“Each day we wake from wild dreams”: Tinos and Calypso

 

We hadn’t been to Greece since 2001, when we spent a week exploring the Island of Lesvos after a few days in Istanbul, on our honeymoon.  It was our first big trip together. Joys and bumps along the way, we figured it out as we went. We escaped the Sultan’s revenge in Istanbul. Caroline didn’t like tiki bars. And our hotel was a dump. But we made it, adapting along the way.

All these years later, it was not easy coming back. Felt like we were just getting a hang of Berlin, before the Teenager’s fall break. Still, we jumped on the tram to Alexanderplatz, to catch the train to the airport, early enough to get through security and fly.  Off to Greece, where we made our way to the port of Rafina, arriving in the evening.  Lot’s has changed since our first trip here, 9/11 a few days after we got back, a financial crisis which jarred the country, learning to navigate history and travel complications, moods, bad hotels, flight delays, jet lag from Spain to Tokyo, and countless trips along the way. Whole worlds opened and closed, just as they did with my parents, who loved Afghanistan and Iran before geopolitics changed, transforming into our recent troubles. Many crises later, we were on our way back to the home of the polis, still helping us unpack a history of philosophy and poetry.

Arriving in Rafina Monday night, I stepped out to grab a snack at a pizza place in the near empty town. A few boys are drinking a few beers.  Boats are docked for the next day’s journey to an unknown island.  I love a port.

Onward into the dream.

Walking through the port the next morning, I breathe in the sea air, looking at the fish markets opening before our 7 AM ferry. 

Dad always imagined a life on Calypso’s Island.

 I wonder about Odysseus lost, searching, striving, trying to get home, dancing with the sirens, eluding the cyclops, destruction and desire, a double helix, ever looming around the corner.  Such thoughts accompany me, on our way, towards Calypso's island, thinking about poetry and myths that teach us about our frailty and hubris, guiding us toward a history of philosophy, into new ways of seeing and thinking, dreaming about our families, our conflicts and clashes, new ideas emerging. Onward into the ocean, into the unknown.

It’s the three of us, as it has been since 2019, when the older teenager spent the summer working in Tokyo instead of traveling as she had the previous dozen summers, hiking around Spain, Italy, and France, surfing in Costa Rica, learning about myths in Ireland, on and on until 2018. Our 2018 trip to Sardinia was our last trip long trip together. The next summer, the three of us met the older teenager in Tokyo before making our way to Hong Kong for protests, Cambodia for ruins, and Vietnam for redemption.

2020 was a lost travel summer, yet we did find our way to Cape Cod for a few days.

And 2021 opened the door California for college tours in Los Angeles and Santa Cruz, before we got back for a summer trip to Bosnia and Croatia.

These memories and lessons are part of our trips, adding to the feelings along the road. Lots of moods, ups and downs. Every traveler has their experiences. They all come with us, all the good and bad, the residue of past days and trips, events of the night before, bad dreams. 

We sit in the back of the boat, just outside, watching the sun come up, chatting away, reading, exploring the boat, and pulling out our respective novels.  Each of us, readers on the road, the teenager with One Hundred Years of Solitude, baby c with Joseph Roth's ever twisting tales of German darkness, and yours truly with Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, edited by Adorno, with notes from Schoenberg, and his meditation on nihilism and ambition.

I’m not sure I like it, says the little one.

Just tell me when they talk about the bananas, I reply.

Its mostly about pedophilia and now necrophilia, they say.

See, I told you he was riffing on Faulkner; Macondo is really Marquez’ fabled country, like Faulkner’s “Yoknapatawpha County.”

Pay attention when he gets to the bananas part, dueling narratives, between diachronic and mythic time, global capitalism and indigenous knowledge, people’s history and official history, the news as violence.

In between pages, we watch the islands passing from Rafina to Tinos, island after island, past the bluest waters, cliffs, whirling curves, ancient churches, on and on.

Arriving by noon, its hot. We find our rental car.  Watch out for the winds they tell us. And we make our way around the island, tiny, twisting roads, along cliffs, about to fall off, tumbling to the sea.

Till we met Jessica, our old Brooklyn friend, in Pirgos.

Jessica is an artist here.

A few years prior, she met a cute boy from town, a gorgeous Greek artist, whose family have been sculptures for generations.

And decided to stay.

She shows us the market, introducing us to the grocers. I know everyone here, she says. And we go out for lunch in the town, at a small restaurant on the water, enjoying the small sardines and anchovies, Greek salad, and beer, sharing the remains with the cats who come to say hi.  The first of many, interested in chatting, purring, possibly procuring a bone, tons of food and friendship here to enjoy.

Our room is a shack on the beach just down from Panormos, water up to the back door, down from a deserted beach, below an old church.  Everything feels empty, abandoned.  An elder warns us about parking in the sand. And disappears.  We feel the fall breeze, the summer hot air, mixing. Jump in and swim.  More cats join us for our dinner.  This one’s got to be a Lucy, says Caroline greeting a black older cat, who befriends us. Birds greet us. Another tabby cat comes say hello. We dub her Megan. They are well fed, ready for friendship, crawling into our laps. The town has tons of cats. Our two are like gods, regal, from other worlds, sitting with us, making themselves comfortable. They don’t seem to be starving. They snuggle up and make themselves home. A small, deserted cove to the left of us, with a few olive trees, and a deserted tiki bar to the left. Water to the right. We can jump right in from the house, built into the rock cliff.

We read and watch the sun go down, with a beer. 

 It’s a bit like a cave inside.  No wifi, only a sporadic signal.  So we watch the Big Lebowski, on a DVD I borrowed from the collection at the Freie Universitat.  The dude abides. Ha.  Still makes us all laugh.  That rug really ties the room together. 

 The screams of the banshees from outside echo through my wind, reverberating on the water, echoing on the waves, the cave to the right, which feels like it will pull us in.  We all descend into bed, early, holding on, as sleep grasps for a long deep sleep.

Waves breaking outside our windows, we wake early, ready for day two.

And slowly fall into a pattern. Every day we wake from wild dreams, greeting our new friends, our two scraggly majestic cats who forage, eat snakes, rats in the hills, and snuggle with us, visit us when we swim, say hello when we return from dinner or exploring.

Waking and swimming and reading and reading and writing to start the day.

Our friend Jessica walked us from Pirgos through Panormos, her adopted home town, where she paints all day, takes care of her cats, now eight, and dreams about Akira Kurasawa films.  The little one and Jessica paint while Caroline and I drive through curvy dirt roads to Kyra Xenis, the ancient Mynecian Temple, from 800 BC, now an ancient church.  There are a lot of things to contemplate looking at a stone path to a temple with a history of pagan worship, pilgrims dating back Millennia.

Back home, Lucy and Meagan greet us, ever regal, looking out in the distance, joining us at water’s edge, saying hello, strong from foraging snakes and rats, powerful and kind, long black tail, compared with Jessica’s calico cats, babies.

Dinner on the pier at Pirgos, fish of the day, calamari, boats in the distance.

Only a few people out.

Season’s over.

Water is still lovely, green blue.

All week we hear about the winds that are coming.

One third of the year, winds howl.

The winds whirl all night, shaking our hut. Michael Jordan and I talked about basketball and black lives matter in my dreams. Lucy followed me to the beach to body surf. Snuggled after the swim. Waves rolled to the shore.

Not Thursday, blue skies.

Just a quiet warmth in the sky.

We walk up to the Panormos Cultural Center and Tinos Museum, where Labrini, our amiable tour guide, shows us the tiny museum’s holdings, many by our host Leonidas Chalepas’ uncle Yannoulis Chalepas.  His works build on themes of Greek culture and history, and the movements of his day. He lived from 1851-1938, struggling with depression, forging a body of work about young women, workers, everyday life, sculptures with the eternally white Tinian marble.

Leonedas directs an art school up the street, where students study for three years, free tuition, free meals.  All they need to pay for is their rooms. Imagine building on the long history of Greek Art, I say to Jessica, who is hosting us. We hatch a plan for a road trip around the island on Friday to the beach and the town of Hora.  Cats greet us at the café. Calico cats everywhere.  They all seem to have the same mama. There is something powerful to them, like gods.  Our little one Spider left us after arriving in Berlin. Eisla left earlier in the year.  And today, they seem to remind us its ok. These magic cats are here to be our friends.

Leaving the cafe, we carry one to the school to learn more about the students and their influences, the anxiety of influence we all feel.  The history of art, they engage.

What’s that, I ask.

A bad Venus, says Leonidas.

I think about Michelangelo seeing a Laocoön out of a piece of rock.

They all imagine what could be, what they could all, drawing and sculpting all day long, chiseling away as Yannoulis did.  He lost the use of his right hand he worked so hard.

It takes the students a month to complete one sculpture, if they are experts.  Sometimes they work together and even then it takes longer.

Up the mountain we drive, to watch the sunset, looking out over the entire island.

Back at our shack on the water, the winds whirl across the water. Dreams grasp.  Cats meow. More dreams about home, black lives matters protests, screams in the streets, politics, chaos, so much chaos. Waves up the house. Waves greeting us, white water and blue.

And Lucy greets Caroline after our trip to the beach.

We watch the moon in the water, swim, listen to the winds how all night, waves crashing outside our door, screaming, banshees wailing, calling us, always calling.

Wake with Lucy’s greetings.  She’s been out foraging.  We give her fishbones and sardines for lunch, chat away. Lucy accompanies us to the desolate beach for a swim, perfect skipping stones along the way.

The water lulls, perfect body surfing waves to play in, crisp green blue waters.

And out to the old town port for lunch, more grilled sardines and beer.  The owner brings us ouzo.  High as a kite, we careen across the hills, swirling in and out, past ruins, about to fall off cliffs on the way to the desolate Kolumbithra Beach, a peaceful, deserted cove, deserted houses about in the distance.

Crisp water, we swim, feeling warm, and comforted like a delicious short story.  It all feels like that, the teenager, Caroline and I, Lucy and Marcy, greeting us, swimming, crisp beer and poems dancing in my mind.

Breaths in between the waves, the skipping stones, darting across the blue water.

Thinking of Yannoulis who worked until he was sick in Athens, losing feeling in his land, losing him mind, before he came back to Panormous, living with his mother, regaining his footing, his life, feeling alive in his head, sculpting till his dying breath.

Thinking about brothers and mothers and family, swimming, comparing notes on the road, memories, dream, reflections. I ordered a suicide sandwich from Amazon but decided not to eat it; wasn’t sure if LAK ate hers. Huh. Oh yea, a dream.

Each day, more delicious dreams about where we come from, stories of Greece, abundant and austere, revolutions and protests, debt and possibilities, pensions rising and crumbling, the Germans moving in to bankroll their debt. 

Jessica says they can be pleased with themselves, the founding fathers of democracy, built on minority rules, who can vote, who can’t.  The polis excludes and invites. We are drawn to the agora.

Athens calls, the National Museum, the Pantheon, Hephaestus’ Temple, the agora. 

We will be there tomorrow.

Today, the beach and our cove, Lucy and the waves, pulling, ebbing, ever inviting, hoping, intriguing, our rental ever on tumbling off the ride of the road.

Thinking about Berlin and our three months away.

And our adventures with poetry and stoicism, philosophy and consciousness, and ways of thinking of ideas and debates, ever evolving and crumbling, splitting, and shaping.  Away from the crazy USA where we have no gun laws, killed wiped out in schools.

Back to Greece where so much began, democracy in tatters, with debt and austerity, trying to stay in the EU, trying to hold on, Poland and Hungry gone rogue, Germany holding it together with France. More trips ahead and behind, not sure where its going. Possibly Bratislava for the holidays, not sure. So much to see out there. So many heroes along the road.

Bear and I talk about Thomas and Theresa and the unbearable lightness of the road, ways of engaging with history, creating their own history of literature, reading One Hundred Years of Solitude, the Macondo, ever riffing on Faulkner’s mythic country, dreaming of home and the library, one novel after another, faves Unbearable Lightness, Norwegian Wood, the Stranger, Orlando, and, of course, the Hobbit, all of us on an adventures.  Ours began in the library, every day after school, for years. Then the Community Bookstore, one novel after another, on and on. Friends joining and disappearing, such is the pace of it all.

Each night, we sleep, three of us in the big beg, in the cave, holding on, hoping not to tumble inside the cave, lost forever.

After exploring one final beach, we settle in for a quiet night; electric outrage changes plans. We always lost electricity in Ireland, says Caroline, reflecting on it all. Up to the church we walk, to find an electric switch.  More and more cats here to accompany us. Powers back. Caroline has no interest in saying goodbye to Lucy, our intrepid host in Tinos.

Our train departs the next day at noon.

I swim and we head on out.

Hurry up and wait.

Such are the rhythms of travel.

Our 1230 ferry to Athens pushed up to 4 pm. So we wonder through the port town, enjoying a lazy afternoon quiet afternoon. I stumble into a church, apparently the church, people crawling up on hands and knees, to the Church of the Virgin Mary, full of silver icons and incense. And back through towns, through the junk shops. Could have been Mexico or Istanbul, stumbled into this quiet coffee shop to pass the afternoon, before our afternoon ferry to Athens.