Temenos: Nothing Is Easy

Just around the corner

Morning run and swim

For all the trappings of a 21st-century society—near universal high-speed Internet service, the full range of large-scale green energy production, myriad efficiencies left and right—much of the “third world” persists in Greek. Three weaknesses are found nationwide: solid waste, septic waste, and water. There isn’t a place that doesn’t suffer from some deficiency or other.

I much prefer the less pejorative “Ottoman-era bureaucracy” over “third world.” This becomes evident in almost any dealings with the Greek government, the civil service, or the courts. And, of course, it extends outward to aspects of daily life. Sometimes these deficiencies have an endearing quality, but usually they are just another pain in the kolo.

As a case in point: creation of one’s last will and testament, called a διαθήκη/diathiki in Greek. Were I to die (which I fully expect) without a written will, our little house and garden would be nearly unattainable by my next of kin, in this case my three kids. They would spend decades in court and thousand of euros in legal fees. I have put this off for years, but now I am determined to rectify this oversight.

So with some help and advice from friends, I drafted a will in Greek, which went through more than a few iterations. Corrected remotely by my Maine neighbor, Bill, a Greek linguist; refined by my poet-friend Niko; then finally vetted by my lawyer-friend Akis; and in the end printed in triplicate by my English friend Alf on his high-speed printer.

Stone work from 2022

Small is beautiful

I was joined in this venture by an old Finikounda friend, the recently former assistant mayor of nearby Koroni, where our house is officially entered into the town books, and two witnesses waiting in the wings. We visited the notary’s office in Koroni—on a sunny Tuesday morning. (Note: They are all sunny these days.) Koroni is located about 12 kilometers east of our house. After winding through a pass in the mountains, we arrived at Koroni, sitting astride the Gulf of Messenia.

Taygetos range beyond

The prediction of victory was, I soon learned, premature. After presenting the notary with clean copies of my corrected Greek text, she informed me that the will needed to be handwritten in ink before it could be processed. It would have been easier to have had the will blessed by a collection of monks or nuns. The good notary proceeded to hand me a pad of paper and a pen, and pointed me toward a free desk.

So we are now scheduled to return on Friday, with an official appointment, the two witnesses, and the handwritten will—which I accomplished later in the morning in the cool comfort of our little house.

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Following the abbreviated visit to the notary, I offered to treat Dimitri to a coffee at one of the cafeneions on Koroni’s waterfront. It was getting hot at about 9:30 a.m.

Holier than Thou

Vive le revolution!

Serving and protecting--now and then

We sat at a little round metal table, with the standard cafeneion chairs, overlooking the Gulf of Messenia and the still snow-capped 9,000-foot peak of the Mount Taygetos range, which towers over Sparta and provides a stunning backdrop to a flat, cobalt sea.

Koroni waterfront

A bit of pork and tsipoura

No sooner did we sit than Dimitri announced: “I don’t drink coffee. It’s not good for me.” I ordered a frappe, medium sweet with milk; he ordered a small single-serving bottle of tsipoura, a volatile industrial-strength floor cleaner masquerading as an aperitif.

“Bring me a meze [appetizer] too, and a glass of ice,” he said to the server. The waitor returned in short order with out breakfast drinks, along with a platter of cold, cooked pork with sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. The classic breakfast of champions in these parts.

“To your good health, and friendship.”

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I am guilty of robust beach reading under my trusty go-everywhere umbrella. This time it was a loaner book borrowed from my poet friend Niko: Anaximander and the Nature of Science, by Carlo Rovelli.

Pastel sunset

Made in the shade

Niko is an English-educated “private” scholar, with a passion for lifetime learning. That is, learning for learning’s sake.

Niko and I share a similar passion for the world of the mind--though his infinitely broader--which includes world literature, mythology, philosophy, history, biography, politics, and the arts. To find someone like this, in a little fishing village in the southwestern Peloponnese, was akin to finding a valuable pearl amid a mountain of oysters. He is a rare gift for a fellow traveler who is otherwise consigned to talking about olive harvests, football (“soccer”), politics, and the price of tomatoes.

A sensible person might ask, Who was Anaximander and why is he important for a 21st-century reader?

The mountain pass down to Koroni

A sixth-century bce Greek philosopher from Miletus, on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), Anaximander set in motion a revolution in science long before Newton, Einstein, or Stephen Jay Gould. Among other revelations, he was the first to understand that the earth floated in space, that animals evolve, and that natural phenomenon—for instance, weather, earthquakes, and the like—were not supernatural events but a reality of the physics of matter.

The laws of nature and the phenomena of the natural world are an intriguing subject, even on a nude beach. And Rovelli, a physicist himself, skillfully conveys Anaximander’s contributions to our human understanding of nature.

Rovelli writes: “Its strength [i.e., that of science] lies not in the certainties it reaches but in a radical awareness of the vastness of ignorance.”

A field day for the honey bees

Wild thyme at the ocean's edge

Sadly, in today’s world, by executive if not cultural fiat, we are moving in the opposite direction. Or at least some of us are—with the US government itself as the chief protagonist in this decline.

The author of this volume continues in poetic fashion: “This awareness allows us to keep questioning our knowledge, and, thus, to continue learning” (Rovelli, 2007, p. xii).

In summer’s clutches

If you say something like, “my it has gotten quite hot,” the response everywhere is just about the same: “Well, it’s summer.”

I am now on my third pair of sunglasses in almost as many weeks. The others have succumbed to excessive heat and my penchant for dropping things.