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. 

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.

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.

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.

Homer Was Blind

The Aegean is not "wine dark".

It's so blue.

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.