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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