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| Smiling agasint all odds--Pylos Harbor and Navarino Bay |
I’m getting a bit sloppy with my
effusive modern Greek, confusing gender and case, among other novice-speaker blunders. But I'm clearly not a novice speaker. Since learning my first Greek words at my grandmother's table--food name are highly motivational vocabulary--and then studying more formally at age 21 in college and after, my Greek has progressed to an advanced level. But the flaws are constantly on display. At the moment this is
mostly a consequence of prolonged heat and late nights, and frustrations in dealing with layers of bureaucracy. Neverthless, I’m almost always understood—maybe in the same way that a toddler is understood. I can argue with police, order a meal, give a toast, and pontificate on most subjects.
The zero percent
The tavernas in the village that
once lacked NA beer (0 percent alcohol) are now stocking it, just for me, or so
it seems. At “Aris,” the Albanian gyro shop, where I was invited to join a
German/English couple for a beer last night, the kindly waiter brought me a Fix Ανευ (= “without”) and I didn't even have to ask. He laughed and said something like “we saw you coming down the street.”
The oddball American who doesn’t drink on holiday. Or ever.
ΔΕΗ part
II
I was convinced that the key to
success at the electric company—in getting an application for a hook-up of the
house to the power grid, which might be cheaper that photovoltaic—would be the
engineer’s newly drafted documents…and red shirt. The pure
psychological power of a red shirt should never be underestimated!
Mass murder in the ΔΕΗ office
With my revised and exceeding offical-looking
documents in tow, I set off for Kalamata’s central electric office even earlier
than yesterday, at 6:30 a.m., in order to beat the heat and be ensconced back
on the beach by 11 a.m. Like all good plans, reality often gets in the way.
I entered the office of the woman
with the bulletproof hairdo, standing tall and confident with the prospect of a
successful mission in my grip. And wearing a red shirt. I've got this one, I thought.
“Good-day, Ma’am. I spent
yesterday afternoon with my engineer and notary. We have prepared the necessary
documents to satisfy the company’s requirement.”
I placed them both, the original,
stamped sets and a duplicate copy, squarely on her desk, with a self-satisfied
look written across my sunburned face.
“They will not do.” Four words
that deflated any sense of progress.
The argument began, with an
increasing tonal pitch. Yelling at officials is an undeclared national sport. When in Greece do as the Greeks. But then I counted to ten. I breathed. I imagined that I was Mr.
Zen, prepared for any calamity.
“Would you kindly look at the
documents with your boss? I’m sure after closer inspection you will agree that
they are precisely what you have demanded.”
“They are not valid.” She was
answering in short, crisp sentences—no belaboring of the rejection. “Your
engineer and your notary do not know the law.”
I offered a sprinkling of reason:
“But this was the law when I
purchased, legalized, and then renovated the house. All in accordance with the
law in 2013.”
“They won’t do.” Another effort
at parodying Ernest Hemingway. Simple. Direct. Minimal verbiage.
I stared out the window for a
moment. I reached for my imaginary knife, hidden in my high black leather Cretan boots, and quickly struck at the jugular. Viciously. With the precision of a
merciless shepherd. All the while I was smiling at her, making lovely eye
contact, nodding with a phoney affection and an expression of the deepest
gratitude—experience tells me it is the way forward in such situations in
Greece. Simultaneously, I was slicing her throat, eviscerating her, watching her suffer.
It was hot. I had driven 120
kilometers, twice in 24 hours. By all rights I should be naked on the beach
reading about Dharma—not in some misfit bureaucrat’s ground-floor office.
On the inside, I was still slicing and
dicing, true to the nobility of my Cretan heritage. My grandfather was from one of the regions that even the Ottoman and the Nazis were terrified to approach. Some of that spirit has lived inside of me since childhood. I remember my grandfather Andoni's story.
He left for America circa 1910, as a young man, but then returned to Greece (with his twin brother and 100 or so other crazy Cretans) to fight the Ottoman Turks in the First Balkan War. That was 1912. They fought on the frontier plains of Ioannina, outnumbered and outgunned. The would eventually recapture Greece after a brutal 300-year occupation that once extended to the gates of Vienna.
The Cretan regiment carried long curved swords (scimitars) and single-shot muskets. Athough they were victorious against the Turks, Andoni's twin brother was decapitated in front of his eyes.
The evil and visciuos Turks. Now they work at the ΔΕΗ central office in Kalamata. And I'm coming to get them. It's a family revenge thing, a personal vendetta.
In a sudden and totally
unexpected moment of mental clarity, I recalled a handful of guiding principles:
be kind, patient, tolerant, loving, and forgiving.
I put away the imaginary knife,
back into my too-tall boots.
I thanked her for her time and
asked for her name and telephone number. “Thank you for your time, good lady.
And I do hope you have a nice day.”
“You’re welcome, sir. I hope we
can assist you in the future.”
I told her that I would be back.
It was a comment about persistence, not a threat. In the end, I experienced a
titillating and quiet satisfaction in the prospect of not spending a lifetime
in a Greek prison for committing a mass murder in a public building.
----
I took the long way back to
Finikounda, stopping in Pylos, and running up the alleyway to the engineer’s
office. He wasn’t there yet. It was only 10 a.m. I jumped back into the toaster-oven rental car and
drove to Methoni, to my notary/lawyer’s office.
My notary friend called the good
lady at the ΔΕΗ
office and discussed the matter with her. Apparently the law governing
electrical hook-up (which our little, once-illegal house is absolutely entitled
to) has changed five times since 2013. These are the sorts of things that the
bureaucracy—total employment for public-sector workers—thrives on. A vast
blood-sucking creature, it requires changes, adjustments, new laws, new
processes in order to keep everyone gainfully employed. These laws and regulations are a never-ending source of nourishment for the beast of the
body politic.
In the end, my friend created a
document electing him as my proxy, and he promised to consummate the deal in my
absence, which is forthcoming. When all else fails, pass it on to the lawyers--if the Cretans aren't available.
The problem is now, thankfully,
out of my hands and in those of an expert navigator, who is intimate with the
hairpin turns of a system that defies logic.
---
It is Wednesday, time for my
fellowship meeting in Pylos---and thank Buddha for that! I chose the topic--defiance and its antidote: gratitude--and everyone told stories of the system and how right-thinking allowed them to survive it.
----
Still, I managed to encamp on the
beach by noon. And for this I was grateful.
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| Looking right |
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| And looking left--not too crowded! |
But a plunge in the ocean was positively cathartic, removing the frustrations of an entire morning in seconds. My neighbors even seemed welcomed after that first plunge.
The wind blows steadily from the
south, originating in the great deserts of North Africa, tempered by the vast
expanse of the Mediterranean, arriving at our shores all the wiser.
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