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| Cafe at Mega Livadi. Typical to have such lovely tavernas on the shore. |
Just as images of Greece entered my mind before coming,
thoughts of Olympia USA are arriving without effort as my stay here comes toward a close. It’s natural to have this happen. Here in Serifos the tallest trees are royal
palms although the tallest tree I saw, a giant eucalyptus, stood behind the tribute
to Constantinos Speras. The tree looked
old enough to have been there when he was alive. In Olympia, it’s all trees. trees, trees.
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| My supermarket and a black cat on the road looking like a he's ready for a shootout in Dodge. |
I have not been in Livadi entirely as a tourist. Every day I have simply lived here in
somewhat the way the Greeks live here.
Granted I’m not Greek so it’s presumptuous of me to say this. But I’ve done my laundry and hung it out to dry,
shopped at the local markets with the regulars, cooked food that made sense to
me even though it wasn’t truly Greek flavors, cleaned my house with the tools
that are used here, endured the wind the same as everyone, walked around, rode
the bus, carried away my trash, did everyday life. So I am feeling a certain connection here
that is warm and I’ll take back a sense of relatedness. At the same time, I have not done much
talking, just listening to the world here, taking it all in. When I did speak with people I generally
asked questions. I was typically not
asked questions in response. I won’t
mind being in company again with known friends and taking up another kind of
everyday life.
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| Old door at the Hora. |
Yet five and a half days to go on Serifos. I return to Athens by boat on Friday
evening. On Saturday it will be at the
National Archeological Museum. Sunday
morning, June 1, I fly out from Athens to Toronto to Seattle. There is always more one could do or could
have done but I’m not the sort to have to conquer every detail of a place. I saw a couple at the Hora who were looking
at the hiking map of the island with some sense of distress and they were
saying, “Oh, we didn’t go on this trail.
Maybe we should do that one. And
we didn’t go on the west trail. We
didn’t see it.” It seemed as if they had
a need to gobble up every inch of the island to say that they had actually seen
it.
Pretty much, having driven around the whole island, it is
the same although there are some different spectacular views from one place to
another. Being content with what one has
seen and holding it as one’s own experience is quite fine for me. I don’t have to say that I’ve walked every
inch. I prefer to say that where I
walked was realized. On days when I
stayed downtown and helped with the mural, I was entirely content with that
adventure. On days when I battened the
shutters against the wind and stayed home, I felt equally content. Some days I just stayed home, wrote, walked
downtown, sat on the patio and looked at the bay. I’m getting old and simple and a little can
go a long way. But I think what I’ve
seen and felt was a lot and I feel enriched for having experienced the
antiquities and to have carried the mythic stories to this place. I can only think that when I watch the
Perseid Meteor Shower in August, the constellations of Perseus and Andromeda
will offer new meaning and I’ll have the treasure of having stood on this ground
where people believe that the real people of Perseus and Andromeda actually
walked.
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| There are eleven cats in this collection that run around all day pestering for food. During siesta they will not move even if I begin work in my kitchen. They've obviously just been fed. |
And these cats, there are actually eleven of them, will have
to find a new source to beg from.
