Greece, with Gusto!

1.

Once upon a time, a 78-year-old man living a relatively satisfactory life within sight of Cape Cod Bay, devised a plan to circle the Earth.  It would be his last such opportunity, he thought.  Yet even while strapping on his long-winged feathers he could barely walk no less fly.  One hamstring was ruptured.  One entire leg was black and deep purple.  His breathing was compromised, his heart was in persistent atrial fibrillation, and, quite honestly the guy had no real idea why he really wanted to go on such a voyage, except that he’d been planning it for years, he felt a persistence sense of needing to get away from the familiar, he wanted to walk in beauty, and he desired to travel outside the daily madness that is America.  Most of all he would travel in the hope of finding some clarity, he thought, a sense of direction, of purpose, of greater self-acceptance and full engagement with the gifts and terrors of his final chapters.  Besides, how much longer would he be physically and psychically able to take such trips on his unmistakably clear path toward the termination of his mission, a fate he shares with Daedalus’ son Icarus. 

2.

The initial plan was to begin in San Francisco where his daughter and grandchildren live and from there proceed to Kathmandu.  He actually buys tickets, one for himself, one for his friend/ex-girlfriend.  His current partner finds the planning and contemplation of such a voyage with one’s old mate, even if our hero promises said trip will not include physical intimacy, well, let’s just say, disturbing.  One wonders what this guy does not get. Not to mention the forbearance of his mate.

Anyhow, what he actually doesn’t get is his trip to Nepal.  And what he does actually get is three days in a SF hospital on the geriatric ward where he discovers he’s been bleeding to death internally.  You think there is a message here?  That maybe he really wasn’t supposed to go to Nepal with his ex-girlfriend.  That maybe he need a different plan where love and death lurk. So much for Nepal, my friends.  So much for an around the world voyage.  Here is the naked truth, if he had gotten on the plane to Kathmandu he’d be dead.

3.

And in these circumstances, the dream of circling the world ends, whereupon, humbled and far weaker, and ridiculously and instantaneously far older than he has ever been, he flies back to the Cape where his mate, Luna the Forbearing, is happy to see him safe and present, absent the need to suffer the agony of her man being with another woman in Nepal, which then brings our two lovers, in the spirit of Cupid and Psyche, to Greece.

4.

Greece is not Cape Cod, of course, not even with all that water, not America, not Nepal.  Greece is an ancient country in the middle of the Mediterranean, Ionian, and Aegean seas filled with history, islands, shorelines, coves, caves, olives, wonderful food, and antiquity, something we in the west know not.  Greece, a place he never imagined he wanted to be and yet here, without plans, without a return ticket, and without any sense where this is meant to lead, except to an inevitable rendezvous with death.  Which means pay attention. 

The flight to Greece is not easy.  The long passage between terminals in Gatwick is tiring.  The long wait between flights is challenging.  The couple takes the Metro into Athens after 18 hours of travel.  They are lost, hungry, and tired. They have another battle.  Each loses.  Again.

5.

Ah, but Greece.  Greece is music and coffee.  Greece is exceptional food and the Acropolis.  Greece is Patras, where the Lenten carnival fills a day.  Greece is meat.  Greece is Lagia, at the far southern end of the Mani, a peninsula in the Peloponnese where our Airbnb is a stone house, with olive wood burning in the fireplace, olives on the table, and slippers by the bedside.

Lagia, our first real stop, is home to an exceptionally beautiful, mural covered, old subterranean church that actually ought be in Jerusalem, adjunct to the Church of the Holy Specula.  The church priest is named George. You can call him Papa.  Papa George owns the restaurant across from the church and the horse eating greens from the back of the open pickup truck in front of the restaurant.  George owns the hotel down the beach, another hotel, and a farm.  George has 4 sons and three grandsons.  He advertises international baptism services, complete with throwing the infant up in the air at the end for photographs and making everyone happy.  He has photographs on the walls.  He makes and sells honey.  He makes and sells olive oil and olive soap.  He has never been outside of Greece.  Not once.  Still, George appears to be an exceptionally happy man, a man who appreciates the kindness and care of his loving god.

6.

We drive in Mani on roads frequently shown in impossibly spectacular photographs of overstated travel magazines.  Really, I have seen much natural and astonishing beauty in my day, but the Mani roads are tied with those in Big Sur, Cinque Terra, the road to Hana.  All the houses in the Mani are made of stone.  The fields and hills are ablaze with yellow flowers.  Mixed on the palette are deep purples, shocking reds, violets, whites.  I have never seen so many olive trees, so many goats, so few cars or people, so few gasoline pumps or stores.  It is the real world out here, home to Spartans, Homer, Poseidon.  The land of rocks and olives at the shore and in the hills.  Dogs guard the goats. The goats’ bells ring.  God is in heaven and in the sea and we are in Greece.

7.

One poor dog we see is tied mercilessly next to some goats at a hairpin turn in the road, shaking and starving.  The woman cries for him.  She takes pictures of the dog to show Papa George, who calls the police.  One never knows what they will be called to face in unfamiliar foreign fields.  On the way out of Lagia we stop to visit the dog again, to bring him some food.  His owner, a plump round dirty older woman has made the mistake of also being there. I stop the car on command and the Head of the Lagia International Pet Protection School (LIPS), who speaks no Greek, jumps out of the car and confronts the owner.  LIPS tells the woman sternly that the dog’s leash is too short, that cruelty to animals is a criminal offense, that the woman shall be reported to PETA, and besides, that she is surely going to go to hell.  This in perfect English.  And the woman gets it, or gets something, because before long her arms are spread wide and she is gesturing passionately, defending the leash’s length, telling the LIPS lady the dog is fine and besides that it’s none of her damn business.  Picture it, two Greek peasant women standing at the side of the road arguing with loud unintelligible voices and hand gestures, pointing at the dog who is trying to get away, like the guy in the car is.  Dogs and cats.  Greek cats.  They are everywhere.  Even on postcards.  We buy more than a few. Later we buy bags of dog food to feed the strays.

8.

After Lagia, we land in Sparta.  After father George, Dimitri, who emigrated with his family as a young man to Montreal, and has lived and owned property in Miami, Texas, and New York.  Dimitri has no children and no wife.  He’s made a lot of money in real estate.  His mother, who lived near him in the states, was literally dying 5 years ago when she begged Dimitri to bring her back to Greece to end her days and be buried on her native soil.  And Dimitri, ever the loyal son, brings her back to die in Greece, whereupon she has a complete recovery.  Cooks.  Shops.  Dances while Dimitri prospers, buying more houses, more acreage with lemon trees, oranges, olives.  He is already selling olive oil he packages and ships internationally. Dimitri, the epitome of the entrepreneurial spirit, approves of our plan to circumnavigate the entire country, Mani, Sparta, Mystos, Lefkada, Corfu, northern Greece to Thessaloniki, back down to Athens, a flight to Crete, you know, man plans and the gods laugh.     

9.

So first to Mystos and then Kalavryta, where the ghost of the beast appears very vividly and by surprise.  Or as the note which welcomes the visitor to the Kalavryta Holocaust Museum reads, “Fascism is not theory.  It is a performance.  You and us.  And the leading actor is Death.”

10.

Then Lefkada, where we never intended to go and I run out of superlatives. Too much souvlaki, perhaps, Lips talking to every stray cat and dog, every butterfly and bee, explaining to the restaurant owner in English and with hand gestures why the owner’s caged birds needed clean water, which results in new bottles of water being delivered to our table.

11.

We go to Corfu.  It will surprise you.  The ferry is huge… and relatively empty.  I don’t quite know what we do, but three days pass and we are still there.  Our budget in Greece is 50% housing and rental car, 25% souvlaki, and 25% café fredos. The town of Pelakas is the epitome of all thing Corfuian.  From there you drive to the northern edge of the island.  There a big ghost city is waiting for summer and Germans.  On the way over hilarious hairpin roads leading to the sea and eternity we talk of love.  Our parents are here with us… in some ways welcome guests and in others just too much baggage to keep lugging around. 

12.

This writing is supposed to be a “travelogue” about Greece, true, but the trip itself is also intended as a voyage to find a greater sense of direction, purpose, or self-acceptance as I enter and experience the gifts and terrors of this final chapter on the road to demise and non-existence.  I am weaker, less mobile, less virile, less the powerfully physical man I was.  Vulnerable.  Poorer.  Limited in ways I do not enjoy and find hard to accept.  I am sad, focused on and aware of loss and of the need to say good-bye.  Part of what engages me in this is a lifelong awareness of death’s inevitability and approach and the sense there were only a few ways to approach the end of self-aware life/aliveness.      

13.

I blame these hopelessly romantic reveries on the Bronx, of course, on firefighters, and on Chief Wesley Williams, the first African American battalion chief in the NYFD, who my father served as Chief Williams’ sole aide and driver.  Jews, Italians, Greeks, Indigenous Americans, the Irish, Germans, Catholics, poets, the Yankees, black people in transparent grief and joy, Sandy Koufax, soldiers fighting overseas, children screaming before annihilation, folks who speak other languages, butchers, woodworking shop, the dairy farm in upstate NY where our urban narrator worked summers in high school and saw birth and death in the raw all contribute to this romantic thread, but no matter what its origins, it is simply his “fate.”

14.

Meteora is the end of “us” though not of the trip.  And in truth it is really a very simple declaration that ends it, a way Lips speaks of her pain and her fears of going mad that I feel in my heart and soul. I can no longer be the source of hers and my pains.  I’ll tell you about the rest of the trip later.  I’ve left out the break into our car and Lip’s terrible losses.  I’ve left out the friends Lips made, the courage she displayed, her strength and courage.  I’ve ignored Athens, Thesonaliki, and long walks up steep steps leading to new vistas and cafes where people sing in Greek to the gods.