"I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus, was on the island of Patmos because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. On the Lord's Day I was in the Spirit, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet which said: 'Write on a scroll what you see and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.'"
The Book of Revelation 1:9-11
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but of course I am. In all the 27 years I have dreamt of ancient Greece ~ what with the gallivanting, self-indulging gods, clueless mortals, supple and shiny heroes astride their horses and decks of golden ships, fleet-footed Atalanta in her short tunic of brilliant white, Prometheus chained to the rock with vultures permaplanted in his guts ~ I don't think I've ever really once actively imagined what the real, modern Greece looked like. That is, with exception of temple ruins in general and the island of Santorini, whose tourism-loving images are virtually plastered in every gyros joint and Greek restaurant on the planet.
(Ireland, on the other hand, was all about the environment and my senses: feeling the tactile quality of the soft wind on my skin, admiring winding roads on precarious lush cliffs and beautifully constructed dry-stone walls, being embraced by glowingly warm and friendly pubs on the coldest of evenings, listening to people play music amongst sparkling bonfires on the beach, inhaling the clean scent of fresh sweet grass, waking up to the bleating of lambs in the morning and falling asleep to the crashing of waves at night...)
"Don't expect the lushness of Italy, Bean," Supe has warned. "It's not rolling green hills with gleaming cypress trees and beautifully-preserved mediaeval towns. Italy keeps asserting how poor they are as an EU country, but they have nothing on Greece. You've seen how well-preserved Italy's historical buildings, fortresses, and cities are. Greece, on the other hand, is poor, poor, poor. The government puts pretty much no money into protecting its antiquities, and honestly, almost anyone can dig in his backyard and find ancient potsherds and such, so Greeks kind of take this stuff for granted. You can row a boat to a deserted part of any island, find stunning pillars and ruins, and come back a few months later and these artifacts will be gone... and it doesn't seem like the government cares enough to do anything about it or even has the funds to do much except complain. And the landscape is arid, dry, and semi-deserty, which is maybe I love Santa Fe so much. So bring sturdy sandals and plan to scramble around on dry, rocky hills; we'll go exploring. Oh, and snorkeling gear if you have any. There's lots of neat aquatic life to see in the waters by the apartment, and hopefully there will be very few jellyfish coming up in the currents from Africa this year."
Thus, I have been suitably informed. My readings of related travel writing have been equally and almost surprisingly enlightening. In "Going Home to Greece," Liza Monroy recounts:
"The Boston Common was covered in seven inches of snow that mid-December day I flew to Greece. When I got off the plane in Athens, it wasn't exactly hot, but the air was light and easy to breathe. The sun shone with a crystalline quality I had never seen anywhere else. No wonder travel articles about Greece always mentioned the light.
We rented a motorcycle from an old man in a shop near the port and rode toward the cave called the Holy Grotto of the Revelation. My mother was in the driver's seat and I clutched her weight, my head turned to the right, encased by a clunky white helmet. Patmos was still and calm; the only sounds were the puttering engine of our motorino and the clanging of Grecian sheeps' bells off in the distance. It was a time for reflection, another retreat into stillness, far from the ebb and flow of the course of modern life.
In AD 95, according to history books, the Revelation of Saint John the Theologian happened in a cave on Patmos, where John spent the duration of his eighteen-month exile. A monastery stands there today. The grotto is a major destination for pilgrims from around the world. 'If I were stuck in a cave for more than a year, I might start hearing the voice of God, too,' I thought, until I read in my guidebook that John is the patron saint of booksellers, at which point I lowered my eyes and silently prayed for the future of my novel, still a seed in my brain.
On the way to the cave, we stopped in a tiny, typical hillside church. A small, old lady shrouded in black waved incense in the air. She smiled toothlessly, her eyes squinting and reflecting off the light streaming in through the entryway.
'There's something mystical about the Greek Orthodox religion, isn't there?' I wondered aloud, as I stared at the gold paintings and inhaled the old woodsy scent of the woman's incense holder, the candles burning in their red glass holders.
'It's very mystical,' said my mother.
I imagined Gregorian chants echoing through the tiny, dark chapel. But the only sound was that of waves crashing against the cliffs below.
As we entered the dim, silent cave, I realized the source of this feeling of mysticism. It struck me like my very own revelation. The island's geography, the natural spirituality within the quiet stone walls, and the cobalt hues of the ocean below all seemed to erase the complications of daily life. It was the perfect moment in the perfect place to just be, and to connect ~ or reconnect ~ with another person. The cave felt like a retreat back to a slower time, when people lived close to nature and had time for contemplation."
Ashley Black, in her aching account of searching for her birth parents in Greece, writes in her story, Adespotos:
"In the mountains of northern Greece, they say you can still find the Sarkatsani.
Semimythical, these aloof nomads are rarely seen in the wild. One only stumbles across an occasional clue. Near Monodhendri, I entered a clearing and found vacated huts in which they had settled for the summer and then vanished. Once, on a mule trail in the Zagoria, I heard a distant barking and the murmur of sheep bells. I followed the sounds to a dazzling gorge, but there nothing stirred except a floating hawk. Like gods, the Sarakatsani manifest themselves to us mortals in tantalizing glimpses.
They call themselves 'Adespoti' (those with no ruler).
This is Epirus, a sparse land, mountainous, with sharp, white crags poking so close to the blue sky that you feel you have ascended to a higher plain where only gods and animals dare to live. Scarcity makes life simple, minimalist. Heartbreakingly beautiful, the poets say, and they are right. Up here, the dawn really is rosy-fingered, as Homer claimed, and the magic of an ancient world still persists. In America, we don't have magi who can cast spells, we don't have the Evil Eye. We no longer have nomads who live in tepees. But Greece has not lost its magic.
I passed a khan, a memento of days when people travelled by foot, and shepherds who, with their migrating herds, needed a place to spend the night. I had never felt so small. The world around me was vast, eternal, mythic.
I was distracted by sheep bells, though there was no sheep in sight, but in this vast landscape, sounds travel for miles, and the tinny tinkle carried as lightly on the air as sunlight across the blue sky. Coming from a distance, so light and clear, the sounds melded together melodically. It had the minimalist quality of a capella singing ~ unembellished, precise, perfect."
Is it in Greece, at long last, where I will find my quiet peace again? Each time I've been abroad in a distant land in the past ten years or so, I've fought for my space, my solitude, my silence. I've had to navigate carefully in my words to avoid hurting feelings, that time alone doesn't mean I don't love you, that I just need to wander on my own. I can't be with people 24/7 and not go insane. I like being by myself far too much. I become a version of myself I don't like when I can't hear myself... and I haven't heard myself properly in years.
This time, in a land where this quietness of soul and landscape is already so evident in the words and writings of a friend and authors, I'm curious to see how easy it will be attain my own tranquil ecstasy ~ or even pulsing realizations that may cause me to collapse entirely and become completely ill ~ in wandering with only my journal, a borrowed camera, my dusty feet. While I will be in the company of my closest friend and her doting family, we are each arriving preoccupied with our own struggles, generally surrounded by noise and others' needs in our habitual environments, plagued with uncertainties, and resolutely clinging carefully to our own hopes.
Nevertheless, I am looking forward to discovering myself lost in timeless vistas, being filled with the love of good people, wonderful conversation and marvellous food, swimming free in the Aegean, and finding the answers I know are already waiting for me... once I have enough stillness and silence to hear them.
(photo credit: Although Cape Sounion, or Sounio, is best known for the Temple of Poseidon (or according to the Romans, Neptune), there is also the remains of the Temple of Athena. The image of a broken column from the Temple of Athena above comes from this lovely site of travel photography. Who knows if it's still even there.)
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