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July 31, 2005
home, july 31, 2005
i'm home! i'm home! i'm going to new zealand! with nuala! we're going to new zealand!
pictures of greece will be up soon.
Posted by michele at 06:00 PM | Comments (9)
July 28, 2005
bathroom, president's hotel, athens, july 27,2005
i am right now sitting on the bathroom floor of my hotel in athens having just woken up from a lurid dream involving acid, rape, and bad education.
long-hai, kristen, and i were all taking a class on politics and the social mind. we were reading a book called dissidents about a group of young radicals trying to change society. in chapter 4 they referred to the meeting point of the group as "The Honey Pot". coincidentally a store had just opened up downtown, also called the honey pot. i was fascinated by this and decided to go there to check it out the day before class.
the honey pot from the front looked deceptively large and also empty. but i took one step inside the door and it held only 5 small round tables radiating out from the entryway in a horseshoe shape. each table held 3 to 4 people, all of whom stared at me hungrily as i took another hesitating step over the threshold. it was dark, airless, and enclosed. in the center of the tables there stood a cauldron bubbling with honey and the man behind it could easily have been mistaken for a bear--a menacing Pooh, guarding his sweet stuff.
to him, i said, "can i have some honey?"
he dipped a tiny, but extremely long-handled spoon into the honey and held it out to me without moving from his place behind the cauldron. i opened my mouth, feeling oddly reminiscent ofthe hangover opening for the airplane.
a half hour later i was higher than anything, lying back on a hill, being raped by the bear. in my head visions of being poured and filled with honey--warm, golden, syrupy honey--were flashing past at an alarming rate. i couldn't do anythingto stop the bear, he was the honey conduit and i, the honey vessel.
the next day i was reading a blog post by KTV about the honey pot store. she mentioned nothing about honey-ooated acid, but told that when she and 3 friends went to check it out the owner was shoving pins into a voodoo doll.
sean came into my room at this pont. he was also taking the politics class, but at a different time from us. KTV was in his class. he asked me if i had read KTV's post and i wordlessly showed him that i was on it right then. he rambled on about how coincidental it was that this store opened up right when we reached chapter 4 of the dissidents.
"i went there yesterday too. alone. he gave me acid in my honey. and then, i think he raped me."
sean kissed me on the forehead and told me it was going to be all right. he led me to politics class and left me wih his notes on chapter 4 and a pencil from which he broke the eraser.*
long-hai asked me if i had done all the reading and i had to say no, that i'd only read the parts on the honey pot. he looked terrified for me as the teacher was a teribly mean woman who would not hesitate to demolish any student who wasn't prepared.
and in she walked, so speak of the devil, asking if we'd all read chapter 4. we dutifully responded yes and opened our books to the proper page. my yes must have been more fervent than the others because she called on me at once to give my impression.
i floundered. i could see long-hai and kristen eyeballing me with horrified looks of pity. and so i began to talk.
"i was very interested in the code-name the rebels gave their meeting place on the hill--'the honey pot'. a new shop just opened downtown yesterday also called the honey pot and in the interest of literary allusion, i went to check it out. what i found was unpleasant. a giant of a man gave me honey laced with acid. another friend who went seperately that day saw him stabbing a doll with needles in a voodoo ritual. the 'moral' i suppse you could draw from this example in conjunctin with the books' own 'honey pot' is that underneath the political cell, this group of dissidents, lies many unseen dangers and dark places that can overwhelm or even harm an outsider. or possibly someone within the group itself."
kristen and long-hai's faces had gone from horrified to stark terror. and everybody else in the class was silent as they turned to look at the teacher.
"those are very serious accusations you're making. to spread vile rumors this way, i should report you to the authorities."
i was stunned by this threat which felt like a blow against my very person. she was impugning my honor and my veracity. my reply burst from me violently, "you are a vicious harridan. why don't you report me? go ahead. while you're at it, make sure to tell the authorities that the proprietor raped me after he drugged me."
tears were pouring down my face as i threw my book at her head and stormed out.
*sean, a girl tells you she got raped and you take her to class? that's awful! show some more concern! don't break pencils.
Posted by michele at 04:31 AM | Comments (5)
July 22, 2005
olympic villas, oia, santorini, july 22, 2005
a typical day on santorini:
9am: get out of bed.
9-10am: eat something, lounge around outside in chairs looking down at the aegean sea, go back to bed for a while.
10-11am: shower
11am-12pm: lounge around outside in chairs looking down at the aegean sea. possibly read a little.
12-3pm: walk down the "street" thru shops and markets and tavernas and churches. shop, pet stray animals, take pictures.
3pm: flee the hordes of day-trippers that invariably descend.
3:30-4pm: eat greek salads made by mom back at our cave house and feed stray cats feta cheese.
4-6pm: swim in the hotel pool and tan on chaises lounges.
6-9pm: shower, read, lounge on patio in front of cave house.
9-11pm: have dinner at taverna of choice.
11pm-?: go to bed, read, drink ouzo, play cards, have facials, and/or pet cats.
repeat. for the next 3 days.
postcript: i counted how many postcards i have sent the other day. i was curious as my trip is winding to a close (only one more week!). i have sent a total of 99 postcards. at $1 a postcard (including card and postage), this means i have spent $99 on POSTCARDS. this is insane.
Posted by michele at 10:23 AM | Comments (8)
July 20, 2005
kreta mare, plakias, crete, july 19, 2005
this is what my life in greece consists of: unbelievably clear blue water and shockingly hot beaches. on the ferry ride back from the samaria gorge to hora skfaion, i could not help but muse what a contrast this life is to the barely remembered one i used to live back in san francisco. i've only been here like 13 days, not even 2 weeks and i've already forgotten what life used to be like.
what working is like. what commuting is like. what cool weather feels like. what my friends look like.
this has become all i know, this water, this air, this sky, and these buildings perched on the edges of hills looking out over the aegean sea.
all i am is a scorched piece of flesh that lies on even hotter sands under a blazing sky and beside a sea of such indescribeable color, all i can do is call it blue. which is hardly justice enough.
Posted by michele at 11:22 AM | Comments (1)
Kriti I, ferry from piraeus to heraklion on crete, july 14, 2005
so meteora brought me to a profound closeness with god. i'm joking. but only a little.
it was so beautiful, these soaring rocks like fingers reaching up to the heavens and begging for grace. the word 'meteora' itself means 'hanging from the sky'. i like that these huge ideas are encompassed in single words.
anita, our tour guide on the GO Tour to delphi and meteora, told us the story of marathon, how the athenian ran all the way to the agora, said one word, and died. but that one word translated to 'we have won'. again--a concept encompassing victory, jubiliation, and safety. it's life. we have won, we have survived. and meteora is also life in a way because it's an expression of life to have hope and to reach for a power beyond yourself. the holy life beside god. to live in this remote corner of the world, cut off from the most sensible thing we know--the ground--and instead live suspended halfway between heaven and earth, which is practically another hell anyway.
Posted by michele at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)
GO tours, meteora, july 13, 2005
on july 9th, i was coming down the stairs at the art hotel on my way to breakfast. cleverly, i determined early on in my relationships with both my shoes and these stairs that the three of us would never be friends, much like water sluices off the back of a nuala or a water-proof raincoat, so my shoes with these stairs. so, of course, i go down barefoot. but on this fateful morning, i could see that there were people in the breakfast room at the bottom of the stairs. wanting to not appear rude and calloused, i slipped my flip flops back on and determined to be very careful on the remaining 15 steps.
i took 1 step and fell the next 8.
the one person who saw me do it was a heavy metal grunge rocker from the netherlands. he said nothing. i said, 'ow'.
four days later, i look like i've been beaten. a lot. with large slabs of marble. i try to look like i'm suffering so the other tourists will feel bad for me and call child protective services. my mom tried to convince me that i'm no longer a child. i claimed the Rubber-Glue Defense and she looked suitably chastized.
in addition to this rapidly purpling bruise the size of my hand, i received an additional injury on the 12th at the amalia hotel in delphi when performing a valiant pool rescue mission. my drowning victim elected to sting me rather than thank me. i haven't been stung by a bee since i was in 6th grade and belonged to a pool with the mookerjees. i remember some of the other horrors of 6th grade-- the sideways ponytail, the MC Hammer pants with gigantic pink flowers on them--but i can honestly say that i didn't remember what it felt like to be stung by a bee. so i am no bitter towards all bees. and marble steps. and possibly heavy metal rockers.
Posted by michele at 10:49 AM | Comments (0)
July 10, 2005
ancient theatre of epidaurous, july 9, 2005
tonight we went to see bacchae by euripdies at the ancient theatre of epidauros on the pelopenesian peninsula. from athens, we caught a chartered bus in kflathmonos square (by panepitisimo metro stop) which took us to gate 2 at piraeus port. here we got on the georgios which took us across the bay to epidaurous. another bus covered in rainbow stripes took us from that dock to the theatre which is up in the hills.
the play was amazing. it was all in modern greek and the fact that all i could understand was the occasional personal name totally didn't matter. the ampitheatre held somewhere around 6000 people, though it wasn't completely full. it was built in the 4th century bc, but was buried until the late 19th century and preserved relatively intact so very little restoration work has been done. in addition, the acoustics are flawless.
bacchae is about dionysus and pantheus, pantheus' mother and the maenad. dionysus proclaims himself a god but his relatives mock him. in punishment he turns the women of thebes mad so they become his followers, the bacchae, also called maenad. pantheus has dionysus chained and brought before him in order to publicly denounce his godhood and prove him for a fake. in answer dionysus causes an earthquake.
the way they did this was one of my favorite moments in the whole play. earlier when the whirling dervishes of mad women were cackling and jumping with reckless undulating abandon across the stage, they were each given a pair of rocks by D's acolytes. they would periodically bang them together in counterpointal rythym to the drums. when pantheus has finished castrating D's godhood, D slips his binds and calls P a fool. he then strides out between the double file of women and pauses a moment at the top to pronounce a few more, no doubt, pithy statements. the women, all still doing thier weird imitation of a susserating giggle, suddenly go silent with him. in this breath of quiet space, they all simultaenously throw their paired rocks on the ground at pantheus' feet and stare him out of countenance before whirling off like the truly mad mysteries they have become.
the beautiful thing was their intensity in every action they took. the cackling, the silence above all, the striking rocks on the floor, and the stare. those women, they had presence.
later on the bacchae rip pentheus to pieces and his mother is left holding his head. in a slight return to sanity, she recognizes her son and tries to give birth to him once more by performing an upside down crawl on hands and feet bent over backwards with his head resting on her pubis to be dumped in the box containing the rest of his unattached body parts. this doesn't work.
i perfectly agree with lucy who says of the bacchae in prince caspian, "I wouldn't have felt safe with Bacchus and all his wild girls if we had met them without Aslan."
wise words, lucy, since probably they would have stained their teeth red with your blood.
Posted by michele at 07:20 AM | Comments (5)
marnis at 3rd septembriou, July 8, 2005
two blocks up marnis street on the corner of 3rd septembriou a homeless man lives at the bus station. today coming back from omonia square to the art hotel at 27 marnis street, i walked past the man as he was tying up his pants. the urine smell was strong and getting stronger and so i glanced down and around and saw the liquid treadmarks left by a shoe which it was patently obvious had tread in the urine after the shoe wearer had finished making the treacherous puddle in the first place. the whole corner of marnis and 3rd septembriou will always be urine, a damp shoe print, and a man tying up his pants.
Posted by michele at 07:16 AM | Comments (2)
heathrow airport, July 6, 2005
at a restaurant called "giraffe" because apparently it is the animal with the largest heart and they "love to live" or "eat" or offer you cheese on your chips.
there's a drink called a "giddy giraffe" though it doesn't appear to have any alcohol in it and it makes me think gimpy over giddy all the same.
and i am reminded of how bad the british bacon is and how intoxicating the scent of malt vinegar hitting chips warm from the frying.
Posted by michele at 07:13 AM | Comments (0)