. But only time and history will reveal a happy ending, if one ever exists.

At least the Greeks know how to throw a party. Paying the bill is another matter.

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Now, a large continent and two oceans away—one warm, clear, and inviting, the other cold, richly diverse, and opaque—a cool fog rolls off the Bay of Fundy, an across this quiet peninsula. It is the North Atlantic’s retort to Greece’s endless summer. The skies here in Maine are ashen grey, the vibrant, ticking pasture is wet under foot, the days are noticeably shorter, the air temperature thirty degrees cooler than in lovely Hellas. In short, this Downeast home is a world away from the southwestern Peloponnese—but every bit as beautiful, intriguing, and “home” in its own way. One thing, however, remains abundantly clear and perfectly obvious: Maine is not Messinia, and Messinia is not Maine. Each place has its special charm, its catalog of positives and negatives, but they are very very different in a multitude of ways: in spirit, in temperament, in lifeways.

And yet the longing for Greece, that burning ember of desire, cannot be easily extinguished.

So, in parting, here is a paean of photos….until next year: Temenos 2016.