I woke at six with a feeling of vague unease, as if my mind were struggling free from the last clinging threads of a bad dream. I had slept fitfully, tossing and turning most of the night. Fully awake now, I slowly oriented myself to my surroundings. I was in fact not at home, as my dream state had led me to believe. I was instead lying in a narrow bunk bed in the economical inside cabin of a stateroom aboard the MTS Renaissance on a 7-day cruise of the Greeks Isles with my sister and a teacher friend of hers, named Cindy.
By the time I had my first cup of coffee and walked out on deck, the unease I had awakened with had faded. I found myself thinking of my first trip to Greece fifteen years earlier. Memories collided in my mind spawning both pleasant and painful associations.
Any visit to Greece would resurrect thoughts of my former boyfriend John, a classics major at Fordham University, and of his Svengali influence in my life when I was in my early twenties. The relationship had ended painfully, but I was grateful for the crash course he gave me on the history and culture of ancient Greece, especially the myths of this land. I learned about the battle of Thermopylae, Pericles and Homer. John was a born teacher and he made those ancient heroes and battles come alive. I was particularly fascinated by the legends of Heracles and Oedipus, the abduction of Zeus’ daughter Persephone by Hades, the god-king of the underworld, and of the Minotaur- the offspring of the union between a woman and a bull.
Putting all further thoughts of the past aside, I excitedly prepared to disembark at our first port of call for the day, the island of Santorini. It is a place steeped in mythology. Many believe it is the location for Plato’s story about the lost civilization of Atlantis which disappeared without a trace, sunk into the sea supposedly by the anger of the gods. More likely the legend arose in connection with the cataclysmic volcanic eruption of Santorini during the Minoan period.
Of all the islands in the Aegean, Santorini is, in my opinion, the most extraordinary. To reach it we sailed into a strange enclosed bay surrounded by sheer cliffs topped by gleaming white villages that resembled snow-capped mountains. The effect was dramatic and spectacular. The beauty of this place must depend on light and line. When dawn comes the light is instant and brilliant against the starkness of the volcanic earth. Yet it has an uncanny fascination of its own. It has rightly been called the black pearl of the Aegean. We have been told that the sunsets here are among the most amazing aesthetic experiences that the Aegean can provide. We unfortunately will not get to judge for ourselves, as we will have sailed on to Crete by late afternoon.
The island didn’t have a cruise terminal. Instead we were tendered ashore by small boats and then conveyed up a steeply cut stone staircase by donkey, ascending high above the blue Aegean to the town of Thia.
This unorthodox conveyance was quite terrifying since these “beasts of burden” kept slipping on their own copious deposits of excrement dropped over countless prior treks up this same path. I hung onto mine for dear life. His loud incessant braying sounded like the anguished wheezing of a dying creature. To distract myself from looking over the precipice, and certain death should I fall, I tried to recall my favorite impressions of our time spent in Athens a few days before we sailed.
However, instead of focusing on the amazing sight of the Parthenon sitting majestically high above the city like a beacon drawing all eyes to her beauty, I recalled instead the deafening noise of the city. Athen’s streets were substantially noisier to my ear than New York's because of the ubiquitous motorcycles and the incessant horn-blowing. Traffic is anarchic, cars simply drive over curbs and motorcycles wanting to pass weave through pedestrians on the sidewalks. The air pollution is suffocating due to the lack of any vehicle emissions control laws, but people seemed completely oblivious to it. Gone was the romanticism from my former visit.
When I was here before with John, we stayed in a tiny pension on a side street off of the wide Syngrou Avenue. The neighborhood was lined with small shops: a butcher, a vegetable market, a TV and appliance store, and a laundry. Sandwiched in between were the quintessential Greek icon stores with rows upon rows of saints on display. The more expensive ones had ornate gilt frames with semi precious stones embedded in them. Women tended to buy them and faithfully lit incense in from of them in their homes.
John said this practice dated back to Byzantine iconoclasm. Now it just seemed depressing to me, dead idols demanding propitiation like a child's desperate attempts to please a remote, angry parent.
John and I often had heated debates about our faith. He was a staunch Irish Catholic, I was German Baptist. I never understood how anyone could believe so emphatically in a religion of hollow rituals and ostentatious ceremonies. Still, I kept the small medal of the Madonna he had given me, which he said had been blessed by the Pope when he did a semester of study in Rome.
Back in the moment, I vowed never to ride on any four-footed beast again. I found a lovely taverna to soothe my nerves with a cool drink.
All over Greece tables are traditionally set out in a plaza under shady thick-trunked old plane trees. The sun shone through the branches while the wine flowed. We enjoyed a simple but delicious meal of bread with humus and tzatziki (yogurt, cucumber and garlic dip) with a large salad of slices of onion, ripe juicy tomato, cucumber, olives and thick chunks of feta. There was music and laughter as villagers and tourists alike sat eating, joking and gossiping. The was even a goat tethered in the yard behind us. I felt like I had fallen into a scene from Zorba the Greek.
After a lovely half day of browsing in the shops and soaking in the cliffside view of the cauldera, we set sail again for yet another jewel in the Aegean.
I can't help but wonder what it would be like to live here suspended among the clouds?
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