Kolymbari, Crete, Greece
Written Sunday/Monday, October 12/13, 2008
Conditions: heavy clouds, with a strong north wind blowing and high waves smashing over the stone breakwater of the port of Kolymbari .

NEWS FROM CRETE

Because my time in Crete is lamentably brief this October, I’ve not tended my garden or even bought potted flowering plants for the porches. This means, as well, that my annual war with the free-ranging katsikas – goats - will not be resumed. But they know I am here.

Yesterday the big black senior billygoat stood for a while on the hillside above my house considering me. The deep bong-bong-bong of his bell announced both his presence and his retreat. He paused and looked back just before he disappeared. While I cannot claim to read a goat’s mind, he seemed disappointed. And, in a way, so was I. Our past combats provided a measure of entertaining excitement to my existence.

I’m reminded of the Greek poet, Cavafy, who ended his poem, “Waiting For The Barbarians,” with these melancholy lines, lamenting the word that the enemy will not come after all: “And now, what’s going to happen without barbarians? They were. . . a kind of solution.”
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Without conscious intention I have ceased attending the services of the nearby monastery as a morning ritual. The attraction of touching base with an ancient liturgical tradition has faded. Perhaps it is the bells and the way they are rung at 5 a.m. Not a deep, sonorous call to meditative worship. No. It is more the frantic CLANG-CLANG-CLANGING! of a fire alarm. Followed by the panicked scream of the monastery’s tame peacocks. Surely the birds should be accustomed to this raucous awakening by now. I am not.

Not exactly a peaceful call to worship. As if there were some emergency requiring an urgent rush to the dark cave of the church. To do what? Is God in trouble or in a hurry? Have the Turks invaded again? What am I supposed to do? Abandon ship? Run for the hills? Take up arms? Practice for the Rapture? Throw myself into the sea? What?
In truth I find more darkness than light when I do attend the service. Old irritable monks in black mumbling an unintelligible Byzantine chant for the benefit of me and a few old droopy widow women. I feel like slowly limping away, more abused and confused than enthused.

I just do not wish to begin my day alarmed. I do not wish to be confronted with sorrow and death at such an early hour. Mournful despair is not exactly the required spice for the stew of my life. So I stay home now.

I put on a recording of the pipes and drums of the Black Watch accompanied by the band of the Queens Household Guards. And march into the day. Whump-whump-wump! Up! Onward! Excitement without emergency.
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Here is a snapshot of breakfast laid out on my table yesterday morning. Fresh crusty bread still warm from the wood-fired oven of the baker in Kastelli. A jar of cold unpasteurized goats milk - the gift of a friend. A glass of fresh-squeezed Cretan orange juice. A slab of Irish butter. Thyme honey and quince marmalade. Hot Brazilian Santos coffee in a pot, and a small shot glass of tsikoudia – Cretan white lightning – to pound an exclamation mark onto the end of the feast so that one can rise up for the day and not remain inert in a satisfied stupor.
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One piece of bad news. My laundryman, Manolis, in Tavronitis, has quit the business. Not retired. He is young. But he was not cut out to run a laundry.
I will miss his energetic good humor and good service. And what will he do now? He says, “Who knows? But, my God, not this.”

The good news is my new laundry in Tavronitis. Though it is half way to Chania – an inconvenient distance - its name pleases me. “THE HAPPY LAUNDRY!” And it is located right across the road from a bar called “THE FUNKY FISH.” How can I lose?
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Another piece of good news. There is a community of tango dancers now in Chania, teachers who have established a mobile tango academy operating around and about in Crete. And an occasional milonga takes place. It’s not exactly Argentina, but it emphasizes the developing world culture.

There is also a Starbucks now in the old port of Chania.
Good news or bad?
Well. . .
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During the first week of my sojourn in Crete the Orthodox Academy hosted an international conference of Astrophysicists on the theme of:
“Star-forming Dwarf Galaxies - Ariadne’s Thread in the Cosmic Labyrinth.”

Since most European scientific congresses are conducted in English, I attended some of the sessions. In layman’s terms they were speculating on the nature of galaxies at the edge of the known universe, with a somewhat literary frame of reference. My favorite lecture was entitled: “Blue Compact Dwarf Galaxies: Born To Be Wild.”

While I had hoped for slides of photographs of galactic whirling, the power- point presentations contained mostly complex analytical data of light, chemical spectra, and formulaic speculation. Way over my head. Sitting in a dark room with computers is not my idea of astronomy. And I am nervous and confused in the presence of mathematics.

I felt better about the astrophysicists when I went for a jet-lag-induced midnight walk along the shore and found several of the group drinking wine, laughing, talking, and leaning back on the rocks looking at the stars.

Later in the week, at a Cretan-themed dinner, the scientists gamely entered into the challenge of dancing Greek style – long lines of men and women holding hands and twining in and out to the music. The steps of the dance as mysterious to them as the light from the galaxies. Still, they danced.

The Thread of Ariadne is perhaps not an apt astrophysical metaphor. A labyrinth has one way in and one way out. A maze is more appropriate. On the way in and out there are many dead-ends, causing the adventurer to turn around and try another way. Whether into the cave of the mind or the cave of the universe, it is the same. This is the scientific method, is it not? This is the way of ongoing amazement.
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My encounter with the astrophysicists parallels an evening conversation with friends, wherein we speculated on this question: Suppose that you could suddenly be transported one thousand years back into human history. You could not alter history, only share some knowledge and ability and experience that might be useful in that place and time? What do you know? What do you know how to do?

Rather than give you an account of our wildly free-wheeling discussion, I leave the issues to you. What would you say? It’s not as obvious or as easy to answer as you might first expect. “Let me explain to you about an I-Pod and a cell phone.” might get you burned as a witch.
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In my luggage packed for Seattle is a pillowcase.  An emaxilarotheke –
(pronounced ee-maxsee-laro-theekee) in Greek. Though not an antique, this one is old-style, heavy white cotton, and hand-embroidered in complex scallop shapes on its border. It is something you might be pleased to find in a dowry trunk in the house of your ya-ya. (Greek grandmother.) In the small town of Kastelli in western Crete such things are still available. Often given to modern brides as a sentimental gesture.

This is the style of linen I prefer for my bed in Crete.
The particular pillowcase I am bringing with me has been washed in water from a mountain spring, using olive-oil soap made by hand in a nearby village. The pillowcase has been hung out to dry in the sun on a windy day when the air was slightly salty from the sea, and perfumed by the scent of wild thyme and jasmine. The pillowcase was left outside on the line over night in the light of the half-moon and bright stars, infused by the dew of dawn, and dried once more by the sun of early morning.

The pillowcase now contains memory, the essence of Crete, beauty, and pure nostalgia. Placed on my pillow thousands of miles from here on some gloomy, cold, wet night in Seattle I expect it to bring sweet dreams.

As market value goes, the pillowcase is essentially worthless.
But priceless now to me.
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This long journal marks the end of another episode in Crete – over 26 years now I have been coming here. In three days I leave for the United States. I do not say “leave for home” because part of the notion of “home” for me is here. There is a reflection in my last book of essays, “What On Earth Have I Done?” that expresses the feelings I have when moving on from Crete. Since I cannot improve upon those thoughts, I repeat some of them here.

“Though I am still here as I write, I already miss Crete.
It’s a curious thing for a child of the Texas plains like me to become attached to the people and culture of a Greek island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. No rational explanation.

“But I suppose that in the midst of my own 21st-century life that often seems so temporary and shallow and confusing, I yearn for a connection to a deep-rooted place and deep-rooted people with ancient traditions that include unrelenting hospitality to strangers.

“How surprising that I would wander so far and wide to satisfy that need in Crete, or that I would recognize it when I found it. Lucky me.

“From my house I can see across the bay to a far hillside where the world’s oldest olive tree has been producing for more than 2,000 years. The villagers there have always taken care of it, with the same perseverance that they apply to taking care of themselves. They are a people who act with a generous care-full-ness that can encompass a foreigner like me. Whenever I visit their tree, I am given something to eat or drink, and some oil or soap to take away home. And always the blessing to “Go with God.”

“No apology for my sentimentality about this island or its people. Of course there are ugly places in Crete. And the supply of the wicked and foolish and pig-headed is as evenly distributed here as anywhere else.

“And I am not a native, but always one who comes and goes - forever an outsider - which means I can’t pretend to understand all that goes on day by day. But I know what I know.

“Still, after 26 years, “the soil of Crete is under my nails,” as they say. And I am old enough to know that in this life you see what you look for, and you get what you are open to receive. And you belong to those whose company you cherish, for they will cherish you.

In my own limited, awkward way, I can say and feel deep down,
“Eimai Kritikos – I am Cretan.”