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| Start of my morning run |
The village idiot speaks three
languages and remembers everyone’s names, year in and year out.
The village drunk has been sober
for four years, after forty years of continuous inebriation—and he’s looking
damned good, walking tall, and smiling.
Mom was right: nothing stays the
same, everything changes.
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| Me and my painter mate, Leonida |
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| Hard sanding, lovely teak finish |
It is one of the finest,
white-sand beaches in the eastern Mediterranean, free of our era’s bric-a-brac
(but for a few umbrellas and a small cantina), devoid of the modern world’s
air-conditioned nightmare. In short—pristine. Until some Russian oligarch
defiles it with a hotel. That is the fear.
I feel incredibly fortunate to
have stumbled into this place in 2007. Percolating with gratitude and happy joi
de voi—bronze, fit, faithful to the steady architecture of an emerging set of
values. Sober. Blessed. Laughing most of the time.
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| How to prune a young olive tree |
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| And how to hack most of a sickly lemon tree |
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This evening, after siesa hour, I
drove to the town of Methoni (ancient Modon), about 10 kilometers west on the
coast.
Methoni is a small town of about
800 souls with a towering medieval castle built by the Venetians, circa 1300,
as a gateway to the Holy Lands.
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| Approach to Methoni, 10 km to the west. DWF (driving while filming) |
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| A moat is good security--if you have the slave labor to build it |
My Cretan grandparents, who were
born as subjects of the sultan (Crete was occupied by the Turks for 200+ years,
until 1906), taught my own father the much-used moniker: “the evil and viscious
Turks.” It was a line I grew up hearing more than a few times.
I am officially registered (γραμμενος= “written down”), along
with my younger daughter Evyenia, as a “citizen” of Methoni, with voting rights
as a Greek (dual) citizen that I will likely never exercise. Though we live a
few kilometers to the east, we are bonefide Methonians, non-resident residents
of a town that serves as the regional center, second only to Homer’s “sandy
Pylos” to the north. This makes us modern-day defenders of the fortress.
We ain’t afraid of no Turks. But
just in case, we keep our swords sharpened, our shields at the ready, and our
breast-plates polished.
Methoni today contends with a
minor horde of northern European residents, unarmed sunworshippers living in
their gated compounds beyond the bastion walls.
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| The old Venetian castle in Methoni, with the bourzi at the end. Ideal for weddings and beheadings |
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| Only one way in--otherwise, bring your trabouche or 5 euros |
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| Our Navarino oranges |
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| Typical stone house, Methoni |
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| We have nearly ripe pears, pomegranates, figs, and avocados... |
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| Fisher's pier, Methoni |
Tonight I attended an ongoing
gallery exhibition in Methoni that is showing the work of several English
friends. I was promptly informed that the artists wanted their guests to find
“their inner child”—and I was urged to wear old clothes that I didn’t mind
getting covered with acrylic paint. I turned down the plastic smock offered by
my English friend R. that would have proved
insufficient as the paint flew—rather literally--where once, a few
centuries earlier, the arrows flew from these very walls.
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We are not naming names
On rare occasion I read the news
from back home, against my better judgment. Clearly the “center cannot hold” to
quote William Butler Yeats on the eve of World War I. As the center vanishes,
the polarities increase in distance.
When ordinary people—or even
well-known political figures, though I am not naming names—can only build
themselves up by degrading and demeaning those who happen to disagree with
him/them (aka “the enemies of the people”) his/their pettiness and massive
insecurities, if not his/their outright incompetence, which is proven on a daily basis,
are on display for the world to see.
It is a disheartening sign of the
times that we have sunk so low. The lowest uncommon denominator. Rage, anger,
discontent. The rallying cries of Us versus Them.
A sad, sad commentary on our age.
No, the center cannot hold.
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| A real fixer-upper, like the state of our politics |
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The Holy Spirit
On to more ethereal thoughts. I
continue to read Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living
Buddha, Living Christ. I was struck by this extended quotation:
A good theologian is one who says almost nothing about God, even though
the word “theology” [yes, a Greek word] means “discourse about God.” It is
risky to talk about God. The notion of God might be an obstacle for us to touch
God as love, wisdom, and mindfulness. The Buddha was very clear about this. He
said, “You tell me that you are in love with a beautiful woman, but when I ask
you, What is the color of her eyes? What is her name? What is the name of her
town? you cannot tell me. I don’t believe you are in love with something real.”
Your notion of God may be vague like that, not having to do with reality. The
Buddha was not against God. He was only against notions of a God that are mere
mental constructions that do not correspond to reality, notions that prevent us
from developing ourselves and touching ultimate reality. That is why I believe
it is safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit that through the door of
theology. We can identify the Holy Spirit whenever it makes its presence felt.
Whenever we see someone who is loving, compassionate, mindful, caring, and
understanding, we know that the Holy Spirit is there [my emphasis].
Take a breath if you must.
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At the art show, I met the
teacher—a kindred spirit.
We meditated together and she showed me some basic yoga poses, a discipline I aspire to follow with the guidance of a sensible instructor.
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| Yoga instructor at the art exhibit |
We meditated together and she showed me some basic yoga poses, a discipline I aspire to follow with the guidance of a sensible instructor.
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| Getting one's fingers wet--art for the inner child |
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| My dear friend and her work |
After we left the exhibition, I
joined my English friend R. and A., and their Greek neighbor, for dinner on the
water’s edge at the Methoni campground. As the sun dipped into a slurry of gentle
pastels, the bourzi (the cylindrical
edifice on outermost point of the castle) was illuminated by beams of light.
The bourzi, a place of massive
executions by beheading during the Turkokratia, now serves as much wanted place
for weddings. Another truly transformative event.
My morning run
The heat continues to build each
day—30 degrees Centigrade at sunrise, over 40 C (100+ F.) by noon. By siesta
hour, find shade or die.
The key to running in Greece in
the summer involves getting up very early (for me) and out the door by 6 a.m.
The problem is that summer evenings in the village are delicious—cooler, with
light breezes of the ocean, groups of people walking mindfully through the
village, stopping for coffees here, sweets there, and a solid meal by 10 or 11
p.m. All of this means that going to bed much before 1 or 2 a.m. is unlikely.
Running on four hours of sleep has been the norm these past three weeks—only
made possible by the afternoon siesta.
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| Destination for my morning run |
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| Church of St. Nicholas |
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| No translation needed |
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| Heading back to the beach, running |
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| Short-cut through the olive grove |
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| Lonely out there |
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| Nearest beach to the house (Loutsa) |
My poet-friend Niko refers to
Greek siesta as “Mediterranean yoga,” a phrase that makes me chuckle as I write
these words.
This morning I ran down the
mountain to Grizokambos (= “dark/grey pastures”) from our village of
Akritohori, which also goes by the old Turkish name, Grizi. So Grizokambos is,
quite literally, the pasture land (and a small village) for the mountain
village of Akritohori/Grizi.
The siting of these villages was
nothing but intentional, owing to a long and violent history of pirate raids
along the coast. One of the old Venetian towers (circa 1300s), sitting
abandoned near my house, was one of several signal posts along the coast.
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| A goatie or three |
More on language
Unlike American English—spoken
indifferently, often lacking in passion, reason, and, to a degree, cultural context—the
richness of spoken Greek extends back thousands of years to antiquity and
pre-history. It is a language rife with the pleasantries of human
communication.
So while running, I passed an
elderly woman dressed in heavy black wool who was hoeing her garden, and I said
the commonest of phrases: “To your good healthy, ma’am.”
She smiled a broad and toothless
smile and replied: “May you find joy, sir.”
I felt the spirit of my sister
emanating from her countenance. It is all about finding joy and living in the
present moment.
Fencing without a sword
The fence man will stop over
tomorrow morning to assess our property and discuss the prospects of installing
a metal perimeter fence (1.5 meters high) with a sliding metal gate. This is an
expense that I have resisted—both because of the cost and the “ugly factor.”
But now the oleanders (πικροδάφνη,
pikrodafni=bitter Daphne) and the
cypress (κυπαρισία), which
Lucia and I planted in 2014 are so high that they would all but obscure the
fence from view (at least looking out from the porch).
The real reason for the fence, according to the old men in the cafeneion: It will keep out wild boar
and the gypsies, a sort of conflation of wild animals and free-spirited humans.
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| A man's home is his csstle--the Venetians knew a thing about home-building (Methoni) |
Later in my run I passed old
Yioryio, the father of my friend Yiota and Taki, from whom I purchased this
property. He is known as mousa (“the
bearded one”) though he hasn’t sported a beard for more than twenty years. It’s
like calling a grown man Tiny just because forty years earlier, as a child, he
might have been diminuitive.
Yioryio squated on his haunches,
in the Arab/Turkish style, and was milking his freshened goats. This spring his
goats produced a whopping eighteen kids, adobable prancing white creatures.
The have already eaten six of
them.
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