Fate sometimes delivers angels, all the more surprising when they don’t look particularly angelic. I was sitting alone on a bench under a tree this afternoon, savouring the quiet and reading my book when she arrived. She blew over, saw me and whirled down, talking a mile a minute, and I could just see the exclamation marks.
“Thank God there’s a woman here! I have been staying with two men, well boys really, only boys! Of course it’s cheaper to stay in a room all together and I thought I was with mature adults. I thought so! For three nights it was cool. Three nights for God’s sake! Why did it suddenly not become cool? They’re idiots! An extra beer inside and they become idiots! I’m speechless! So I sleep in the nude! That’s not so strange! I always sleep in the nude! I have always slept in the nude! It doesn’t mean anything except I like to sleep in the nude! I don’t even find them handsome. If I did I would have been having sex with them already! Why would I wait three days? But no! A bit more raki in them and they think suddenly I can’t resist them. That they are irresistible. My God!”
With this she suddenly grabbed my hands and said, “You understand! You understand everything! I can tell you are an understanding person. I knew it the minute I saw you! Fate brought me here! We need to talk more. There is much depth in you, and I have so much pain too. Why have I not seen you before? Ah I am speechless with joy. Come!” She took my arm and literally pulled me to the little taverna nearby, called out in perfect Greek to the waiter to bring us a bottle of wine and some olives, then faced me again, smiling for the first time.
“Who are you? Some goddess who came down from the mountains to walk amongst the mortals? You are very beautiful. And reading Ovid, so you must have a brain too! You must tell me everything about yourself. I need to know who you are! I feel like you are the second half to me.”
There was a nano-second pause which I took to mean it was my turn to speak, but before I got anything out she carried on, “Ah you have a Canadian flag on your bag. I love Canadians! Unless you are one of those Americans who think they will get better service if they put a Canadian flag on their bag. They are idiots! Everyone can tell they are Americans! I love Americans! Their spirit! I will never live there but I love their country! Why do they need to pretend to be something different? But I can tell you are not American. You have a sensitivity that I share. We are from opposite sides of the planet that meet in the ancient world. I am from the old world and you are from the new. But I can be whatever I like and have no ties to any country. And you do not either. I can tell you are one the world’s travelers! Not here for a useless two week holiday in the sun, looking to have sex with idiot boys, but someone who understands the world and tries to make sense of it. A woman of the inner circle.”
I laughed. I really couldn’t help myself. The wine came and she poured out two glasses, giving one to me and raising the other in a toast. “To the women of the inner circle! To finding a friend of the soul!”
We drank and she put her glass down with a flourish. She was striking in a modern, northern European way. Defined cheekbones, pale skin, short, short black hair with white blond tips, several tattoos on her arms and legs and as many piercings in her ears, and with a direct blue-eyed gaze that went right through me. Her accent was northern too, but not clearly of one country that I could discern.
“Who are you?” she asked, or rather demanded, and then it really was my turn to speak. After I told her my name and where I was from, she asked questions in a matter of fact way and listened with as much force as she spoke. It was oddly easy to tell her things. When I told her I’d been a teacher, she shot up both her arms and exclaimed, “I too am a teacher! I knew we were connected souls. I can say no more!”
Well, yes, she was a teacher. It turns out she gave sailing lessons one summer.
Throughout our ensuing conversation, there were many exclamations at how parallel our lives were, although I became unsure as to whether or not ‘parallel’ was a concept she totally understood. She has four brothers. (I have two sisters.) Her father is an architect and her mother a painter. (My father is a research scientist and my mother sings at funerals). She left school at 14 and has travelled throughout Europe since, able to speak five languages fluently. (I went to university, and my language skills are hit and miss, although I can find a toilet and get a sandwich in several by now). She had an abortion at fifteen (I had my first kiss at twenty). However, it did turn out that we had the same star sign and were the same height. Practically twins.
She was relentless. I didn’t even know her name at this point, but felt here was someone so outrageous, and yet with a certain something that invited trust. Someone I could actually talk to, once she let me. It was rather a relief to have someone to really talk to. Someone who didn’t know me, or who had any expectations.
We ended up “being speechless” for hours. Philosophy, music, jewelry, literature, numerology, mathematics, suicide, teacups, religion, art, history, food…everything. Thoughts I could only share with you found themselves on my lips to her. I found out more about her in a few short hours than I know about friends I’ve had for years. I still haven’t exactly told her about you, but I think she suspects you exist. She does know I have been through big changes in my life this year, but not what caused them. At 3am, after 13 hours of solid conversation, we decided it was time to go to bed, in the same room as it turns out, as she had left her old place and it was too late to find another. I didn’t feel at all threatened by her. This surpirsed me no end. Maybe I need to be around humanity again.
The only thing that stops her from talking is sleep it seems. We’d barely got into the room when, true to her former billing, she stripped down to nothing and crashed into bed, falling asleep instantly. I swept aside this evening’s collection of silverfish from my own bed, changed into my more demure nightshirt, and likewise slipped into a deep sleep.
Wednesday, April 25, 1984
Wednesday, April 18, 1984
Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - on the plain
I've been wandering this island for awhile now and feel the need to rest in one place for awhile. I took myself to the Lassithi Plain, a green plateau covered with windmills, so high and cold the trees still clung to their blossoms, long since gone elsewhere. The air vibrated with the baaaas and bzzzzs of so many new lambs and myriad of early bees. “Make more good Greek honey” I told one particularly fat bee as it stumbled across my path.
I move without purpose these days, wandering and meandering through the days, letting things come upon me rather than seeking them out. I take few buses, needing my money for lodgings and food, and sometimes forgo those if I end up in the countryside at nightfall. Then I find a level spot off the road to lie down, using my pack as a pillow and grateful that the weather has generally been mild enough to sleep in my clothes without shivering. During the day I have settled into a rhythm of mindless walking that takes me 25 or so miles a day, and I am often surprised to find me arrived without remembering anything about the time it took to get there. Being able to turn off thought and memory has been the most useful of skills. Every once in a while some random thought breaks through and my heart aches with hurt until I can quash it down and get back to blank existence. I can't determine if I feel safe because I don't care or if it's the other way around.
So it was when I climbed the last rise and entered the Plain. Wandering along the road the only intelligible thought I had was that the air is too cold for sleeping outdoors tonight, when I happened across a small house with a sign indicating a room was available. I walked in and found a sparsely furnished room, but with two beds so I can spread out. As if I really need room to spread out. I still haven’t replaced much of my stolen stuff, but with the warmer weather of Crete I haven't felt the need to.
The large and ugly cathedral is in the process of being decked out for Easter and I went in to take a peek. I bought three candles and lit them, one for St. Rita (loneliness), one for St. Jude (desperation) and debated my last one - should it be for St. Christopher (travelers) or St. Joseph (happy death)? I feel too guilty for Jo so light one for Chris. I sat and enjoyed the quiet, seeing myself looking at the scene as if from very far away, like watching a play from the balcony, detached as if not even in the same room.
During the last few days I have felt odd, like something is going to happen, but that it has to come from me and I have no idea what it is or what to do to initiate it. A bit like Odysseus might have felt after one of his shipwrecks, having come so far and yet knowing there is still much ahead. I feel shipwrecked myself actually, getting more and more depressed and sinking further and further inside myself. I have noticed a propensity for staring at pools of water in a certain way, and at knives. I will take hold of a knife in a cafe, then shudder and suddenly wake as if from a stupor, really seeing what I’ve been staring at. This scares me no end. Could it be that I really am capable of suicide? Could my private ‘suicidal single’ label come true? Is that what I want? Would that end lead to a beginning I am prepared to face? And why am I afraid of it? Is this not what I want? To be rid of the world and its weight? Or is it the physical pain I am afraid of?
I saw a line in a poem “Self-importance sits in the back seat and directs all our travels” and I worry that I will become a hermit. Someone who wanders through life but doesn't contribute anything at all to it. I must find something to do to fill in the time, to leave something behind that makes earth a better place. I want to create a great work of art, but I can’t even create a good mood.
Why, when others were winged, was I made snail…
to crawl on humblest garden path, to leave such slender trail?
Teaching children was good, but I can’t bear the thought of being a schoolteacher all my life. Everyone calls it a rewarding career. Satisfying perhaps. But rewarding? I could never go back to that town with such memories of you, and can’t get enthused about teaching anywhere else. That part of my life is done. It feels like the end of something precious. My first apartment away from home, my first proper job, my first real boyfriend, my first lover. Those four years marked the most wonderful, fulfilling, miserable and memorable epoch in my life thus far. Parts of it – the best parts, will never be duplicated – can never be duplicated. I am so grateful I got to live them, and to live some of them with you. But I could never go back there. I would crumple into a little desiccated ball of misery, feeling trapped and remembering only the bad instead of the good. Well, making an end is the only way to make a beginning. Crushing to think I have to start by being at the end.
A gang of children ran around the church playing games, then caught sight of me, shouted and ran to grab my hands and pull me up towards the decorated altar. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or frightened. They took me all around showing me everything, the polished candelabra, heavily embroidered cloths, framed icons, all the while chattering incessantly, before leading me finally to a brilliantly flower-bedecked coffin. This is a special part of the Easter décor - Christ’s coffin. Near it several old and black garbed women prostrated themselves and I tried in vain to shush the children and keep a respectable distance. The ladies looked up and, seeing me, leapt up, smiling big toothless grins and ushering me close to the coffin, a stranger, a foreigner welcomed to their tradition. They grabbed my camera and thrust it into my hands, suddenly posing with serious expressions, then bursting into animated smiles and chattter.
Back outside I blinked in the watery light and wandered around aimlessly. With no onward destination I think I will seek out human activity this afternoon. There must be an open taverna somewhere here. There’s always at least one taverna open no matter how small the village. Just even having that small a plan was very satsifying. Perhaps they will have cheap restina and I can drink enough to blot out the rest of the day.
I move without purpose these days, wandering and meandering through the days, letting things come upon me rather than seeking them out. I take few buses, needing my money for lodgings and food, and sometimes forgo those if I end up in the countryside at nightfall. Then I find a level spot off the road to lie down, using my pack as a pillow and grateful that the weather has generally been mild enough to sleep in my clothes without shivering. During the day I have settled into a rhythm of mindless walking that takes me 25 or so miles a day, and I am often surprised to find me arrived without remembering anything about the time it took to get there. Being able to turn off thought and memory has been the most useful of skills. Every once in a while some random thought breaks through and my heart aches with hurt until I can quash it down and get back to blank existence. I can't determine if I feel safe because I don't care or if it's the other way around.
So it was when I climbed the last rise and entered the Plain. Wandering along the road the only intelligible thought I had was that the air is too cold for sleeping outdoors tonight, when I happened across a small house with a sign indicating a room was available. I walked in and found a sparsely furnished room, but with two beds so I can spread out. As if I really need room to spread out. I still haven’t replaced much of my stolen stuff, but with the warmer weather of Crete I haven't felt the need to.
The large and ugly cathedral is in the process of being decked out for Easter and I went in to take a peek. I bought three candles and lit them, one for St. Rita (loneliness), one for St. Jude (desperation) and debated my last one - should it be for St. Christopher (travelers) or St. Joseph (happy death)? I feel too guilty for Jo so light one for Chris. I sat and enjoyed the quiet, seeing myself looking at the scene as if from very far away, like watching a play from the balcony, detached as if not even in the same room.
During the last few days I have felt odd, like something is going to happen, but that it has to come from me and I have no idea what it is or what to do to initiate it. A bit like Odysseus might have felt after one of his shipwrecks, having come so far and yet knowing there is still much ahead. I feel shipwrecked myself actually, getting more and more depressed and sinking further and further inside myself. I have noticed a propensity for staring at pools of water in a certain way, and at knives. I will take hold of a knife in a cafe, then shudder and suddenly wake as if from a stupor, really seeing what I’ve been staring at. This scares me no end. Could it be that I really am capable of suicide? Could my private ‘suicidal single’ label come true? Is that what I want? Would that end lead to a beginning I am prepared to face? And why am I afraid of it? Is this not what I want? To be rid of the world and its weight? Or is it the physical pain I am afraid of?
I saw a line in a poem “Self-importance sits in the back seat and directs all our travels” and I worry that I will become a hermit. Someone who wanders through life but doesn't contribute anything at all to it. I must find something to do to fill in the time, to leave something behind that makes earth a better place. I want to create a great work of art, but I can’t even create a good mood.
Why, when others were winged, was I made snail…
to crawl on humblest garden path, to leave such slender trail?
Teaching children was good, but I can’t bear the thought of being a schoolteacher all my life. Everyone calls it a rewarding career. Satisfying perhaps. But rewarding? I could never go back to that town with such memories of you, and can’t get enthused about teaching anywhere else. That part of my life is done. It feels like the end of something precious. My first apartment away from home, my first proper job, my first real boyfriend, my first lover. Those four years marked the most wonderful, fulfilling, miserable and memorable epoch in my life thus far. Parts of it – the best parts, will never be duplicated – can never be duplicated. I am so grateful I got to live them, and to live some of them with you. But I could never go back there. I would crumple into a little desiccated ball of misery, feeling trapped and remembering only the bad instead of the good. Well, making an end is the only way to make a beginning. Crushing to think I have to start by being at the end.
A gang of children ran around the church playing games, then caught sight of me, shouted and ran to grab my hands and pull me up towards the decorated altar. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or frightened. They took me all around showing me everything, the polished candelabra, heavily embroidered cloths, framed icons, all the while chattering incessantly, before leading me finally to a brilliantly flower-bedecked coffin. This is a special part of the Easter décor - Christ’s coffin. Near it several old and black garbed women prostrated themselves and I tried in vain to shush the children and keep a respectable distance. The ladies looked up and, seeing me, leapt up, smiling big toothless grins and ushering me close to the coffin, a stranger, a foreigner welcomed to their tradition. They grabbed my camera and thrust it into my hands, suddenly posing with serious expressions, then bursting into animated smiles and chattter.
Back outside I blinked in the watery light and wandered around aimlessly. With no onward destination I think I will seek out human activity this afternoon. There must be an open taverna somewhere here. There’s always at least one taverna open no matter how small the village. Just even having that small a plan was very satsifying. Perhaps they will have cheap restina and I can drink enough to blot out the rest of the day.
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