Monday, July 31, 2017

The morality of irresponsibility

Have I really been back for almost two weeks? My awareness is distended, straddling an ocean, split again to span a whole continent, divided in five to occupy several nations at once. My body is thus lankier than normal, joints loosened and dilated as if I had spent time on a rack, eyes widened by bright, interrogative light, my mind severed by the demands of this interview from cogent routines. Yet somehow the flesh is not encumbered, nor especially painful or awkward under my supervision. If there are chains, I don’t quite sense them yet. Likewise the mind has not ceased to function, I simply do not recognize its functioning right now as well as I normally do. I float, but not as if driven there by torment and escapism, not disembodied. Perhaps superembodied?

Thursday, July 20, 2017

Athens: Bathing in the Spring

[note - Chronologically, this came after Venezia and before Crete]

My time in Athens was very short, but has left an enduring impression on me. That first evening in Greece, from the moment I stepped off of the underground, I witnessed the underlit fountain of culture, which showers the city that surges and foams outward in all directions, which showers the entire Western world in its influence. The Acropolis leaps skyward in the middle of Athens, an abrupt promontory flooded in light, a head wound exploding from this mind responsible for so much of how the West thinks, legislates, makes art.

This monument is so grand, so glorious, even in its decay, even in the profoundly empty spaces - the pedestals that do not hold statues of Zeus or Athena any longer, the columns that do not stand, the roofs that have long since collapsed and crumbled.


How tragic to witness that Greece now reels so badly from a modern crisis fabricated from modern, petty myths and monetary legends - our global obsession with values that are calculated, transacted and then forgotten in milliseconds...a new height of superficiality, of expendability...an infinite array of infinitesimal threats assaulting the root of our shared, cultural tree.

Monday, July 17, 2017

One foot in either world - or, the return

Here is an odd circumstance, either promising or unsettling depending on how I look at it - as I begin to investigate where to live when I return to my hometown, I find that the exact same apartment I lived in several years ago is once more available.

A good thing or a bad thing? I loved living in this place, and moved out primarily due to rising rent. It now costs about 33% more than it did when I lived there. Still, it is a very nice apartment, other than the somewhat noisy neighborhood it is in, as well as its remoteness from...well, almost anything, including grocery stores (about a 2km walk).

This is an easy, familiar, readily-available option. It would solve a lot of logistical problems of my return immediately. What does it do about my higher-order problems, though? The idea of signing a lease here raises in me fears of regression. The sense that I am walking backward down a path that I have already worn smooth. Am I not supposed to advance from where I am into a different and/or better future? Isn't literally returning to where I came from going backward?

One simple thing that would profoundly mitigate this decision - something I have learned in the course of my journey that I really want right now - is regular company. I recognize that this will come with its own challenges, but I think it would be very nice to have a roommate (and, by the way, if a 2 bedroom apartment were to become available in this complex where my old apartment is available, the per-person cost would be about 20% less than what I used to pay there). It would be an economic, social, and perhaps even spiritual improvement over my current set of options, which seems to be:

- Live exactly where I used to live, exactly how I used to live (alone)
- Live in a different city (or country!), exactly how I used to live (alone)
- Hopscotch from friend's house to friend's house, which operates at best as a delaying tactic and during which time I must nevertheless resolve a number of lingering clerical and financial concerns.

I still need to find work, rescue my possessions from a storage unit, and move forward with my life. I especially need to move forward with my life. This epic trip was meant to be phase one - now I just need to figure out a phase two.

Sunday, July 16, 2017

Venezia - Lie Back and Float (6/22 to 6/26)

Taking the best symbolism from the ten-hour delay I endured, waiting for my Volotea flight to arrive in Sicilia and shuttle me to Venezia on the 22nd of June, I shall say that this tedious, dazed, hungry and tired day I spent in Catania’s airport modeled for me how I ought to treat my time in Serenissima (Her Serene Royal Highness), in the Floating City, in Venezia - that is to say, I should take it slowly.


It should be noted that my airport day was its own, modest adventure in a bottle

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Keep traveling - the grace of shitty first drafts (credit to Anne Lamott) - minor edits 2017/07/15

I have been very tired again, recently. This occurs more frequently the longer I have been traveling, and it saps the energy I have to explore, and also to reflect and write about those explorations.

It is okay, though. One doesn't always have to get it right the first time. Fortunately, one sometimes doesn't have to get it right at all.

Monday, July 10, 2017

Sicilia: a homecoming four generations in the making

The older woman across from me pointed out the train window. I looked over my shoulder past the hurtling landscape of southern Italy, neck protesting at the sharp angle, and immediately forgot the pain as I saw, glowing in the late afternoon sun, the island of Sicilia.

She and her husband were Sicilian, returning home. Across the aisle a Russian mother and her two children sat. They were visiting on holiday, as I was. All of us had embarked on this seven hour journey from Roma, all of us felt the gathering anticipation of arrival.

Sunday, July 9, 2017

Flip the Pyramid - Mirth and Mischief, Folly and unfoiled earnestness: hijinks in Oxford, Africa in Crete (7/6-7/9)

My regularity with this blog has been less than regular, so once again I’m time-jumping to the present to reflect a bit more on where I am, after which I will get back to where i was.


And where am I? After last night, I can’t quite be sure. Was it all a dream, as the good-natured fairy suggested (but wait...how can he have suggested it if it was, in fact, a dream), or did I and Hippolyta’s other “fourth cousins” truly gallivant about in the gathering silk skirts of an Oxford evening, opening mysterious briefcases, attending amateur drama auditions (to play the role of bats - “whEEEEEEE-NEE-Nee-Nee-nee-nee-nee,” which, on the authority of that dubious troupe is the sound that bats make), breaking into confidential files, witnessing a streetside spat/pursuit between Demetrius and Helena, spying on a video chat between Lysander and Hermia that occurred behind a pub, attending to dapper-suited Egeus’s fatherly woes and his plans to make his daughter marry Demetrius, kill her, or have her forswear men (reasonable options, surely), and otherwise scouring the streets for snippets of an embellished, and wildly-entertaining performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Napoli (a fitting city to visit in the past while catching up to the present)

I fear that I do not do justice to any of the places I have visited, or the people whom I have met. Writing is like drawing a map: you attempt to create a convincing fake, a sufficient approximation, to allow someone to abstract reality, pretend to stand above it even while they move through it...kind of like a maze.

Surely my experiential maps are full of dead ends, skip crucial landmarks, embellish excessively about this or that turn that could have been described in a handful of words. So how can I begin to walk you through a city such as Napoli, overwhelmed as it is with vital detail, and which demands navigation in three dimensions more completely than any other city I have ever visited?

There’s got to be a better way, or “wherever I go, there I am, blocking my path”: Mazes and Labyrinths, Plans and Accidents

My chronicle has gotten way behind schedule. I still want to write about Napoli, Catania, Venezia, Athens, Irakleio, and Sitia (as I catalog these cities, I straddle my time in Rethimno and as soon as I cross over this wall and hop down to the next backyard, I will have to add it to the list).

First, I have to air some dirty laundry. I have to try to clear my head.

I become dispirited, and so my thoughts and energy diffuse. Or perhaps I am not being fair to myself - maybe I am resilient beyond anyone’s expectations, and I am simply frustrated at my apparent lack of “success” (we may try to define that later). Maybe I despair at the destructive, chaotic, or ineffectual results of my attempts to focus my resources down a particular path. Whatever the reason, I end up not writing.

I haven’t stopped doing, although an increasing percentage of my doing feels like it is happening somewhere five kilometers to one side, and I am observing it in miniature through a telescope. Moments that shake and stir me have dwindled significantly, and with increasing frequency I have the appalling experience of feeling like I am observing a remote-control doll of myself in the moment and not really being in the moment. A side note, remembering something I wrote earlier - one element of this phenomenon is that as my sense of connection with the world around me goes down, my number of photographs goes up. Cause, or effect? Illness, or placebo? Perhaps, adding to the list of potential causes for my malaise, I am only tired.