Athens, Delphi, Sicily, Crete, Santorini
It’s almost as if, in each new place, I ask “who am I here?” And by acknowledging who am I NOT in any given place, I hone in on who I am constantly becoming. As if each new day is its own birthing, I emerge from the darkness of sleep, the depths of thought, the murkiness of emotion—and something always changes. Or maybe something is remembered. Or tweaked. And each time that happens, I no longer exist as I have been.
But…always there is a gift of some kind offered through the process. The memory of something I lost within myself for any number of reasons. And then there it is. It could be a pact I’ve made with myself years ago that has gotten lost in the shuffle of bumps in life’s road—that I review again and renew again. Or what I’ve given up on, like a man telling me how beautiful I am, even as age paints a different picture of me. But it’s never in the external, but in the survival of my spirit. I move through life in short bursts of place, people, experience. I want to believe I'm seen for all of who I am, regardless. Isn’t that what we all want—to be looked straight in the eye, into the heart, and the spirit?
And always, these things cannot be bought, even by what is leftover from history.
Written on a temple in Delphi
When one invites a different experience, a different cultural take, then one has to allow the questions to appear, to linger. But, then there is the listening, the translating, the acceptance of what seems to be an answer. Koans really, where the pondering of the question becomes the answer in itself.
If Rilke was right when he wrote about loving the questions themselves, with the willingness and trust to find one’s way into the answers, then when I look behind me, I can see the road winding, touching markers, backing up from what makes no sense.
Travel is no less. And so the questions appear with what brings me the oracular musings of anything new, or even familiar. How do I want to travel? What settles into gratification? Frustration? What shapes a baseline criteria for anything in life?
And so, for my spirit and my love of travel, a new friend asks for my companionship to Greece and Italy. And so, from the darkness of intermittent sleep across time zones and oceans, I arrive into Athens to be the witness for her, but also for myself. She buys a trip that I cannot monetarily add to. It is a different kind of gift. It is one of trust, of safety, of shared experience. It is not to be taken lightly, by either of us.
As a solo traveler usually, I’ve come to rely on my overall nature—as I have evolved through other years of travel—of seeking adventure, with safety in mind of course, sometimes even caution, but always reverence for what avails.
With another person, the reverence is harder to come by. Reverence comes with the willingness to surrender, to let go of agenda and control, to welcome the unexpected. Not everyone is like this. Not everyone seeks the serendipitous. Not everyone invites the small moments of magic through trust.
I weigh the balance of itinerary vs. exploration. The nomadic wanderer vs. the tourist. There really is no fine line with these distinctions. I’m no longer the tourist, even when I allow myself to go to a touristy destination. I no longer stick to itinerary. But here, on this trip, I have to. Even when I offer a different perspective, I have to let my own agenda go. This is not my trip, not the way in which I would travel through these areas. And so, I cling to what I have become in part—someone who sees her environment through the lens of a photojournalist. A witness to each moment, each person I pass by, each historical site. I eek out an hour here or there when my friend has no more interest in walking or seeing or experiencing. We all have a saturation point, and I respect hers. But I know I’m at my best when I set off into the unknown—inviting magic.
In the cities, English is available. My Greek phrase cheat sheet doesn’t really make sense. But I want to offer something, so I say efkaristo to the taxi driver, then double check to make sure I’m pronouncing it right. “Yes,” I ask? “Thank you--efkaristo?”
The driver smiles at my attempt. “Yes, very good.”
I will come to use pa-ra-ka-LO….”please". Together, these might become the two most important phrases to have in my vocabulary.
Even asking if someone speaks English—in Greek—makes little sense. If I ask if someone speaks English, in English, and they do, then they understand. All is good. If the person doesn’t understand, then there really isn’t a lot of hope for a dialogue. I could ask directions—I can look at my notes and ask “Where is…” and then say the name, or point to something. But, would I even understand the answer?
I will go on to use kalimera (good morning), kalispera (good afternoon/evening), and see-GNO-me (excuse me) often while in Greece. It’s my offering to the gods of travel. Other than all of this, its just easier for everyone to use English in the cities or tourist destinations.
What was Athens like? Yes, a city. Yes, a neighborhood where a few moments could become the familiar. Modern, so people speak some English. Long history that certainly has both shaped and not shaped modern Greek society. But still a culture where the local people hold madly to their root.
“Dirty rain,” the woman at the local market tells me. “From the Sahara. Hard to know what to wear.” I hand her a few euros for some eggs and bread. Later, I learn that if the dirt in the rain is not washed off the “white” of Santorini, the rain will stain an orange-red and not come off.
Throughout the trip, I will stand at yet another pile of rocks, age old as most rocks are, and read the informational sign. Research has been done, speculation amassed about the details of daily life, politics, belief systems. Amongst the ruins, there will be yet another remainder of a piece of a wall or a column, headless statues, shards of pottery, pieces of gold jewelry, coins. Those in the know have woven their stories around history, started their reconstruction of old structures, frescoes, pots. They’ve drawn sketches of what they think temples looked like once upon a time, and made 3D replicas of holy areas…
It’s not so much that I’m not interested in history, but perhaps more interested in what we've done with it. What layers have covered the important learnings? Is it only what the scholars have left us in their writings? Their deaths? I want to see how the people have survived all of it, what they have carried in their DNA over the centuries. I want to witness what lingers in their cultures, their foods, their everyday movement through their villages and cities.
It becomes clear on this trip that I prefer to linger longer in places— to feel the energy, witness the place in all its minutae rather than get swept into the vortex of tourism. I’d rather struggle with language, let hand gestures and smiles guide my way. Cities and tourist destinations breed English translations, even on menus. I’d prefer to wander the maze of narrow cobbled streets of mountain villages like Randazzo or Erice or Gangi in Sicily. I’d rather get lost in the Plaka near Athen’s Acropolis and hunker down to listen to street musicians into the dark hours of the evening.
Sometimes I go off on my own for a bit while my friend rests back at the apartment or hotel. I sit under the glow of history’s ghosts, the lighted Parthenon above the cobbled Dionysiou Areopagitou walkway that begins the circumnavigation walk about the Acropolis and it’s slopes. And always marvel at the mountainous art forms of gelato showcased in refrigerated cases in every alleyway. |
It’s the people I want to be near and connect with. It's Emilio in Randazzo, Sicily, our lodging host with big dreams.
“I make my grandfather’s house for healing retreat,” he informs us.
He’s created gardens with Buddha statues, patio sitting areas overlooking the Alcantara River valley, set up a ten person tent for groups. Our room is small, but cozy, crucifixes on the walls alongside posters celebrating the seven chakras. Non-denominational.
Emilio is young, 31, but has an old soul. He wants to connect with people, and offers to be our local guide for a couple of hours on a rainy day where our plans need to change. We eat at his friend’s restaurant, stroll through a maze of cobbled stone alleys made of black pumice to knock on the door of another of his friends—a luthier and musician who shows us his workshop, plays us some ancient types of stringed instruments made by him, tells us stories of settling in Erice with his wife. Emilio guides us to huge cathedrals of black stone and tiny black chapels. Early evening in the communal kitchen of his retreat, he plays a “soft jazz’ mix he’s put together in his passion as a DJ.
“I like,” he says with a smile. Later, on You Tube, I listen to short snippets of his synthesized mood music, some for dancing, some for meditation. He's complex and delightful.
"It wasn't like this fifteen years ago," Klaudio, our host in Bexedes northeast of Oia, tells us. "People came to explore, in shorts and sandals, with a backpack. Now, in season, as many as seven cruise ships sit in the bay, and all those people flood Thira and Oia. Once I have enough money saved, I plan to leave."
If I had more time, I would wander the more isolated stretches, listen to the ocean roll onto the black, or red, or brown sand and pebbled beaches.
This is how history has evolved. Those sharing what they know deep in their hearts and land and bones. These are the utterances from the oracle, always ambiguous, always in translation. I am both the priestess and the questioner. The world is my shrine. And unlike the Oracle at Delphi at the base of Mount Parnassus, the priestess trancing from geologic gasses, my murmurings eventually make perfect sense and I know that I no longer can be a tourist in my life. I have become the traveler.