August 23, 2007

• Crete, Milos, the Surface of the Moon

  Herete! Kali Mara! That’s “Hello!” and “Good Day!” in Greek! Crete happened. Was incredible. Incredible! Ate an octopus and felt its suction cups clinging to the inside of my tummy. Communed with Zeus in his birth cave, where a goat nursed him to boyhood. Splashed a two cent piece into a cave pool and asked for Zeus to bless our our upcoming transitions. Went to museums. Hiked to ruins. Hiked to more ruins. Oh look: RUINS!!!! Ruins, ruins everywhere. You can’t do a thing without RUINS! Minoan ruins, Mycinean ruins, Dorian ruins, Ruins ruins. It is AMAZING and the ones high, high up have crazy mad GOATS crawling all over them. Baa! Baa! Greek goats “baa” higher, like a fretting little girl. Scottish goats “baa” like they are dry heaving. Baa! Baaa!!!! So many museums: Historical museums, MILLIONS of archeological museums, and an absolutly lovely one dedicated to traditional Cretian life.

  The ferry to the isle of Milos was smoky. Smoking, smoking everywhere. Hack hack. Came out smelling like soot and filthy lungs. Gross. But the food was great! When’s the last time you had good food en route to a place? NEVER! Except for on the Milos ferry. Mmmmm…Mousaka! Lamby lambs are delicious minced up and smothered in eggplants. EAT THEM NOW!

  Milos is hot hot hot. Venus de Milos was stolen by some greedy French people here and given to Louis the 18 as a pressie, which is why I met the purty lassie at the Louvre in Paris. But this is where she came from, found in a cave by a farmer looking for his well. Insane!!! We hiked to the spot it was found in. We hiked to an ancient Roman theatre and the FEELING there, the insane FEELING of ovation, of dignity, of art as something more than a frivolous endevor – a feeling of art, words and performance as intrinsic, a part of us, inside us, as necissary as breath, as old as stone. We crawled through ancient catacombs; the second oldest known in this world.

  We swam, we swam, we swam. Swimming with entangelments of the sea. Swimming without touching the bottom. Swimming without scraping a sea urchin, without a slippery something twisting round your leg, making you squeal, giddily panicked, “what was that?!?” We swam in caves, we swam in gorges. We swim so much – at the end of hikes, in the middle of hikes, in the morning, in the night, in dreams – that when I am still, I still feel white capped waves battering me over and over and over. I sway. Swish swish. I’m a fish.

  Today we walked across a space where a volcano’s lava congealed and stopped in blurbs and bubbles to form the surface of the moon. It was peaked and hollowed, crazed and impossible. The wind whipped our bodies, making the impossible whiteness of the sun bearable. Grains of sand, of sulfer, of sea stung our faces. Waves howled below. Ravages of a ship wreck lay broken, a left warning twisted round bursting rocks.

  Tomorrow we board the ferry for Athens. Museums. Acropolis. Mainland. Home is soon. And when I think of it, of home, I don’t think of Glasgow. I think of home home. Of moms and brothers and Cooks Dairy Farm. Of best friend Brian. Of real home.

  People like to ask, “where are you from?” It’s a weird question to answer. We live in Glasgow. Moved from Chicago. Grew up in Michigan. What do you say? “The states, America.” They nod. They smile. “What are you doing here?!?” This place sees Italians, Spanish tourists, families on their holidays. The resorts are full of pink, badly behaved English. Vroom vroom they dart around on motorbikes and 4-wheelers. They are drunk, singing football songs, ready to get warm, get wasted, and get laid. Yikes! Stay away from them! Head for the lost places, the hiking places, the places to eat local cheese and buy wine on the side of the road from the old woman who made it in her garden. Away, away.

  The sun has eaten at my brain. All I feel is waves. And this is how I write with the ocean in my ears. This is how I think and spell and am.

  Love to you all. And love to Greece.

  XO,
  Truly

  • 10:04 am
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