Monday, December 04, 2006

In Which I Try my Hand At Veterinary Medicine


These are my cats. Here at the top, basking in the sun, is Chloe. She's fourteen. If our house were a royal palace, she would be Queen Elizabeth. Below, grey and a bit rotund, is Laptop, who, as soon as he was named, decided he didn't really like people's laps very much. If this house were a royal palace, he would be Prince Philip; very much royalty, but not the sovereign with his face on all the coins. (Can you tell that I recently saw The Queen, with Helen Mirren? Thus all the British royalty references. But really, my cats are so much more lovable than most of the people in that film. Still, you ought to see it if you haven't.)


And here, at the bottom, is Calypso. You've probably heard about her already. She may be the only one in this household with an EU passport, but she is definitely the Camilla of the household. In other words, it may take another few decades before she is finally accepted into the fold. The trio have moved from constant outright hostility to only occasional outright hostility with some periods in which the King and Queen just ignore the presence of the Greek peasant. However, thanks to my sister, she does have a pillowcase with her picture on it, which is pictured. Perhaps for Christmas Hayley will get her another pillowcase, with this picture of Calypso and her pillowcase both on that pillowcase, and I'm sure Calypso will appreciate it thoroughly.
But pillowcases and cat hostility are not why I'm writing this. Well, actually, cat hostility is why I am writing this, but it's not cat vs. cat hostility, it's cat vs. human hostility that I had in mind.
Poor Chloe was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year, and she's been on a daily medicine regimen ever since. Her health has been remarkably good thus far (knock on wood), but every day she needs 1 mL of medicine to be pushed down her throat with a plastic syringe. She likes this about as much as you might expect, which is not very much. Unfortunately, she's also damn smart, and she has learned that whenever I approach her in the early evening with one hand behind my back, it means that she is due for a dose of medicine. The moment I open the bottle of mysterious tonic, whatever it is, she runs. Sometimes I won't even see her run, I'll just turn to where she was sleeping peacefully five seconds before, and she will have disappeared completely. When she finally comes out of hiding (which doesn't take very long, as she hates to miss social interaction) I have to pounce on her from behind, hold her against me, and stick the little syringe into her mouth. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. When it doesn't, a spray of brown medicine goes everywhere. There are brown spots of medicine all over our couch cover, all over the bedspread in my parents' room, sometimes on the floor, and even on the ceiling. Once, the stuff even ended up in my mouth, and I suspect Chloe somehow engineered that specifically for revenge.
As if this weren't enough, Laptop was recently diagnosed with asthma. Rumor has it he may actually get an inhaler one of these days, which sounds like tons of fun for everyone involved, but for the moment, he's just got some temporary pills. This is easier for the humans of the family, because Laptop is something of a glutton. If you hide the pills in some cheese, he'll gobble it right down. Sometimes. There have been occasions when he gobbled down his cheese and secretly spit the pill onto the floor. If you've never picked up a pill covered in cat spit and tried to turn it into something appetizing, well, I envy you. Luckily, that cat definiion of "appetizing" is different than the human one. Have you seen what canned cat food looks like?
I also realized, after several doses of medicine in feta, that he was coming to be suspicious of feta. I switched to gouda, then to mozzarella, muenster, cheddar, and now to manouri (which I finally found at the market!). That cat is going to be quite the cheese connoisseur by the time he is finished with his medication.
Calypso is the only feline member of the household who is not on medication, but that's OK, because she causes trouble by generally becoming hysterical for no reason on a regular basis. Sometimes she gets very upset when people try to walk past her in the hallway, and she makes a squeaking noise and tries to bat at them. Sometimes she gets upset when she sees another cat, and she lashes out at the people nearby. Once, she got freaked out by the loud conversation I was having, and lashed out angrily at the briefcase leaning in the hallway. Overall, the entire apartment is frequently full of squeaking and yowling and crying and meowing. There is also the occasional bout of hissing, spitting, and general destruction. It's very much like what happens when the seventh graders in my more difficult class have a substitute.

Sunday, November 26, 2006

In Which I Wonder At Marching Bobble-Heads


After almost four months in the United States, I've readjusted in many ways. I no longer use the Greek words for 'Excuse Me' and 'Thank You', I expect the stores to be open on Sundays, I no longer think 27/11 is a date in a strange new month, and my red wine consumption has rapidly fallen. This saddens me constantly, but I console myself with Indian food, the Sunday New York Times Crossword Puzzle, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
However, American holidays are still a novelty. Perhaps a better way to say that is this: holidays are still a novelty, no matter what their nationality. When you live abroad, you become used to regarding holidays with a mixture of curiosity and anthropological objectivity. When it's not your holiday, you don't have any of the nostalgic excitement for it that you associate with the holidays you have celebrated since childhood. Instead, you just spend a lot of time staring wide-eyed and wondering and trying to figure out why everyone is dressed up today. (Or, in Greece, you wonder why all of the stores are closed and discover that it is the day of a saint that you have never heard of.)
So now that I'm back in the States, I don't think I've quite stopped looking at holidays as objects of curiosity, even when they are as familiar as my front door. Anything is a novelty when you've been away long enough, and a normal Thanksgiving is something I haven't had in a while. Last year I was in Greece. Two years ago I spent countless horrid hours fighting through delays in Des Moines and O'Hare due to a snowstorm and arrived home just in time for the turkey, completely exhuasted. Three years ago I had a minor passport problem at London Stansted airport and ended up taking a very long unexpected overnight train ride to Scotland, arriving in Edinburgh completely exhausted and just in time to spend Thanksgiving touring castles and kilt factories.
As holidays go, I generally think Thanksgiving is a good one. I know that if you look back into history, you will not find that the story of the first Thanksgiving is as happy as many Americans would like to believe. I know that Europeans did terrible things to the Native Americans. I know that the traditional "First Thanksgiving" story has some real historical inaccuracies in it. However, I also think that for many Americans, Thanksgiving is only vaguely associated with pilgrims, and very much associated with food. That's the way holidays work, isn't it? Christmas is supposedly about the birth of Jesus, but most people are much more concerned with trimming their trees and exchanging presents than they are with the religious aspect. Easter is also supposedly Christian, but the eggs are Pagan in origin, and I haven't the slightest idea where the bunny came from. And somewhere along the line Halloween stopped being an night where you stayed in and hid from evil spirits, and started being a night when little kids wandered the streets and ate themselves sick.
This year, I tried to look at Thanksgiving as a foreigner might. Some aspects of the celebration can be universally appreciated, I think; people from all nations can appreciate good food and spending a day with family and friends.
On the other hand, there's the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Now, for the first nineteen or twenty years of my life, I attended the parade every year, without fail. I would wake up at dawn, head down to Central Park West in the wee hours of the morning, and spend five or so hours in my pink snowsuit, or my ski pants, or my puffy coat, drinking hot chocolate and watching inflatable cartoon characters and high school baton twirlers who look like their legs are going to freeze off. I think I might have given up at the age of fourteen or fifteen if it weren't for those baton twirlers. It can be pretty cold out there, but if they could smile with bare arms poking out of their sparkly bathing suits, I could survive in my parka.
For those years, the parade was just a normal part of Thanksgiving, like cranberry sauce and lasagna. (Yes, my grandmother makes lasagna on Thanksgiving. We eat it after the mozzarella and pepper and before the turkey and stuffing. That might sound odd to someone who does not have Italian heritage, but I've talked to people of Scandinavian descent, and trust me, they have some much stranger holiday foods.) In over twenty years, I've never slept in on a Thanksgiving. I always either rose at the crack of dawn for the parade, or because I was in the middle of a transportation nightmare. Last year, in Greece, I think I awoke at 7am. It was the latest I'd slept in a lifetime of Thanksgivings.

This year, I had a traditional Thanksgiving; I woke up at 5, walked my neighbor's dog, and went to the parade, in the rain. I was not overly enthused by the prospect, but I was due to meet a large number of good friends there, and I succumbed to peer pressure. Some people succumb to peer pressure and wear stupid clothes, some end up hooked on nictotine, and some end up very very wet at an early hour on Central Park West.

After four years, the parade seemed both nostalgic and new. I remembered Thanksgivings of my childhood, watching the high school marching bands back when they looked so old and glamorous. I thought of seeing the giant Garfield when he looked not just big, but larger than most houses. I recalled the excitement of seeing Santa Clause and feeling that Christmas was in the air.

I also looked at Bobble-headed pilgrims and thought, wow, what a completely bizarre way to honor one's ancestors. Is there any other nation that honors their founders by having normal sized people walk around with giant inflated ancestor faces? Is there any other nation that celebrates their heritage by parading very wet pop stars down the street on giant rolling castles and pirate ships? We are really weird, aren't we?

I recently read the book Lies My Teacher Told Me, which is essentially an indictment of the way American history is taught in our schools. I agreed with many of the criticisms made by the author, but when he criticized Thanksgiving for minimizing down the cruelty of Europeans toward Native Americans, I had mixed feelings. We absolutely do need to a do a better job of recognizing the horrors in our own past, but for me Thanksgiving has little to do with pilgrims, and much to do with my own personal traditions. If we attack Thanksgiving for being a celebration of cruelty, we should also attack every religious holiday on the calendar for doing something similar. I particularly like Thanksgiving because it does (or can) cross religious and cultural borders, that it can belong to everyone, and because appreciating the things you have is usually a good thing. If you look back to the Native Americans, it's a holiday that is probably rooted in the absolute worst of American traditions, but these days I think it can embody the best of American traditions. After all, it was really started by Abraham Lincoln as a celebration of unity after the Civil War.

And maybe the pilgrims had bobble heads for a metaphorical reason. Those pilgrims and their inflated egos! They thought they were better than everyone! Oh, those big-headed ancestors of mine! Thank goodness I'm more culturally aware than they were!

(I'm trying, anyway.)

Monday, November 20, 2006

In Which A Little Red Dress Becomes a Big Problem

I really hate shopping. I know I have mentioned this before. I like having new clothes, but the actual shopping process always leaves me feeling irritable. Part of the problem is that I am short. Jeans and skirts that are not in petite sizes usually have about four inches of fabric hanging off the bottom of my feet, which require wide shoes. Sleeves hang over my hands, and straps are always two inches too long. Finidng something that looks good usually requires me to spend lots of time trying on things that look awful, and that does not generally make me cheerful.
So, though I've known for months that I'm going to a wedding in December, I completely avoided worrying about a dress, hoping that perhaps something would magically appear in my closet, or perhaps a personal-shopper-fairy-godmother would come out of a pumpkin and create one out of thin air, and I would avoid the process of trying things on and making decisions.
Finally, however, I realized I had to get it over with, and I went to Macy's and tried on three dresses. At this point, A Miracle Occurred. Three dresses fit me, and looked pretty nice. Not one, three. I actually left the store feeling good, and the whole process didn't take more than an hour. I decided I wanted the red halter dress, but I thought I would look for it online at a cheaper price before I went ahead and purchased it.
And then my sister, home for Thanksgiving, entered the equation. My sister loves to shop. She can spend hours agonizing over small purchasing decisions. When I explained that I was planning to buy a dress, she insisted that we depart on a long shopping journey, spanning two and a half miles of Upper West Side storefronts and countless images of garments on the internet.
"I think I'm going to buy the dress at Macy's," I told her repeatedly.
"No!" She exclaimed every time. "Look at this one, with the nice flowery pattern on the skirt, and it comes in petite sizes..."
"I think I'm going to buy the dress at Macy's," I repeated.
"Halter tops have been done," she told me. "Look at that one!"
"I'm going to buy the dress at Macy's." I announced. "But oh, all right, I'll try it on."
This was my mistake.
We were at the Banana Republic, and the dress was a little red strapless dress, suitable for weddings and other formal occasions. Because they didn't have my size, I chose the next size down and began looking for a fitting room. After about five minutes of poking my head into various corners, I found one, all the way across the store, by the men's sweaters. I didn't see any store employees about, so I just chose a room and tried on the dress.
It was one of those dresses that's tight in all the wrong places, and loose in the wrong places, and I did not trust it to stay up. Some dresses fit, and some dresses are too big, or too small, and some just don't fit. They were formed for someone else's body. This was one fo those dresses. Plus, it would leave an awful lot of myself exposed to the Iowan December, and trust me, that's a bad idea.
I stepped out of the dressing room and displayed the awkward dress to my sister, who was satisfied. She left, and I went back inside to put my clothes on once again.
Unfortunately, this did not go as planned. I unzipped the dress as far as my waist, and then it stopped. I mean, I kept pulling, but the zipper was not going anywhere. I yanked. I tugged, I begged, I cursed, and I tried again. It was stuck solid.
I tried pulling up, and that worked. I could zip myself into the dress again, but once the zipper hit my waist, it stopped working. Something was stuck, or broken, or otherwise malfunctioning, and I hadn't a clue what the problem was. I tried wriggling the dress over my head, but it wouldn't fit. It wouldn't slide down over my hips, either. The feminine figure has some serious disadvantages.
"Hayley?' I asked, hoping my sister would come to my aid. "Hayley!" She didn't answer. I continued to tug the dress downwards. It wouldn't budge. The zipper had managed to become stuck at a very inconvenient spot.
"Hayey!" I howled again, and again. "Hayley!" Eventually I gave up trying to be discreet and let out a long wail of "Haaaaaaaaaayyyylllllleyyyyyyy!" that would have made Marlon Brando proud. There was no answer.
I slipped my t-shirt back over my head and opened the dressing room door. I found myself face to face with a Banana Republic Employee, who was regarding me with a bemused expression.
"Who's Hayley?" he asked.
"My sister," I answered.
"Oh!" he said brightly, as though this explained why a young woman in a t-shirt, half a cocktail dress and bright blue socks would be howling like a cat locked in a bedroom. He turned and walked out into the store.
"Hayley!" I heard him yell. "Hayley!" There was no answer.
"Sorry," he shrugged.
"No problem." I went back into my dressing room cell and continued to pull on the dress. What would happen if I tore it? I wondered. Would they charge me for it? Would I have to pay one hundred and sixty-eight dollars plus tax to get out of this thing? It was an unsettling thought.
I was approaching frenzy mode when I heard on a knock on my dressing room door.
"Emily!" my sister exclaimed. "What the hell is going on in there? I've been waiting, and waiting, and I kept thinking, well, I'm not going back in there-"
I yanked her inside the dressing room cell.
"I'm not going back in there," she continued. "Because I realized that something. Actually, this is the Men's Dressing Room. But then you didn't come out."
"I'm stuck." I showed her the zipper. "This is the what?"
"Well, it didn't have a sign," she said as she tugged on my zipper. "But it is in the Men's section. The women's dressing room is on the other side. What is wrong with this thing?"
We spent several more minutes yanking and cursing, but that little metal thing just would not move. It didn't appear to have anything wrong with it, it just would not yield to any external pressure whatsoever. It was definitely the Fidel Castro of zippers.
"Should we ask someone for help?" I wondered. I was thinking of a store clerk. I wondered if I should dare to venture past my cell, and just hope there were no men in their boxers hanging around.
My sister decided to try a different tactic. "I'm calling Mummy," she announced.
"OK, " I sighed.
My mother was informed of the situation via cell phone, despite the fact that she and my father were off somewhere in the wilds of Connecticut, driving home from a weekend trip. I don't know exactly what my sister expected her to do, exactly, but I guess calling your parents is just one of those things you do sometimes when you're in a tight spot. I called home when I realized I was going to end up in Romania unexpectedly, and Hayley called home when she realized her sister was caught in a strapless dress unexpectedly. Why I'm always the trapped one is another question.
My mother informed my sister that she should retrieve a store employee. The store employee, a tall young woman with green shoes, spent the requisite few minutes tugging before she announced "Shit. I'm going to get the manager." At that point I decided it might be prudent to put my pants on under the dress, just in case it was removed publicly.
Luckily, the store manager declared that all necessary measures should be used to remove the dress, including the breaking of zippers and ripping of seams. A pair of scissors were retrieved, seams were chopped open, and I was finally emancipated. I celebrated my freedom by marching out onto Broadway and announcing that I was definitely, definitely going to buy the dress from Macy's.
"No!" My sister exclaimed. Then she paused. "You know Emily," she remarked. "That's exactly the kind of thing that would happen to you. I mean, I know it wasn't your fault, but it is exactly the kind of thing that would happen to you."
I can't really deny this. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to buy the goddamn dress from Macy's.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

In Which I Keep Writing

I've been gone for a long time now, partly because every time I put my fingers on the keyboard, I had to resist the urge to write mournful statements about how much I miss traveling, and I thought that might get boring after a while.
But I also miss writing. And, though I still have mixed feelings about the United States, I have a lot to say about it. New York is a place that gives you a lot to say.
So, without further adieu, I'll tell you some things about the past few months, and we can consider ourselves caught up, and then go from there.
Thing #1: I now work as a tutor to 7th graders at a public school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Many people think that New York City Public schools are places to be avoided, but I am having fun. And honestly, seventh graders are very much like seventh graders, regardless of economic status or nationality, or whether they call themselves seventh graders, or gymnasium students. Many people also think that seventh graders are to be avoided, probably because they remember being in seventh grade, and how horrible it was. But I like seventh graders so much more now that I'm not one of them.
Thing #2: There was actually good news in American politics last week. Can you believe it? Good news! I don't know if I believe it. I think I might be dreaming. Any minute now a dwarf is going to walk by in a tutu and a dolphin is going to speak Greek to me, and then I am going to wake up...
Thing #3: My blog needs a new name. It needs some cool banner at the top, and it needs some actual writing about events that have taken place in recent memory. I'm working on all of these things, but if anyone has suggestions about the more technological items on this list, that would be great. I haven't the slightest idea how to put in a masthead, and when I look at the html, it makes me feel vaguely seasick.

Monday, September 25, 2006

In Which Raw Fish Is Safer Than Spinach

I've been missing Greece for a number of reasons lately, as one might expect. However, there is also one way in which I have been missing Greece that one might not expect; I'm pretty sure the spinach in Greece is not contaminated.
You've probably read about the whole spinach E.coli scare which has taken hold of the U.S. lately. (I certainly hope you have if you are currently in the U.S.) It seems that all fresh spinach carries the risk of contamination, and nobody dares eat the stuff until it gets sorted out. This has been going on for about a week now, and I have to say, I'm very upset about it.
I am a dedicated spinach eater. Baby spinach salad, Saag Paneer, Spanakopita, spinach couscous; all are important parts of my diet. In fact, my sister has been known to complain that everything I cook is a variation on spinach and feta cheese (this was before I went to Greece, so you can imagine what I'm like now).
Now, way back when mad cow disease was causing Americans to panic, I decided that anyone dumb enough to eat beef was courting disaster, and I shook my head at people too weak-willed to resist a hamburger. This was very easy for me, as I do not eat beef. When bird flu showed up in northern Greece, I eliminated poultry from my diet for a good few weeks before giving into the temptation of a chicken gyro. That seemed reasonable, as cooked meat wasn't supposed to carry the disease anyway. But now I am faced with a much more serious situation; spinach definitely carries a risk, and it's not easy for me to avoid the stuff.
My boyfriend did survive the consumption of a spinach and mushroom pizza the other day, a fact which gives me great hope. Two or three days later, when he still did not appear to have any signs of fatal illness, I decided that if he could do it, I could too. This is the sort of logic that they warn you against when you learn about drug use in middle school.
I ordered eggs florentine for breakfast soon thereafter, and was turned down by the waiter, who explained that they were no longer serving spinach due to the risk. I became indignant; who were these restaurant owners, to deny me my contaminated vegetable matter? The nerve of some people!
It was last Friday night, after five spinachless days, when I reached the point of true desperation. My boyfriend and I were looking for a place to eat dinner before going to a birthday party, and we were wandering aimlessly through the East Village, reading menus.* Finally, we settled on a Japanese restaurant. The only problem, was, I didn't know what to order.
I am not a picky eater, and I rarely find myself at a loss while looking at menus, even in unusual restauarants. In fact, I am particularly good at finding foods to eat in unusual restaurants. I know what Indian foods I like, what Ethiopian dishes are good, where to get good Caribbean food, and so forth. If a week goes by and I have not eaten food from at least three continents, I start to get bored. However, I somehow never became very well acquainted with Japanese food, and looking at all those sushi dishes was all Greek to me, by which I mean I could get a general sense of what the menu was getting at, but I couldn't be entirely sure that a highly unconventional bit of fish anatomy wasn't going to show up on my plate anyway.
"What should I order?" I asked Joe. Being employed by a Japanese company, he regularly eats Japanese food of all varieties. He suggested the bento box, a sampling of all different foods, several of which I had never heard of. However, as he had suggested it, and he is generally more particular than I am, I decided to try it.
The bento box arrived several minutes later, filled with dumplings, tempura, teriyaki, seaweed, rice, and some suspiciously rare-looking pieces of fish. Joe explained that it was sashimi, raw pieces of fish that you are supposed to eat with wasabi and soy sauce. He failed to explain why he is able to calmly discuss the consumption of seafood that is practically still wriggling when the idea of perfectly grilled octopus sends him into a panic. But that's another matter.
The point is, I ate raw fish. I picked it up with my chopsticks, dabbed it with wasabi, dipped it in soy sauce, and ate it. It tasted, well, it tasted like fish, but it tasted raw. Honestly, since I've tried tuna that's really really rare in the first place, it wasn't such a shock. I don't think there's anything about the color or consistency of raw fish that particularly freaks me out, it's just the knowledge that food poisoning could occur. However, when spinach suddenly carries a serious risk, I think my sense of what is or is not good for one just goes out the window.

*I had suggested falafel and schwarma, but that just led to a long and heated discussion about the difference between the difference between schawarma and gyros, and why the gyros at the steet fairs on broadway are not the same as the gyros in Greece, even if they do have posters with pictures of the Parthenon on them.

Monday, September 11, 2006

In Which My Subconscious Surprises Me

Three days ago, I returned from a trip to Grinnell, where Brad and I gave a presentation about our year in Greece. It was great to be back in Grinnell, and also a little bit odd. I felt a little bit like a student, a little bit like a guest, and a little bit like a ghost. I loved talking about Greece and hearing from classmates who traveled through Africa and Asia in the past year. It enjoyed talking with professors and a Greek Grinnellian or two. However, I did find it a bit weird to walk through campus and not see very many people I know. Worse, I kept seeing people that I know that I know, but don't know how I know, and wondering if I should go up to them and say hello. Is it worse to say hello to someone who has no idea who you are, or to say hello to someone who does know who you are and then have to explain that you don't know who they are? I haven't come up with a solution yet.
However, all of this led to a really interesting dream last night. Here's how it went. I was back in Iowa, but nobody could see me. I was invisible, some sort of ghost of Grinnellians Past. I decided to watch a performance in the theatre department, and it turned out to be a Greek tragedy. Since I was invisible, I had no qualms about walking up to the stage and watching the performance very closely, particularly during the exciting parts. (Strangely enough, there was a lot of fighting in this particular tragedy, even though onstage fighting never actually happens in ancient Greek theatre. My subconscious must be uninformed about classical theatre.)
During a particularly heated fight sequence, one character turned to the other and announced, in perfect modern Greek "I went to the supermarket! Your supermarket!" Then he attacked the other character with a sword.
After that, I went to the dining hall, which had been converted into a Greek taverna, but they wouldn't let me leave until I opened my purse and showed them that I had my cat with me, and that she had all of her official European union cat paperwork. That's right, in the dream, I carried Calypso in my purse. What's more, when asked to find her, I actually had to look around for a little while and fish through some papers and keys and things. I even had to dig her out from under my cell phone. I woke up and she was sleeping right next to my face.
I don't know what Freud would say about this, but going to the supermarket has never made me angry enough to kill someone in a toga.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

In Which I Wonder (Like The Cast of Rent) How Do You Measure A Year

I know I've been rather absent from the blog world lately, but I haven't disappeared, really, it's just been a messy few weeks. However, I will continue to write, even though I suppose I can't really call myself Emily Z in Greece anymore. I'm thinking I ought to come up with a new name. Actually, I have been thinking about coming up with a new name ever since I picked the old one in a rush. I figure I ought to be able to come up with something more creative, you know, one of those catchy cute little names that people design for their internet selves. Or should I create a whole new blog? I don't know. I don't think I will, not yet. In any case, I'll be blogging somewhere, about something.
One year ago to the day I was frantically packing my bags and thinking that a whole year sounded like a really long time. Now it's been a whole year and it does seem like a whole year, but I still don't quite believe it. I don't know if I should say that I'm in culture shock, because I'm no longer saying 'Signomi' to strangers on the subway or dipping my fork into communal plates on the table. (This is acceptable in Greece, but when you do it in the US, people glare at you, particularly when they are your sister.)
I don't know the exact definition of culture shock, but I will say this: Greece is on my mind all the time. Images of Thessaloniki pop into my mind at random, like a slide show of all the pictures I never took. Greek sentences automatically form themselves in my brain, incorrect but everpresent, just in case I need them. The bottom of the movie screen seems deserted without Greek subtitles. Real iced coffee, made with real coffee grounds and no frappe mixer, tastes weird as hell. I don't understand why any restaurant would actually stop serving dinner at 9pm, and why on earth anyone would voluntarily consume American cheese. (But you know, I've always been a snob about that, so it's nothing new.) I go about my life in New York, as I always did, but I'm haunted, ever-so-slightly, by the ghost of another place. Sometimes it's sad, sometimes, bittersweet, sometimes funny, sometimes I'm just overwhelmingly glad to be home, and sometimes I'd do anything to get the hell out of here and back on a plane to Thessaloniki.
A few specific observations? They have new ten dollar bills here. I went to the deli across the street one day and pulled out a ten to pay for my sandwich. It was a strange reddish hue and I gave it a look of such confusion that the man behind the counter announced, teasing, "That's play money! You can't pay with that!" It took me a few moments to realize he was kidding, at which point I started to feel like a real idiot and turned the color of the money.
And pomegranates! While I was off in Greece discovering pomegranates and feeling adventurous and exotic, all of America was discovering pomegranates right at home. There aren't many actual pomegranates around, of course, but there is pomegranate tea, pomegranate juice, pomegranate ice cream, baked goods with pomegranate essence, and pomegranate cocktails. I don't know what brought this all about, but I have mixed feelings. I'm delighted to see my new favorite fruit everywhere, but I'm sad to realize that my love for juicy red seeds is no longer a unique phenomenon from abroad, but rather one more person jumping on the bandwagon. I'll have to resign myself to being hip instead of exotic.
So anyway, here I am, 365 days after my initial departure (but only 364 days past my arrival), reminiscing, functioning but still in some state of shock, thinking about home and how glad I am to be here and how much I want to leave. It's easier than I thought it would be, and maybe easier than I wanted it to be. But I'm here, that's all.

Tuesday, August 15, 2006

In Which I Mingle Sweets and Bittersweets

 

We were returning from a family trip to a Thai restaurant in Queens when I saw the cafe that this box came from. I couldn't resist the urge to get out of the car. It seems that baklava in the states comes in much bigger pieces than the Greek stuff, but it's pretty good. There were a variety of other honey soaked pastries available, as well. However, the truly exciting part was hearing Greek spoken ("Οριστε, κυριε", said the woman behind the counter, and the customer said "Ευχαριστω!") and hearing Greek music, if only for the brief moment it took for my baklava to be wrapped. I'm trying not to get nostalgic and depressed. I'm not goin to look at my pictures of the beach for a while, that's for sure- I don't know what that would do to my mental health. But someday I will try to post some of them, and post a more complete recounting of my travels through Europe. Posted by Picasa

Friday, August 11, 2006

There's No Place Like Home

After ten days, I figured I should let you all know that I am alive, I did make it across the Atlantic, and everything's fine. I have not updated because my body is having a little bit of trouble adjusting itself back into American life (I keep falling asleep. I thought it was jet lag, then it turned into a fever, and now it's just a persistent exhaustion, maybe a mourning cry for the afternoon nap.)
Actually, my brain is having a little bit of trouble too. In other words, I sort of don't believe I'm gone and not returning soon, and I really don't believe that I need to figure out what I'm doing next.
But my cat did make it through customs, small carrying case and all, and the customs lady just said "Awwwww!" That's it. No questions about bird flu. No cursory glances to make sure she didn't appear to be carrying some other contagious disease. My cats at home, of course, did not say "awwwwwww." They (well, one of them, Chloe, the Queen Bee cat of the household) hissed a lot, and now Calypso is hissing like crazy at her. It's not that different than dealing with middle schoolers, really.
It's sort of a shock to have people speaking English to me all the time. And the subway is expensive. I will certainly have more observations on my re-Americanization soon, but for now, that's it.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

In Which I'm Awful At Good-Byes

Almost two weeks ago, I boarded a train that I thought would take me to Budapest, and I thought would have beds available. Instead, I ended up curled up on a couchette in an empty train compartment at half past midnight, trying my best to fall asleep with my head on my backpack.
Sometime soon thereafter, another girl boarded the train and asked if she could share my compartment. It was dark and I couldn't see her well, but she seemed to be in her early to mid-twenties, with long dark hair and several enormous bags. She explained that she had spent the previous two and a half years studying in London, and was now returning to her home town in Bulgaria to do something, she wasn't sure what yet. I explained that I was in a similar situation, drifting around for a month before I return home for an uncertain future. We spent almost two hours in the relative dark, waiting for our passports to be stamped and examined by people on both sides of the border, talking about travel, London, and our mutual uncertainty. "I think," she said at one point, "the more you travel around, the less you know where you belong, you know what I mean?"
I know exactly what she meant. Those words have stuck with me for the past few weeks, rolling around in my brain as I traipsed around Europe. Maybe they don't seem terribly profound quoted on my blog, but from a stranger in a dark train in the middle of the night, they take on a sort of eerie quality of truth.
In the past five years, I have lived in a more diverse assortment of places than most people see in twenty. New York, Iowa, London, Greece. I don't think I'll ever get sick of seeing new places, but I am sick of saying goodbye to places I love. I'm not tired of going, but I am tired of leaving. I'm tired of missing places.
But that's too bad, and it's too late; wherever you are, there's always something to miss, and I'm about to find myself with a whole new life to long for and miss.
I can remember a lot of lasts in the past few years- last walks through Manhattan before leaving for a semester in Iowa, last blueberries in Maine before leaving for England, last bus trips down Piccadilly before leaving for the US, my last weekend in college with my last night at the Down Under Pub, my last jog in Riverside Park before leaving for Greece, my last dinner of Peruvian chicken before the plane took off. I look back on all these things, and I come to an inevitable conclusion; the last time you do something is just like all the times before, but way more depressing.
There's something awful about doing something and knowing you won't be doing it again anytime soon. I even remember turning in my last college term paper, a long treatise on James Joyce that had given me a decent number of headaches, waiting for the relaxation that inevitably comes with finishing a large task, and just feeling a strange bittersweet longing for all my late nights with piles of notes in front of the computer screen. I hate that feeling. I hate it so much that I'd almost rather not have the chance to say goodbye.
And so, with two days before lift-off, I'm not going to think about how this might be my last taverna meal, or my last ride on the 58 bus, or my last dip in the Aegean sea. I'm not going to walk down Tsimiski for the last time, or buy my last bottle of retsina, or take one last look at the white tower. Thinking about these things that way makes me feel like an inmate on death row. I'm just going for a walk in the city where I still live. I'm just enjoying myself and seeing my friends here. I'm just taking another flight on Tuesday, that's all.

Saturday, July 29, 2006

In Which I Have One Last Run-In With Bureacracy

I arrived at Thessaloniki's Makedonia Airport yesterday, exhausted and sweaty, and two hours late because Gatwick was a mess. Our flight was immediately herded into something that I will call a line, but only for the lack of a better word. (Oh wait! I found the better word! The better word is mob). We went through passport control, picked up our baggage, and headed off into the distance. It was nice to be back. It is nice to be back.
However, before I headed off into the distance, I decided to stop by the Olympic Airlines desk to ask a question about my cat's travel accomodation. (Yes, although I have not made a formal blog announcement about this, my cat is coming back to the states with me. Was there ever any doubt this would happen eventually? Was there ever a bigger pushover for cats than myself?)
I waited on line for ten minutes, explained my question to the lady behind the desk, and was referred to another window. That window referred me to another window, between puffs of cigarette smoke, and that window referred me back to the first. Well, they tried, anyway, but I protested. "I just need to know," I said "how big the carrier is allowed to be."
The lady looked at me like I was crazy. "You know," she said. "It should be small."
"Small?" I asked.
"Small," she answered. "Just bring a small case."
I walked away, pondering this. Pretty much every other airline in the world appears to have regulations specifying the size, shape, height, width, material, air holes, and writing on a container that holds a live animal. I believe Swiss Air checks that the bottom is waterproof. However, as I have been repeatedly reminded, the Greeks are not Swiss. Olympic says it should be "small." I decided that this lady maybe wasn't very well informed about the issue, and I decided to give Olympic a call. I was put on hold for ten minutes, and when I did get a chance to talk to someone, I got cut off as soon as I said γεια σασ.
I tried again, was put on hold, and was promptly cut off once again. I got on the bus, bought a new phone card, went to a new pay phone, called, and was cut off once again. It was then that I noticed that the Olympic Airlines number is actually 666-666, which makes it the sign of satan, doubled. I tried again later that evening and was told to call back this morning.
I called back this morning. Once again, the woman on the other end sounded baffled. "Size?" she asked. "You know, something...mikro."
Μικρο means 'small' in Greek. I sighed. I mean, personally, I think that the island of Folegandros is small, but I really don't think anyone would be happy if I showed up with it in my hand luggage.
"Like, something that will fit under the seat," she added.
"Are there specific dimensions for what fits under the seat?" I asked.
She paused. "Something mikro," she repeated. "Like, a handbag!"
This made me think of an acting teacher I had in high school, who used to randomly shout "A handbag in Victoria station!" That's a line from The Importance of Being Earnest. I believe one of the characters was abandoned at Victoria Station in a handbag when he was an infant. However, I do not plan to abandon my cat anywhere.
In the end, I thanked the woman, hung up, sighed, and decided I should maybe worry about something else for a change. The thing is, I don't really want to worry about the rather frightening fact that I am going home in four days, so cat carriers are a welcome alternate source of stress.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

There's No Place Like London

Things I had forgotten about Britain:

-The smell of English breakfast in the morning. Eggs and toast and fried tomatoes, oil and salt and butter. It's a bit overwhelming for someone who has accustomed herself to the Greek style of coffee and maybe some bread.

-When you get on the London Underground, there are signs telling you which lines are not in operation that day. They always say things like "We apologise for the inconvenience this may cause, but the Picadilly Line will not be in operation today between Green Park and South Kensington. Hopefully, services will be restored tomorrow. We wish you a pleasant day!" This is in contrast to New York, where you hear a loud fuzzy noise blast into the station, followed by a garbled, belligerent voice on the loudspeaker screeching out something like "ONE TRAIN NOT RUNNING GO TO NINETY SIXTH STREET". At least, I think that is what they are saying when they talk. I don't think anybody knows for sure.

-The sandwiches all have mayonaise on them. I think that deep down, in the depths of my soul, I have never particularly cared for mayonaise, but I tolerated it, because it's pretty easy to ignore. However, I've never liked it, and I never actually voluntarily put it on anything that I prepare, unless I am forced by a recipe. Thus, I am far from pleased when I walk into a sandwich shop to discover that everything has mayo on it. (Actually, I think my boyfriend has brought out the latent mayonaise hatred in me, because he really, really, hates mayonaise, and thus I feel justified in my own dislike for it. This does not mean, however, that I will ever start to like American football.)

-Everything costs more than you could ever possibly imagine that it could cost. The price of a Greek hotel room is enough to buy you a British sandwich. And it'll have mayonaise on it.

-Shakespeare's Globe is honestly my favorite place on earth. I saw A Comedy of Errors today- stood through the whole thing, because that's what the riffraff did in Shakespeare's day, and I am trying to stay on a riffraff budget. But my feet didn't hurt at all, and afterwards I went to the gift shop and purchased a myriad of unneccessary objects with Shakespeare quotes on them. (Example: Eraser with fake spots of blood that reads "Out, Damned Spot!")

-I arrived in Victoria Station at 1:30am, after a harrowing experience with Ryanair. I stepped out into the street, noticed the car was coming at me from the WRONG DIRECTION, yelped, and made a mad dash back to the pavement, bags flying. Now I know which way to look, but I still have to look in the non-British direction as well, just to make sure there's not some foreigner driving on the right. In Britain, the phrase "deer in the headlights" should be changed to "American in the headlights".

-I keep taking pictures of things like Big Ben. Why? I already have a large store of pictures of Big Ben from the last time I was in England. I do not look at them. I do not need more of them. Big Ben, like the Parthenon and the Empire State Building and the Eiffel Tower, has been photographed enough. The whole point of going to London is to see things like Big Ben, instead of just looking at pictures of them. But I still take the damn pictures.

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Important Advice for Life

If the train to Budapest leaves Thessaloniki at midnight and is scheduled to arrive in Budapest at 10am, that does NOT, I repeat, NOT mean that it is scheduled to arrive in Budapest on the following day. In fact, it will arrive in Sofia Bulgaria the next day, and you will end up sitting next to a mother with several small children who ask lots of questions (Where are you from? How old are you? Are you married? What do you do? Will you come to Blagoevgrad? You will stay with us!) and then you will end up on another train through northern Bulgaria that you cannot get off, not even to buy food or coffee or water or a phone card, and you'll spend four hours at the Romanian border filling out papers about bird flu, and your phone credit will die, and you can't phone home to tell your parents that you are alive or your friend in Budapest what's up. Finally, you will realize that you are scheduled to arrive in Budapest the following morning, that is, the trip is actually 34 hours and you are not even half done, and you'll abandon the entire endeavor in Bucharest, where a Japanese-Romanian translator will help you find a hotel and food, and you'll have no idea how much the money is worth, especially since things have recently changed so that some bills say 100,000 and some say 10 and it means the same thing. But there will be coffee and pastries for breakfast and oh thank god, a plane ticket to Prague.

Monday, July 10, 2006

In Which The Tentacles Have Their Revenge

I did, eventually, make it to Santorini, followed by Folegandros and Naxos, and the future is still yet to be determined. Island internet costs a lot, but I'll give you a few highlights anyway.

-On Santorini, I went to Red Beach, which is appropriately named. The sand, from volcanic rock, is indeed red, and stunning. I have been shaking crimson and black dust out of my clothes for days.

-On Folegandros I hiked for an hour over a cliff to get to a tiny, gorgeous cove where I was one of only ten people. The water was blue and green and clear, the sun was warm, and I had been paddling about for a good half hour, basking in the beauty of it all, when I stuck my hand into something that felt...odd. Sort of like swimming through grass, but grass with tiny needles. I came to the conclusion that I had been stung by a jellyfish, swore loudly (in English, of course), went madly splashing towards shore, glimpsed two more pinkish gelatinous creatures wobbling along, shrieked again, and repaired to my towel, where Lonely Planet informed me that "Greek jellyfish are not lethal, but they can cause pain." Well, the fact that they COULD be lethal had never even entered my mind. The fact that they can hurt, and can leave little red tentacle-shaped welts across one's arm was more obvious. Lonely Planet also recommended that you douse stings in vinegar, which made me contemplate rushing over to the nearest taverna, picking up the salad dressing, and pouring it over my arm.

-Every time I think I know the ferry schedule, someone informs me that I do not. The woman in Santorini definitely said there were ferries from Mykonos to Lesvos every Tuesday, but every travel agent in Naxos and one on Mykonos says I am wrong about that. The schedules all say that there are frequent ferries from Naxos to Mykonos, but the Naxos travel agents say I am wrong about that too. I'm damn mystified, and at this rate, I have no idea when I will be home. I'm not really complaining.

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

In Which, Stranded, I Begin An International Trend

Well, I'm still in Irakleion. And I'm getting sort of grouchy.

Just the other day I was joking that perhaps I would move to a Greek Island and strand myself by the beach. I did not expect the gods to take me literally. But then strong winds took over this part of the Aegean, and all boats from Crete were cancelled for two days- with more strong winds predicted for tomorrow. I have been occupying myself with archaeology and The Odyssey. Yesterday afternoon I read about poor Odysseus, stranded on Calypso's* island, crying because he is so desperate to leave. I've never felt so much sympathy for the poor man, but it gives me some comfort to realize that being stuck here is, in some way, part of an ancient Greek tradition.

Today, being desperate to get to the beach at last (I have been on the road for over a week with only a few brief toe dips in the ocean) I took a bus eastward, to an area filled with resorts. I walked down to the beach...and found no beach. Instead, there were about three feet of sand with white-capped waves crashing upon them like, I don't know, the north atlantic or something. Huddled upon beach chairs were some Germans, some Brits, and a family of unknown Scandinavian descent. It was a bit chilly. I was disappointed, but somewhat encouraged by the green color of the surf- so I stuck my feet in. After five minutes of strolling through the waves up to my thighs, I was joined by a German man who actually jumped right on in and began paddling through the waves. Not wanting to be outdone by the Germans, I jumped in too, splashed for a few moments, and looked up to find that a British couple had followed suit. Next came another German man, and another man who could have been from anywhere; I didn't get a chance to try and listen in on his accent. Throughout this, the mysterious Scandinavians stood on the pier and took pictures of the water, and the Greeks stood in the taverna, probably thinking we were all completely insane, but at least they let us use their beach chairs for free.

Overall, it was not the best trip to the beach I have ever had- next time, I want more sun. However, I cannot help but feel that somewhere here is a lesson in international relations. I'm just not sure what it is.

*the nymph, not my cat.

Monday, July 03, 2006

In Which I Don't Know Anything

I am in Irakleio.

It took me two hours to find a hotel in this city because I did not have a map. I did not have a mapt because I left Lonely Planet on the bus yet again, and realized that although Lonely Planet identifies its customers as 'independant travellers', some of us are not independant enough as to function well without Lonely Planet. I left Lonely Planet on the bus because I was sore and tired from hiking Samaria gorge. I hiked Samaria gorge by myself because I overslept and missed the guided tour that I had already paid for the day before. Before that, I had to email Brad and ask him to do my last load of laundry for me because I didn't get it out of the machine in time before I left for Delphi. I've been meaning to write blog updates and write emails and apply for jobs, but I haven't done any of that. I am not wearing any rings and I do not know if I left them in Thessaloniki or at my hotel in Delphi. I'm going to Santorini tomorrow and I do not know where I will stay or when I will leave or where I will go after that. I don't know exactly when I'm returning stateside, or what I will do when I get there. I'm not sure if I will go to Croatia or to Prague. I really don't know anything. I'm sweaty, I smell awful, and I'm sore, exhausted and covered in mosquito bites.

Life is pretty good right now.

Thursday, June 22, 2006

In Which I Mentally Cheer For Prostitutes and Snow

 
For my birthday in April, my boyfriend made me a CD which included a live version of Paul Simon singing 'The Boxer' in Central Park. Not surprisingly, this concert was packed with New Yorkers, and the crowd goes wild every time the city is mentioned. The phrase "seventh avenue" is met with cheers. The mention of "New York City" gets everyone screaming with excitement. The fact that the former is part of a reference to "the whores on seventh avenue " and the latter is part of a wish to go "home....where the New York City winters aren't bleeding me" doesn't seem to register. Or maybe this crowd was just really proud of that stuff, because what kind of city doesn't have a few problems with crime and weather?
I make fun of these people, but if I had been there, I would have cheered too. So what if the protagonist is miserable and lonely and trapped in the city? To some of us, you don't leave New York to go home. And that's worth cheering about, damn it.
I've come to learn that part of really knowing a place is learning that there are things about it that you despise. I've always loved New York, but I had just enough hate for it that I decided to get the hell out of there, and I went to college in Iowa instead. I loved Iowa too, for very different reasons that I loved New York, but I won't lie; I had some real moments of hatred for it too. I spent four years going back and forth, trading Central Park and Indian food for cornfields and a small town where everyone knows the details of everyone else's life. I think the Grinnellians thought I talked about New York too much and the New Yorkers wondered what on earth I was doing off in the middle of nowhere. But I think I was all the richer for living in two different places, and maybe that's why I decided to come to Greece; to know another place, in a different country this time.
Like all places, Greece has had its fair share of frustrations. There are days when I just want to go shopping on Sunday, or I need to express something complicated and the language barrier is a problem. There are days when I feel like the language barrier keeps me from really knowing the kids I work with. There were also the endless hours of wading through bureacracy to get my residence permit, which has now been pending for eight months, and will in all likelihood, arrive expired and after I have left this continent.
Above all, I miss diversity. It's so peculiar to me, to walk down the street and know, based on genetic features, who is not from around here. I actually find myself staring at blonde people or American-looking people, or anybody with non-Greek looking features. Me, the New Yorker, who usually would not bother to stare if a ten foot gorilla got on the 9 train, and I am now staring at people because they have blonde hair. I'm not sure I like that feeling.
I'm also not sure I like what has happened to my taste buds. My tongue used to be hardy, capable of enjoying hot peppers and curry. I used to laugh at people who ordered food mild. I used to be tough. But then, last week, I broke open a box of packaged curry that my father sent me a few months back, I took bite and found myself coughing. It was so spicy! Packaged curry was spicy, and I know it wasn't even as spicy as the real stuff they serve in Jackson Heights. My tongue has been coddled with feta and tomatoes, and all of the taste buds I had been burning off all my life grew back. I don't like it. I feel like a wimp.
So yes, Greece has its drawbacks, just like any place has its drawbacks. In a certain way, I'm pleased about it. It makes me feel that I really have been here. So many tourists come and go, thinking of Greece as a warm sunny relaxed paradise with ruins, and they don't see much farther than that. It's the same thing that happens in New York, when visitors crow over the view from the Empire State building, but never get the close-up view that reveals so much more. In a way, perhaps it's what happened to me when I studied abroad in London, and decided it was heaven on earth, just filled with literary landmarks and history. I can hardly think of anything I really disliked about London. Maybe it really is the most perfect place on the planet. But I don't think so. Maybe I should go back and try to find some things I hate, and then I'll be a real 20th Century Londoner, instead of an Elizabethan one.
There's another reason I'm glad to have found things about Greece that drive me insane. The fact that I see them makes me realize all of the good things about my own home that I never appreciated before. America is upsetting me so much these days that I sometimes feel just utterly disgusted with my whole country and want to pretend that I'm from somewhere else entirely. When Greeks ask me if I am from England, Italy or Albania, I have sometimes felt tempted to say yes, just to avoid questions about George Bush. When Europeans change between languages with more ease than I change my shoes, I feel embarrassed that we're all so monolingual. But when I think about listening to seventeen different languages on the subway, or eating Kosher Indian food on the lower east side, I realize that there is something wonderful about living in a place with so many different kinds of people. It's such a huge relief to discover that we really do have some things to be proud of back in the states.
And so I will cheer on the now almost non-existent whores of seventh avenue along with incredibly confusing Greek language and the heat of the Greek summer. I will love to hate bureacracy at the embassy with the same passion that I love to hate the New York Yankees. I will complain about the crowded 58 bus in the same way I complain about ten dollar movie tickets in New York, and eventually I will go home, where the New York City winters certainly will be bleeding me, and I will dream of the sweltering Mediterranean sun and long to find someone with whom I can drink ouzo and practice my stilted Greek. Posted by Picasa

Friday, June 16, 2006

Happy Bloomsday!

June 16th, 1904 is the day that Ulysses takes place. June 16th, therefore, is known as Bloomsday, in honor of Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of the novel.

Today, to celebrate, I looked at flights to Dublin. I also ate a kidney for breakfast.

No, not really. I am dedicated to literature, but not that dedicated. I did give my cat some treats, though, as she is named after one of the books of the novel. I also contemplated going to the beach, but decided to wait until a day when I don't have to be back for work in the evening. Perhaps later today my life will morph into a strange trippy 'reconstruction' in which people change gender and the dead appear. And then I will make the long trip home and think in one long sentence as I fall asleep. Yes, I will. Yes.

Monday, June 12, 2006

In Which But For The Sky, There Are No Fences Facing

Here I am, with barely two weeks of work ahead of me, maybe less, and I don't know what I'm doing next. I purchased the Lonely Planet guide to Eastern Europe the other day, and it has caused me to become completely unhinged. I thought at some point I would travel up through the former Yugoslavia to Croatia, but now I also want to go to Prague, to St. Petersburg, to Kiev, Poland, Albania. I want to see Lenin in Red Square, I want to see Transylvania, I want to read Cyrillic. Oh, and of course, I also want to see more Greek Islands, including Crete, Santorini and I-don't-know-what-else, I want to swim in the Aegean, I want to see Knossos and hike Samaria Gorge, and stop by Delphi, I want to go back to London and see all the things I missed when I studied there and wander along the river and through Hyde Park, see Shakespeare at the Globe Theatre, go to Dublin and walk into eternity along Sandymount Strand, go somewhere else in Ireland and see the green that I have heard so much about, and just generally go places.
It's interesting, because so rarely in my life have I had so many options open and the freedom to decide, completely by myself, where I will go and how I will spend my time. On group trips and family vacations it's usually a compromise between several people, and on short trips it's usually about hitting the most famous, must-see sights. But with a decent amount of money in the bank and Europe and a good number of weeks stretching before me, I almost have too many choices. It makes me think about where I want to go, sure, but it also makes me wonder why I want to go to certain places and not to others. Why is it that some places make me jump around in excitement, and other places leave me cold, even when I know next to nothing about either place?
People ask me how I ended up in Greece, was it the ancient history or the culture or the history or the weather? I don't know what to say, exactly, because on one hand, I just sort of took the opportunity that presented itself. The truth is, though, that Greece has always fascinated me. A lot of people daydream about Paris and Spain, and I can see why those are appealing, but for some reason Italy and Greece have always struck me as the really fascinating countries of the Mediterranean. Maybe that's because I spent so much time studying Greek and Roman culture and literature in school. On the other hand, I spent five years studying Spanish in school and Spain is still not as fascinating to me. On the other hand, I was positively wretched at Spanish. On the other hand, I was even more wretched at Latin, and my family trip to Rome is one of my favorite travel memories ever. O the other hand, Latin class never had gelato like that.
The truth, which will be not be surprising to anyone who knows me even remotely, is that I like to go to places that I have read about in books. I want to go to St. Petersburg because I read Crime and Punishment. Somehow a novel about poverty, misery, sickness, corruption, murder and prostitution just gives me this great desire to see where it all took place. I want to go to the island of Ithaka because damn, if Odysseus spent so much time getting back there, it must be worth it. The World According to Garp has given me a fascination with Vienna and small hotels that I would love to satisfy one of these days. Sophie's Choice makes me miss New York, wonder about trips to Poland, and decide that despite my English major, I will never, ever go into publishing. (Do you remember the scene where some guy submits an epic manuscript of Norse verse that takes up a whole suitcase? Actually, mostly, that book just makes me want to write a book that good, while simultaneously reminding me that I probably never, ever, will. How many books fit that description!) I suppose it is no surprise, then, that I studied abroad in London, where practically every street and building seems to have some sort of literary past. I have a Greek friend who is absolutely baffled by the fact that I am giving up precious Greece-in-the-summer time to see Britain and Ireland yet again, but he just doesn't understand the pull of those glorious iambic Shakespearean syllables spoken under the open night sky, the stream of Joycean consciousness, incomprehensible until it is hilarious, and the simple joy of JK Rowling and Phillip Pullman (who are both, actually, a little more complicated than some might realize.) I didn't really get excited about Albania until I found out that it's the site of ancient Illyria, where Viola and Sebastian land in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night...and oh, yeah, the place where Lord Voldemort spends ten years wandering through the forest after he is outdone by an infant.
However, there are actually some other things that draw me to certain cities or countries. Some of these things are simple, like names. The first time I read the name 'Thessaloniki', I thought "wow, that sounds amazing!" I didn't know a damn thing about the city, but I knew it had an awesome sounding name with enough letters to make it difficult to fit into address forms. I resist the use of 'Salonica'; it's just not nearly as aesthetically pleasing. In truth, Greece is filled with appealing names, like Santorini, Xanthi, Samothraki, and Chalkidiki. They all sound like places you would want to see. Moldova, in comparison, does not sound nearly as appealing, perhaps because it conjures up images of puffy green growth on old bread. I would anticipate finding lots of old ruins in Moldova. But according to Lonely Planet, Moldova is actually a very lively place, where they recommend that you party a whole lot. Who knew?
There's also the appeal of the forbidden. I'd like to go to parts of the former Yugoslavia (or East Germany) in part because I couldn't have done that a few years back. Cuba is fascinating; so damn close to my home nation, and yet you can't go there or even buy cigars from there. I don't even like cigars, I think anything you smoke is pretty foul, but I would love to go to Cuba.
Ultimately, I can't discuss Forbidden Places without mentioning what I have recently decided is the Forbidden Holy Grail Fruit; Mount Athos. Mouth Athos, or Αγιον Οροσ in Greek, is the "holy mountain" on a peninsula filled with orthodox monasteries. This religious settlement was established well over a thousand years ago. People flock from all over Europe and even all over the world to see it and, if they are so inclined, to live there as monks. Visitors are permitted, although only in limited numbers, and in even more limited numbers if you do not happen to be orthodox. You just have to obtain a permit ahead of time. So what's the catch? Only male visitors are allowed. That's right; no women whatsoever. They don't even have female cows or pigs around and boats carrying women must remain a certain distance offshore.
Now, I respect that the monks on Athos have chosen to live a certain kind of lifestyle that they do not want interrupted, and I suppose they have that right, with hundreds of years of tradition backing it up. I don't know if I actually really want them to change their rules. But I still want to see Athos, very badly. I suppose it has something to do with being raised in a very PC environment, where I was constantly taught that women can do anything, be US president, go to the moon, whatever. I mean, I'll be honest; I'm not holding my breath on the whole president thing. But legally, it's possible. But on Athos, it's a whole other world, possibly one out of a whole other century, and they have no qualms about keeping women out. And thus I am fascinated. What are they doing in there? Would I, or any other woman, really disturb things all that much? And if we would, what would we disturb? Obviously, it's not something I could really be familiar with.
It's much like the dormitory here at school,where girls and boys are not allowed on each other's hallways. The girls come up to the door of the boy's floor every now and then (the boys are not even allowed upstairs to look into the girl's hall) and you see them peering in curiously, or, more often, reaching in just far enough to give a male friend a smack on the head before he runs back into safety. Every now and then I escort a girl or two through the boy's hall en route to something else, and she will usually watch with fascination as we pass various rooms, or else gloatingly announce her presence to every male within earshot. I suppose the monks would not like that so much.
Anyway, the end result of all this is, I'm trying to figure out where to go, and I am a little bit mind-boggled. Anyone who would like to recommend islands, eastern european cities or nations, or destinations in Ireland would be most welcome to comment.

Thursday, June 08, 2006

In Which I am Filled With Ire While I Recount My Relaxing Weekend


Last weekend I finally made it to a Greek Island. Thasos, the isle in question, is about three hours from Thessaloniki, or maybe four, depending on your mode of transport. Brad and I took the bus to Kavala, a city several hours to the East, and then a high speed ferry to the island, which only took about half an hour.
We arrived at Prinos, a harbor area with some nice beach chairs and the blue, blue sea. We plopped down and relaxed for several hours, just stretched out and lazy. I had not planned sufficiently in advance, and so I was not wearing a bathing suit, but I took a discreet trip behind a closed canteen and changed that right away.
The water was cold. OK, it was not really cold, not nearly as cold as the water in Maine or other parts of New England, which is the usual region of the world where I go swimming. It was warm enough to immerse yourself in for long periods of time. However my first dip proved such a shock that although my body did not feel too cold, my lungs protested. It was very strange. Is there some reason why a person's lungs can't handle immersion in cold water? Is that what happened to Leonardo Di Caprio in Titanic?
Anyway, after a few moments of gasping for air, my lungs adapted, and I swam back and forth for a while, splashing about and looking down at the ocean floor, because it just so amazing to see the ocean floor while you are swimming. This is a new experience for me, and I have to say it makes the whole thing less intimidating when you know that Jaws is not out to get you.
After lazing about in Prinos, we made our way to the bus station, where we headed off to the town of Thasos, or Limenas, which is the main town of the island. We found a hotel room, found some food, and found our way to the Acropolis of Thasos, where one can look out upon the blue sea from a higher viewpoint, and also see exciting things like ancient shrines to Pan. We also glimpsed a shrine to Dionysus which fascinated me mostly because it was just sort of sitting in the middle of a city street, as though it were a traffic island or something. As an American, I just think it's pretty amazing to see ancient ruins lying about like that.
We also strolled through the ruins of the ancient agora, which was enjoyable. It was a bit overgrown, so it was difficult to fully appreciate what it would have looked like during Roman Times, but I have seen several agora ruins before, so I was able to use my imagination. It was here that Brad pointed out that the word 'agoraphobia' means 'fear of people' as opposed to 'fear of shopping', which would be my guess. After all, if 'agora' means market, and αγοραζω, or agorazo, is the modern Greek verb 'to buy', it would be natural to assume that 'agoraphobia' referred to a fear of shopping, right? However, I guess that because the agora was the ancient social area, the word refers to fear of social interaction.
It's unfortunate, really, because I am not afraid of social interaction, but I am afraid of shopping. In fact, year by year, I think my hatred for shopping increases. This may be genetic, because my mother also despises shopping. It also may have something to do with the fact that I absolutely detest trying clothes on. I hate waiting in line for changing rooms, and I hate taking everything off and putting more clothes on and taking them off and putting more things on and so on. I also think my hatred for shopping has increased since my arrival in Greece, because I never know what damn size I am, and I don't know where to find anything. Take pants. As a petite (translation: short) person in a nation full of shortish people, I would expect to find pants that do not drag on the ground when I walk. But no, this is not a possibility. Instead, when my ancient petite jeans died, finally, I had to call my mother and have her trek down to South Street Seaport, which is way the hell at the tip of Manhattan, and buy several new pairs of petite jeans at American Eagle Outfitters and ship them to Greece, because I swear that is the only store in the universe that actually sells petite jeans. American Eagle Outfitters is something of a teen chain, but I may be shopping there at age forty five just because there I have not found another store in the known universe that sells pants which fit me. This fills me with such ire and rage. (Are there ay other synonyms for 'hate' that I can use before I end this paragraph?)
One more thing about shopping before I continue, and you can skip this paragraph if you don't care. Much as I hate trying things on, I realize it is a necessity. However, on three separate occasions, salesladies in Greek stores informed me that I was not permitted to try things on. I have actually had these people charge into changing rooms and yell at me for attempting to try on T-shirts. Apparently, one is either not permitted to try on shirts, or else one is not permitted to try on shirts which are on sale. Since things on sale are generally the things I buy, this is a dilemma for me. When I asked one of the Changing Police why I was not allowed to try on T-shirts, she shrugged and said "that only costs five Euros". Well, forgive me if I sound culturally insensitive, but it's my damn five Euros, and it's never going to belong to anyone who enforces such a stupid irritating rule. The upshot of the whole thing is, none of the pants here fit me, and I am morally opposed to buying shirts at a significant portion of the shopping establishments. So I don't buy much in the way of clothing. I only buy pens. I love shopping for pens. I can stand at the little pen displays in stationary stores for a really long time sampling all the different color pens and selecting a variety of styles and hues. I always leave with a very satisfied feeling. There is nothing better than a pile of new pens in different colors.
Well, actually, the Greek islands are pretty good. The Acropolis was a nice hike, and I enjoyed saying hello to a large group of goats on our way down. I also enjoyed seeing a boat and a hotel named Καλυψω, or Kalypso, or Calypso. I wondered if perhaps Thasos is the island of the mythical nymph Calypso, as it is located conveniently on the route back from Troy to Ithaka. However, as Brad pointed out, pretty much every island in Greece is located on that route. Plus, wikipedia tells me that Calypso lived on a mythical island that has not been identified. Too bad, but it was exciting, seeing things named after my cat. (That's right; they were clearly named after my cat, even though she is only about eight months old and Homer is several thousand years).
Brad and I spent the next hour or so in a cafe, watching basketball. Brad has become an avid fan of Aris, which is one of the Thessaloniki teams, and they had a playoff game. I've been to one Aris game, and I have to say I most enjoyed it, although my sport is really baseball, not basketball.
We had dinner at a restaurant named 'Pigi', which was filled with British tourists, but had good food, including stifado and octopus keftedes, which are meatballs made from octopus and I think some herbs or something. They were delicious and I cursed myself for not discovering them several months before, when maybe I could have convinced my boyfriend to try octopus in that form instead of in tentacle form. I doubt it would have worked, however, unless I had lied and declared them chicken, which would have been rather mean. In any case, they were good.
The next morning we awoke, had breakfast at a sweet shop on the waterfront, and headed out to the Golden Beach on the West Side of the Island. The Golden beach, which you can view in my previous post, is not golden, but it is blue. I spent a good long time relaxing, paddling about in the water, reading my Lonely Planet and planning my summer trips, and applying sunscreen, although I apparently was not careful enough about the latter, because I ended up with two oddly shaped bright red triangles on my shoulders. The rest of me is barely tan, but my shoulders hurt for days. Oh well, it was worth it.
At that point it was about 3pm, and we needed to start our trip back. This consisted of a bus to Limenas, another bus back to Prinos Port, and a big giant ferry to the mainland. The ferry took 90 minutes instead of 35, but it was a scenic trip. We did miss our connecting bus out of Kavala, but that turned out to be for the best, because we got the chance to stroll through the city, which is lovely, grab something to eat, which was nice, and see the ancient fortress in the old town, which was really quite worth the bus delay.
Sadly, here's the other reason I am filled with ire; blogger absolutely refuses to post any of my pictures. I have such lovely pictures too, blue sea and white sand, views of ruins, mountaintops, fortresses, boats named Kalypso....but, try as I might, they just won't load. It's enough to make me scream. Ah well. Here's one picture that somehow made it up, a view of Thasos from the Acropolis.

Monday, June 05, 2006

Homer Was Blind




The Aegean is not "wine dark".

It's so blue.

Thursday, June 01, 2006

In Which I Examine Various Things Said to Be Un-Christian

I saw a man walk on hot coals the other day. And five days later, I watched Forrest Gump, Amelie and Gandalf chasing through the streets of various European locations in a search for the holy grail. Normally, it would be hard to connect these two experiences, but I have found a way; both are condemned by some christians for being blasphemous. OK, you say, but that's hardly unique; some christians will condemn anything and everything, including M and Ms. (See the Book of Mormon for further details on that one.) Yes, I say, but M and Ms have not played a big part in my life as of late. So we'll talk about coal walking and the Da Vinci Code instead.
The coal walking took place in a village called Langadas, which is either 9km, 20km, or 12km outside of Thessaloniki, depending on which guidebook you happen to own. Some friends, friends of friends and I had a few adventures getting there via taxis and public buses, but we made it eventually. It was Sunday, May 21st, the feast of Saints Constantine and Eleni. This is the traditional date for the coal-walking ceremony, which also takes place in Serres, about one hour further down the road. Some say that the coal walking ceremony dates back to pagan times, and indeed, this is exactly why the Orthodox church has condemned it. Although it has been going on for centuries, and always on this same day, it used to take place in hiding to avoid trouble from the religious Powers That Be. Nowadays it is much more public, although it still does not take place in church.
We had arrived hours in advance, so we decided to stop by a taverna and eat before the ceremony. There we talked to some locals who gave us another story entirely. They reported that the whole thing dates back to the early christian era, when a church in Asia Minor (a part now in Bulgaria) burned down on this very day. The people of that village rushed into the church to save their icons, and managed to make it in and out of the flaming debris without getting burned. Indeed, the modern ceremony involves a lot of dancing with the icons of Constantine and Eleni, and is regarded by the participants as a christian ceremony, so which version of the story you choose to believe is somewhat negotiable.
In any case, it was about 8:30pm when we found the location where the coal-walking was to take place. It was a small very simple house with a large empty yard out back; hardly a grandiose location, which made it all the more interesting. The house was packed full of people and music was being played while a number of villagers danced back and forth with the icons. In case you have not seen orthodox icons, these were big, a foot or two high, and looked to be encased in silver. Outside, a fire was lit, and a crowd watched the wood burn down slowly into hot embers. We waited for over an hour, listening to beat of the music from inside, where the coal-walkers were presumable dancing themselves into some sort of a trance. I could barely peer past the crowds and into the windows to catch glimpses of musicians and dancers.
It was nearing 11pm when they emerged, a procession of about twenty people, men, women and children, drenched in sweat from dancing, still strumming their instruments, many adorned with bandannas and clutching the icons. They passed right right by me and into the yard, where the remains the fire had burned down into black coals with the occasional flicker of red to remind you of the heat.
At this point the crowd had gone silent and pressed inwards toward the yard, and I could hardly see what was happening. It took a while, but I eventually managed to work my way to the front and I did in fact see several people walking across the red hot coals. It was quite impressive. I hardly know what to make of it. There are a variety of theories as to how these people can walk across coals and emerge with the soles of their feet intact, but nobody has really figured it out for sure. One outsider even tried it a few years back and emerged with third degree burns on her feet. I just wonder how one starts coal-walking. I suppose if you have done it for years you must not be afraid of it, but what of the first time? How do you know that you are ready and that won't get burned? I suppose this question proves that I'm far too skeptical to undertake such a task.
I have some pictures of all this, but I'll be honest; they're not great, and for some extremely irritating reason, blogger refuses to let me post them. Perhaps blogger has highly traditional feelings about Christianity. Maybe it's afraid of condemnation. Well, use your imagination. I think the whole idea should give you some material to work with.
And now for the more mundane example of blasphemy. I'm not even going to explain the Da Vinci Code, because to do so would be to assume that you are hiding in a cave somewhere and this blog is your only connection to the outside world. If that is the case, you are already totally out of the loop and you have more important things to worry about than this particular offspring of popular culture. In fact, mostly I am just going to point you all to Anthony Lane's review in the New Yorker, which is absolutely the meanest thing I have read all year, and therefore far more entertaining than the movie itself. I do not know how Anthony Lane manages to dredge up such ire and viciousness on a regular basis, and perhaps he had some unpleasant incidents in his childhood, but I am awfully glad about it, because his movie reviews are one of the first things I read in each issue of New Yorker after I have looked for new David Sedaris essays.
Myself, I have nothing to say about the religious implications of this book. In my opinion, if Christianity really wanted to keep up a positive image, they would be less upset about the idea of a happily married Jesus than they would about a Jesus who sanctions killing. Or maybe they should be upset by the prospect that some people would actually be dumb enough to believe that Catholicism is overrun by violent albino monks. I think that people have a right to be angry if they feel that their religion is being falsely portrayed, but if the combined effects of Martin Luther, John Calvin, celibacy and and numerous sex scandals have failed to topple the Catholic church, well, is Ron Howard really going to be the Vatican’s undoing?
The Da Vinci Code, of course, has not just been condemned by Catholics, it has also been condemned by Orthodox officials, even the archbishop of Thessaloniki himself, who decreed that all faithful citizens should not go see it. Based on the fact that it is still playing in every Thessaloniki cinema, there are not a lot of faithful citizens out there. I'm not sure why these religious officials even bother to ban things like this. Don't they realize? People are just like small children; we'll go after anything we're told me can't have. Take me and Lucky Charms. Growing up, I was allowed to have some junk food, but Lucky Charms were not allowed unless we were on vacation. My sister and I munched on Kix and Total for years. When I finally arrived at college, I remember seeing the giant bin of Lucky Charms sitting there in the dining hall, free for everyone in unlimited amounts, and I thought "Wow!" I barely registered the empty vodka bottles in the recycling bin and the people trying to give me condoms every time I turned a corner. But Lucky Charms, man. Lucky Charms were decadence. They were the embodiment of independance. They tasted of adulthood, how's that for irony? But you know what? I don't even really like them. Total is better. I'm just glad my parents didn't enforce a ban on coal-walking in childhood, because that could have created far more dire circumstances than a few bowls of sugar during freshman orientation.
Here's my beef with the whole franchise; let’s say that you are part of a secret society that considers femininity to be sacred. You think that Catholics are misogynists, and blame them for denigrating female sexuality, persecuting free-thinking women and keeping women out of positions of power. You think that Mary Magdalene was supposed to be the true founder of Christianity. So when it comes to choose a leader for your radical feminist group, wouldn’t it occur to you to maybe choose, I don’t know, a woman? In this fictional priory thing, women are special enough to be divine sex objects instead of evil sex objects, but sex objects they remain, and men like Da Vinci and Newton and the dead guy on the floor of the Louvre are still the ones who actually control shit. If that’s actually supposed to be some sort of iconoclastic revelation for the modern age, maybe I should disappear to one of those caves at Meteora.
And furthermore, even if there were living descendants of Jesus, what in holy hell would they be doing in France? I mean, I know that my geographical knowledge is scant; after all, I placed Bedford-Stuyvesant in Manhattan. However, I am pretty damn sure that Jesus was not French. I am pretty sure that he was not, actually, European. In fact, I think he was Middle Eastern and Jewish. I suppose people do migrate over the course of thousands of years, but I also suppose that Paris makes a far more scenic location for an action movie than modern day Nazareth.
In case you’re wondering, I did both read the book, and see the movie. I suppose you could call that silly, seeing as I clearly have lots of issues with both. The naked truth is, however, that I like Tom Hanks, and his fellow cast members, and I really, really really like London. I would probably pay seven Euros to watch people eat sandwiches in London if they strolled past enough scenic locations in the process. If only it had better bagels and less insane exchange rate, it would be the perfect city. (New York, on the other hand, would be the perfect city if it had Shakespeare’s Globe.) So no, I’m not immune to fun. I’m just an English major, and this is what happens when you let an English major loose on the world with nothing to analyze; she creates a totally unnecessary treatise on Dan Brown. Stay tuned for next week, when I will discuss the influences of John Milton on Harry Potter, and the week after, when I write my own novel about a female God who loves the idea of gay marriage, encourages coal-walking, eats m and ms, and strikes down several choice members of the government. Because if you're going to create a totally silly religious controversy, you might as well do the damn thing right.

Sunday, May 28, 2006

A Little Worried About Your Future?


It's college graduation season again, and I'm finding it hard to believe that it's been one whole year since I myself graduated. However, now that I'm one of these Real World residents instead of a college student, I feel it necessary to share what I have learned in my first year since college. I feel that this is especially necessary because I am also kind to trying to figure out what the hell I'm going to do with myself next year, and it makes me feel better if I can give sage advice to someone, anyone. So, without further adieu, here are five important things to keep in mind:

1) Everyone talks about the real world as though it were a horrible, horrible place where all of your dreams will be crushed and you will miss college forever. This is not true. Look at me; I do various jobs and still have time to read books, write all different things, get the ocassional eight hours of sleep and obsess over my cat. I did not have time for any of that at college.

2)If you majored in English and you think your major is useless, move to a foreign country where they do not speak English, and suddenly you will feel more useful. If you don't want to move to a foreign country but you still feel your major is worthless, you are wrong. English is not the least useful major out there, not by a long shot. Just think of all those people who majored in Classics and Philosophy.

3) Read books for fun, and watch movies, but don't read books or watch movies that try to make points about the futility of life by depicting promising young people who destroyed their lives and never came to anything and ended up homeless on the street.

4) Always remember that you never have to eat dining hall food again. You may have to get up early in the morning, and you may have to clean your own toilet, and you may have no money, and you may feel lost, confused and scared. But you never have to eat dining hall food again.

5) People are going to try to give you lots of advice. They have probably already been trying to give you advice for months or even years. Maybe you have even been asking them for advice, but they are probably giving it whether you are asking for it or not. They are popping out of the woodwork shouting things like "College is the best time of your life! The best time of your life is OVER!" and "You should really start to think about law school" and "you should really start to think about getting a PhD," and "You should NOT become a teacher," and "You should DEFINITELY become a teacher." People that you hardly know are coming up to you and asking you "what now?" and you shrug, and they say "Starbucks," and "Journalism" and "Plastics!" People are saying "It's awfully hard to make friends out there in the real world" and "You're going to be in a long distance relationship? Why? You realize you're DOOMED, right? DOOMED! It won't last a week and you'll end up lonely FOREVER!" People are giving you books with titles like "The Post-College Survival Guide" and "How To Go From Liberal Arts Grad to Millionaire in Five Years" and "How To Not Live In A Carboard Box on Broadway." If you are thinking about just relaxing and getting a job at Barnes and Nobles, people are telling you "You're overqualified for that! Don't do it!" If you really don't want a job at Barnes and Nobles, people tell you "What, do you think you're too good for an honest job? Kids these days are so spoiled!" If you tell people that you want to become a famous best-selling novelist they laugh and say "Get a grip on reality!" If you tell them you don't think you'll ever be a best-selling novelist they tell you "Follow your dreams!" Eventually, all of this will bombard you to the point where you want to cry or vomit or curl up in a little ball in the corner and cover you ears and scream "LALALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" or all three.

You should feel free to ignore all of these people. Including me.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

In Which I'm Crazy, But Not As Crazy As That Guy


I recently read an article in the New York Times about trapped cats. The article explained that New Yorkers have a history of going to great lengths in order to remove cats who have become stuck in various places, in cases spending thousands of dollars to knock down walls to get out the animals. The article also quoted some urban specialist, who analyzed the situation by explaining that while people in cities are fairly used to seeing human suffering, they are not used to seeing animals suffer. Thus, we ignore homeless people, walk nonchalantly past crime scenes where bodies are being removed, and freak out completely when we hear a few meows.
This is true. Absolutely one hundred percent true. I know because my cat was neutered on Tuesday and I have spent the past forty-eight hours panicking over her. I am panicked when she runs around because I am afraid she will hurt herself or infect her stitches. When she is asleep, I check periodically to make sure she is still breathing. When I noticed some drops of blood coming from her stitches, I called the vet in tears.
This is not the beginning of my cat insanity. I talk to her a whole lot more than I speak to some people who are actually capable of speech. That's the beauty of it, actually; she never disagrees with me. She does meow a lot, but I can interpret that in any way I want; it could mean 'Yes, feed me!" or "I completely agree, the Bush administration seriously needs to go," or "I agree, you should go back to bed."
However, my craziness was put into serious perspective last week when I saw the film Grizzly Man, a recent documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a man who spent thirteen summers of his life living among wild bears in remote parts of Alaska. Not only did he live with them, he also videotaped them, photographed them, and videotaped himself talking about them. All of this footage came in handy two years ago, when he and his female companion were eaten by a particularly nasty Grizzly, right at the end of their expedition.
My first thought upon hearing Treadwell talk to a Grizzly Bear was "oh my god, that sounds just like me talking to my cat." It did, too. He turned to the giant hulking beast and murmured things like "I love you, you cutie, I love you sooo much! Now, be a good girl and go catch that fish! Yes, that's a good girl!" The bear, sadly, did not give nearly as good as response as Calypso does. She didn't even growl in return, just sort of sauntered along on feet wider than my waist.
I should clarify that Treadwell wasn't doing any sort of scientific research out there on the tundra, just kind of chilling and communing with the bears while making sure there weren't any poachers around. He did some educational work with schoolkids during the winters, for which he deserves credit. However, for the most part, the bears were more of a really, really esoteric life-consuming hobby than an actual study. Whether he should have been out there, well, that's the central question of the whole film, and I'll let you investigate that one by yourself. But I would not have been out there, that's for sure.
I assumed Treadwell was, at least, a person raised in the wilderness, a person who had cultivated his love for nature and wildlife during birth, who felt so at home among animals that he felt the need to risk and lose life and limb to protect his home. That's what I thought. And then I found out he was from Long Island. Most of the native Alaskans interviewed in the film appear to regard the Bears with affection, but also trepidation and distance, just as I would regard a fellow passenger on the subway. You coexist, but you don't interact. It takes a wacked out Long Islander to go jump in the river with them and console a bear who has been scratched-up in a mating fight with his own dating woes. And it takes a small town native to approach an urbanite on the nine train and try to make conversation about the weather.
And those are my thoughts on the subject. They have nothing to do with Greece, whatsoever, but then again, I never said I would only write about Greece, did I? Nope, I just said that I'm Emily IN Greece, which I am. In Greece, watching my cat recuperate and thanking myself for choosing a country that does not have Grizzly Bears. Besides, based on that fact that I generally get about 500% more comments on my cat-related updates than my Greece-related ones, I think I am not the only crazy one in the blog world.