Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - eccentric angel

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.

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.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - Creta

The boat stopped at Naxos, Paros and Thira, then I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to cries in the darkness “Creta, Creta”. I scrambled off and found myself in a city, but it was too late to find a place to stay so I curled up under a tree. Thank goodness it’s warmer here - I think I actually got a little sleep.

In the morning I awoke to see a clean but rather touristy Agios Nikolaos, so I escaped to the mountain village of Kritsa and the ruins at Lato. I felt a bit creaky but it was good to move my bones after having spent so long on a boat and then a night lying on the ground. It was a though a kind of paradise, walking along a pebbly lane, the sun luxuriously warm, meadows filled with wild flowers, the air alive with the sounds of birds and insects. I saw the flash of a hoopoe fly by. Bent old men tended fields and straight old ladies tended goats. Lato’s location high in the hills looked down to the sea and the white buildings of Agios Nikolaos, so much nicer from this distance. I breathed a deep, satisfied sigh that filled my lungs with the aroma of grass and warm soil and flowers and leaves. I felt as if I might see a youthful Apollo step lightly out of an olive grove.

On the way I passed an old lady sitting under a tree by the side of the road crocheting, beautiful lacy things spread out around her. Greek women seem to be either really young or really old. There’s no middle age. She sat in traditional black dress, rigid and vertical with a serious expression on her lined features, so much dignity. We chatted, and I thrilled to see her smile at a joke. My Greek is improving in leaps and bounds.

I wanted to buy something, but could only afford a hankie. My money is running out, I have to think of something soon. I decided to go along the north coast via Elounda across from the island of Spinalonga, previously a Venetian fortress and leper colony. Alas, just as I had arrived in Malia I realized I’d left one of my bags on the bus – the one with my passport! How could I have been so stupid! I stood looking down the road the bus had departed along, gawky and shocked, my hand on my mouth. A German tourist saw my panic and offered to chase the bus on his motorbike. It was like a scene in a movie. I jumped on as he revved the engine and we went tearing off in hot pursuit, me clinging onto his flapping, light coloured jacket. We swerved along the near deserted road, whipping past the odd goat and goatherd who barely looked up as we passed, spewing pebbles in a spray of clatter. Just as the movie watching public would have gotten bored with our action scene, we spied the bus up ahead and put on a spurt of speed to catch up to it, pass it and motion the driver with three arms flailing – one left steering the bike. The driver slowed the bus until it rumbled to a stop. I leaped off the bike, and ran to the back of the bus, all the while speaking whatever Greek I could to assure the driver and few bemused passengers that I was not some lunatic that was set to rob the bus. I was so happy to see my bag sitting where I’d left it and carried it triumphantly out. The driver shook my hand, waved me out and rumbled off to continue on his way. With heart rate lowered my biker saviour and I returned back along the road much more sedately. I tried to buy him lunch but he would have none of it, beamingly saying it was the best time he'd had in years.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - a city to leave

Athens is a terrible place and it’s no wonder I have felt disinclined to write for a few days now, on a boat out. The city lies like a cement blight on the earth, with the nearby sea struggling to be seen through thick pollution. A few green hills emerge from the muck, little oases in a grey desert. The only joy was getting a healthy stack of mail at the poste restante. I derive great strength from the most unlikely sources, and conversely I am often surprised at how some friends never write at all. Best of all though, I can respond or discard as I wish, not having to behave nicely like I have to in a conversation.

Sidney is full of the joys of motherhood, which is lovely to read, but very hard as well, and I can only read her words in small doses. Her life and happiness consume her. Sam is a little more sensitive, telling me very little about her social life. Or maybe it’s more because her social life is not all that main stream. She has shaved off all her hair and has a nose ring, which Mom and Dad don’t know about yet. Mom will freak. Good thing Sam doesn’t really care what anyone thinks of anything. Niki writes of her men and those she wishes to introduce to me “once I come home”. The most touching are from my previous students, badly spelled sentences telling me what they are studying this year, how they like their new teacher but not as much as me and how they read out my postcards in class then place them on a map for everyone to look at. My heart hurts when I read them. Those children are the only things from home I miss really. The people I’ve known the least amount of time but who have made such an impact, each one of them. I will remember all their names, first and last, all my livelong days.

Reading and writing letters were interspersed with visits to the Acropolis, the Agora and the Theatre of Dionysos, where I tried to imagine what it would have been like to see something by Euripides or Aristophanes so long ago. One of the museums had a model of what some ruins would have looked like originally, using only one original section of column. I am astounded as to how they can take one piece of stone and reconstruct an entire building out of it, but I guess it no more a feat than reading some voyager’s diary and creating a map.

One of the little museums was open yesterday so I wandered through and saw an exhibition of armour – all museums in Europe seem to have an inordinate amount of armour. And it always seems to be in the first hall one must go through. Armour always depresses me. All those young men, the pride of nations fighting for what they believed in. Where are they now? Bits of dust. Forgotten by all. Many of their causes dismissed outright by history’s stern assessment. And now all that's left are little pieces of metal, empty reminders of lives lived and lost.

Every day I received earnest and persistent offers for dinner or dancing or walking which I declined. Honestly, Greek men! Even the coffee defeated me, with its bitter sludge at the bottom. So to leave, but where? I laid out my map last night. North through Macedonia? The Peloponnese Peninsula? That certainly has a nice alliterative ring to it. And with it, Sparta, Tripolis, Mycenae, Olympia, famous, romantic names. But in the end the islands beckoned and I decided to take the first boat that left Piraeus this morning.

It actually did not leave until well in the afternoon and is so packed there are no seats available, even in the smokiest of rooms. Especially in the smokiest of rooms. I found a space on the deck, but know I won’t get any sleep. For one thing the lights stay on all night and for another I am beside some guy with incredibly smelly feet!

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - the dark side of figs

The train into Athens was obviously not going anywhere in a hurry, and was filled with bored young servicemen in uniform who watched my every movement, a little disconcerting. A hawker dressed in white sold souvlaki and bread to train passengers thrusting drachmas out the train carriage windows. I bought a bag of dried figs and decided to park myself between carriages where I got the benefit of occasional fresh air while escaping soldiers’ stares. I love the figs of Greece. These ones were particularly sweet.

Sharing my open space was a Belgian woman, two Italian youths and a Norwegian man of about 30. They were all in Greece for two or three weeks, tourists rather than travelers, inserting a quick break from their lives. Tourists escape their lives, travelers try to find theirs. I am a traveler.

One of the Italian fellows plinked away on my guitar, glad to have the practice, and the other one played his own. It was a delight to hear them while I ate my figs. No one can believe I am travelling around with a guitar that I can’t play. My lucky guitar. I owe it to learn a tune or two.

Once in Athens, I found a place to stay close to the station. The room was really chilly so I went downstairs to ask for a blanket after memorizing the Greek for “My room is cold. Could I have an extra blanket please?”, which I got out haltingly and probably very badly, but I received great smiles and profuse assurances that blankets would be sent up momentarily. Things looked good when two heavy blankets arrived, then a quarter of an hour later an electric heater made its way in, borne in the arms of a little boy of about six. I think my squeals of joy frightened him.

Despite the warmth of my room, I was fated to wake up anyway. This time it was from a wretched stomach ache. It started as a full feeling like heartburn, then I started to feel nauseated in little waves. I lay there and tried not to think about it, but the back of my throat got that hot, sour taste and I knew a bathroom was where I had to be. Not wanting to wake anyone else up, I stumbled along the hallway in the dark trying to remember where the bathroom was. In a growing panic I surely made more and more noise as I tried every door I came across. At one point I ended up in a spare bedroom – at least I hope it was vacant! Finally, and with no time to spare, I found the bathroom and teh toilet. I was there for what seemed hours until I felt well enough to head back to bed. There was absolutely no doubt it was the figs. No more for me for while, that’s for sure.

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - oh oracle wherefore art thou?

Delphi has no answers. I guess I never really believed it would, but Delphi was the one place I thought might. My old classics professor would have been proud to know I had taken the historical myth of the oracle so much to heart! I sat in a little dip of land surrounded by ruins and flowering almond trees all day but nothing came to me. I felt just as empty as when I arrived. Deep down I don‘t think I’m even looking for an answer really, but it doesn’t stop me from trying to find some sign of guidance or direction every day. I’m just going through the motions of living, surviving until I find a new place for myself, wandering through time. Survival is the most despicable way to live. It’s not living at all. I eat when my watch tells me I should, I see the blue water, feel the cool wind, listen to the garble of tongues in foreign codes. If only I could keep open and curious, to keep learning, then I might gain something.

I catch myself reading meaning into all sorts of mundane things. Words I read, voices I hear, colours, sounds. Are you trying to reach me in some metaphysical way? Are you trying to tell me to go to you? Or am I being an idiot who is spending too much time on my own, overthinking everything? Should I just get over it, stop and deal with what lies ahead rather than go over and over and over what happened in the past? And what might have been.

What is this journey on which I have embarked? Someone told me it takes a full turn of the calendar to get over any kind of loss, like a divorce or something. It is already almost nine months old and I am as ignorant as I was on that hot, horrible day that started it all against my will. It’s like a growth inside my guts, like a bunch of roots, or a tumour. Nine months it’s been festering inside me. I long to know what it is all about, where I am headed, what my destiny is, and yet I am so afraid of what it might be. I am afraid I will be found lacking for the requirements of the journey, or that the journey will be a long one.

People who mean well write and tell me to come home, to find a job, get on with life, as if what I am doing is somehow outside of life. But the one person who could convince me to alter my path is silent. It’s like I’ve been erased from your life, that ‘we’ never existed, as if our lives never connected. Can I really go into the future without you?

Chapter 5 - Southern Europe - approaching the oracle

My boat and bus rides were nauseating with lurches, fumes and sharp turns upsetting my stomach so that upon arrival, I looked for a bakery to get a loaf of plain white bread. Wandering into the first one I found, the baker shyly gave me the small loaf I asked for free – delightful surprise! He also showed me around his tiny place that seems all oven. Loaves of all sorts, some shaped into long, straight sticks, some round and some like doughnuts were placed in the waist-high opening. He used a long handled, flat paddle made of wood to move the loaves around and remove them from the oven, all with a speed and deftness that comes with years and years of repetition. He puts out 400 loaves a day and I could see why – his hands moved like quicksilver over the dough. He grinningly told me his hands are good for massages. I said I was grateful for the bread thank you very much and left before he offered proof of his other talent. Greek bread is delicious, but it gets stale so quickly it’s only good on the day it’s baked. I ate it in huge chunks while walking, feeling much better.

Now in Delphi, the place where I’m staying has hot showers. Oh Bliss! I had a gloriously long one tonight, but started missing you too much and ended up crying while the water cascaded over me. I get an odd degree of satisfaction crying in the shower. But I cried so much one my contact lenses fell out. Miraculously I found it on the floor and popped it into my mouth until I could get to a mirror to put it back in my eye. How unromantic!