No Foreign Lands

London Heathrow Terminal 5. Seven hours between flights. Not long enough to make it worthwhile to enter the country and travel into London. Long enough to wonder if I’ve entered the never-ending dystopia of a J.G. Ballard novel entitled Terminal. I sit in a cavernous room with hundreds of people all loitering, subdued and talking in hushed voices, as if heading, hoping, for hibernated unconsciousness. ‘As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.’ (Thoreau)

One of the films I watched on the flight here was Dunkirk. Before the film there was a warning for viewers that the film included scenes of aircraft in distress. As the film unfolded, the warning seemed misplaced. There were some aircraft in distress, but nothing compared with the destruction and death depicted on ships. Then I figured out that we were on an airplane, so perhaps some nervous passenger would watch Dunkirk and start imaging the worst. Taking the ferry from Dar es Salaam to Zannzibar, we were shown Home Alone.  All the seats on the ship faced the screen. It was unsettling to watch this Macaulay Culkin Christmas classic in the Indian Ocean that August day on a boat full of Muslim Tanzanians. But perhaps less dangerous than showing Dunkirk.

Read an article in the Financial Times on the drought in Cape Town. The city is currently on course to completely run out of water on April 21, the very day I’m scheduled to leave Cape Town and South Africa. J.G. Ballard did write an excellent novel entitled The Drought.

I fly to Johannesburg in two days, but today I was in Oakland for the Women’s March. Last year I was in Cleveland this weekend and attended the Women’s March there. It was inspiring to see so many women and men of all ages and races and abilities stepping out–and to connect with the larger community where I live before my departure.  It was especially sweet to run into some students from my school. I loved the creativity of the signs, so many hand-made with original messages. One of my favorites was “This is how we win. Not by fighting what we hate, but by saving what we love.”

There is a local artist, Joe Murphy, that has been making and distributing peace chains. He has made over 500,000 clay or wooden pieces with the word ‘peace’ in many languages. We got some for our daughter at a demonstration many years ago. He was at the march today and I got four for my trip. Peace in Xhosa, Zulu, Arabic and Hebrew.

 

 

 

In 1985, at the age of 28, I went cycling by myself in Europe for three months. I started in London in August and ended in Athens in November, traveling through England, France, Italy and Greece. Since I was traveling by myself, my journal was my companion. Originally written for myself, I gave an edited version to friends after the trip.

When I went on this trip I had never been outside of the United States. My parents and none of my six siblings had ever been outside of the country. From the vantage point of the present, it’s almost impossible to imagine how strange and new it was for me to be traveling in Europe.

It was a different time and place. I lived in Boston. Reagan was President of the United States and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK. When I arrived in London in mid-August I had reservations for two nights at a youth hostel in Kensington and a return flight from Athens in early November. The rest of the trip was improvised. I traveled with a copy of Let’s Go Europe.  Mobile phones did not exist. I was on the road almost every day. I would head out in the morning, cycle about 30 miles to the next interesting town and arrive needing to find a place to stay. I had maps for biking through the country, but rarely street maps for the towns. I would have to wander about or ask directions to find my hostel or pensione. I would spend the afternoon and evening exploring before getting up the next day and heading off again. Of the 12 weeks I was gone, only three weeks’ worth involved spending more than one night in the same place.

These are journal entries and I haven’t edited out all of the emotional torment.

Monday, October 14, 1985 – A gorgeous sunny day. In the mountains. On the road from Bologna to Firenze. My morning food and rest stop. There’s isn’t the haze here that sat on the Po Valley. Much less traffic too. I’m at the point in the trip where I’m supposed to start buying presents. It’s been planned. Except I’m feeling poor, can’t think of what to give, and am not up for a day of compulsory shopping. Also, there are also quite a few names on the list. I like the idea of giving people journal entries and photos (more words than pictures). It’s relatively cheap, very personal, very creative, fun to do, and I can give it to everyone as a combination gift from the trip and Christmas present.

My flight to London departs in five hours. My stomach is full of butterflies. 85 days in Europe. My god, what have I wrought? Yes, I’m worried and scared. People ask if I’m excited. Right now, I don’t feel the excitement. Have I forgotten something? What about customs? Check-in? Getting from the airport to London? To the hostel? Does the hostel have my reservation?

London. I am here. Never again will I say I’ve never left the U.S. Today there were many moments when a mystery I’d long heard of became a seen and understood reality. Yet I’m often stunned by how familiar it is. The ads. The language. The stores. The corporate logos. The music in the pubs. The city. There are, however, few of the good summer tans so prevalent in Boston.

On the bus from Heathrow to London I overhead a middle-aged British couple talking to
a couple of tourists. “Americans?” the British asked. “No, Canadians. We feel we belong here.” The British were very apologetic.

 

Would I be able to make this trip without my journal? Yes, but it would be lots lonelier. This quiet paper makes good company.

 

Today I walked past Parliament, Maggie’s house, various government office buildings. I saw not a single Union Jack. Not one fling anywhere. Washington, DC is littered with the U.S. flag. Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret’s next door were, however, plastered with wall monuments. They honored people from god know when. Those so honored include the civil servants in India—who’ve done her so much good. Maybe they’ll run out of space someday.

I can see where traveling alone could be a bore. No one to share your adventures with. Meals, this one for example, are silent.

 

I saw a poster in a subway train about unattended bags. Don’t touch them. Don’t pull the emergency stop handle until the train’s in the station. Don’t tell other passengers. It wasn’t until I read the last line that I realized it wasn’t about lost property but about bombs.

 

My money belt gives me a little paunch. There’s a surprising sense of physical security from having it snugly around my waist, like a warm hand on my belly. I feel extra safe. Maybe it’s more like a diaper.

My self-criticism machine was turned on tonight. I passed a bar full with a young crowd. Some punks but very mixed. I didn’t go in. I had to walk past twice. I’ve seen no other bar so full of people my age talking and enjoying themselves since I arrived. And I didn’t go in.

My self-criticism button on career issues may be tough to find in Europe (though I’ll manage some), but on relationship issues it will be easy to find. If I don’t do something, this trip will get very lonely. Many of my life’s’ choices were designed to force me to reach out to people and open up, to become an overcompensated shy person: Oberlin College, co-ops in college, organizing at the Boston Food Co-op, men’s consciousness raising group, and co-counseling. Now it appears that vacation by myself in Europe should be added to the list. If that’s the goal, I say let’s make a goal of it. Let’s not act on the fear and inhibition. Be a fool. ACT NOW.

At the London Bridge. When I wrote that ACT NOW last night, I was heading to bed. But an instant later, when I thought about those impulsively written words, I knew that to go to bed would be another failure. Visible in the dining hall at the hostel were several people watching the tv. To ACT NOW was to go in and talk to them—and so I did.

 

Buckingham Palace, home of the Queen, is surrounded by a high iron fence. The tourists straining at the gate brought up visions of the people in revolt.

London doesn’t have that many skyscrapers. The city is very dense mile after mile, but it doesn’t go up the way New York or Boston does. It lacks that verticality. Maybe it’s zoning laws.

 

I’m increasingly at home here in London. A lot of this is due to having walked around enough to know where I am physically in the world. I am obsessive about wanting to know the layout of an area. I often walk routes tangential to previous excursions to connect my internal maps. Coming to a spot from this way or that. Mentally connecting a square with a monument up the street. Having been here a few days, I am now more content to sit and talk to young Americans, to sit and eat a slow brunch. Because I have a basic knowledge of the city’s physical make-up, it’s mine.

At the Cathedral at Canterbury. Thomas A Becket was slain here and this became a favorite on the pilgrimage tour. It seems that a pilgrimage was mostly a vacation by another name–or do they just tell us tourists that so we can pretend we’re part of a great historical tradition?

The main section of a cathedral has three parts: the nave, the choir, and the apse. This church is divided almost in half by a wall separating the choir from the nave. Apparently, the public could stir up quite a ruckus, so the monks made a barrier between where they sat in the choir and where the congregation was in the nave. Soundproofing. Besides, the Mass was in Latin and so the public couldn’t understand it anyway.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to be in this church full of loudsinging people. A Celtics game at the Boston Garden was the only comparison I could think of. A large noisy crowd. A building with history and lots of things commemorating old heroes. Spectacles on a regular basis. A sense of pride from being a spectator. Hmm.

The apse is the holiest part of the church. The apse at Canterbury is dedicated to recent martyrs. There were displays for two people: pictures, typed information sheets in clear plastic. One of the two so honored was Martin Luther King. There was a long quote from his sermon the night before he died. Teary-eyed I was.

I am on the coast of England. It was a touching moment when I looked out at the familiar ocean and thought about ‘what is out there?’ I always ask myself this question, considering its layers of meaning, whenever I gaze at the ocean. At the physical level, looking from New England, what’s out there is England and Europe. Today I stood at the shore and realized that ‘I am in England looking out’ and cried.

 

People call each other “love” here. “Hello love” the woman who just walked in said to her friend. The man who checked me into the campground tonight called me “love.”

Inexplicably, my mood has shifted. Yesterday was the first fun day cycling. Rolling along narrow country lanes lined with high hedges. Riding like a race car driver or a bob sled runner.

I went to the American Express office in Brighton to cash some travelers’ checks. In a typically American fashion, the desk and files are identical – yes, identical – to the ones in the Boston office. Same brown counters. Same maroon filing cabinets behind.

Daily, hourly, I make decisions about what I want to do, where I want to go, how long I want to stay. There is no one else to please. No moral principles to question. No career criteria in waiting. What do I want to do is this trip’s guiding light.

I went drinking with an English man named Alan last night for the second night in a row. He’s 26 and has already worked at the same job for ten years. He invited two German girls and a Scottish lad. They all ended up joining us, so we were a fivesome. The conversation moved along. The Germans spoke passable English. A boy-meets-girl scene: Alan boastful and forward, me entertaining and respectful, the Scottish lad kind and quiet, the German girls cute and confident. They’re 17 years old and in England for a month. Alan reminded me of Mick Jagger: cute and cocky with a British working-class accent and thick sensual pouting lips.

Visited the castle at Arundel (accent on the first syllable). Picture perfect. I was reassured to learn that the extensive remodeling in the 19^th century was designed to provide a vision of the ideal Norman castle. It is too perfect.

It was fun to visit nonetheless. Home of the Earls of Norfolk. Number 16 currently calls the castle home. Room after room has huge portraits hung on the walls. I’d seen such paintings in museums, but they’d looked ridiculous. Here they made sense and seemed totally appropriate. The rooms were huge, the walls cold and gray. These big portraits were lively and wonderful. The conveyed the history of the place, a castle that has been in the family for 600 years.

I visited a church next to the castle that was built in the 1300s. It had been part of a monastery when Henry the VIII dissolved the monasteries in the 1500s. This one went too, but only half the building was made an Anglican church. The other half became a burial place for these Earls of Norfolk. The Earls remained Catholic and retained the castle only through their connection with Anne Boleyn.

Where the nave of the church ends and the choir begins, there is an arch. This was walled up, an Anglican church and a Catholic chapel in the same building. In 1879 the Anglican parish church went to court trying—unsuccessfully—to claim the whole building. After their failure, the Earls replaced the bricks with a glass wall and a metal grill locked shut. Now you can look from one church in to the other.

In 1977, for the first time in over 400 years, the gates were unlocked and one service was held in the entire church. A Christian unity celebration, appropriately enough. Three times since then, the door has been unlocked. Always the Anglican and Catholic bishops are present. One of the occasions was when Prince Charles came to visit town; he shouldn’t be inconvenienced by such foolishness. Being the head of the Church of England, the Queen has to give her approval for the doors to be opened.

It rained all day yesterday, but I awoke this morning to blue skies and high expectations. Last night I asked the woman running the hostel if she’d heard a weather forecast for today. “Sunny and showery.” This sounded like a meteorologist’s joke to me. “What’s that?” “Well, that’s what it will probably be like tomorrow.” I was still incredulous.

On awaking to sun, I was preparing for a quick departure when I looked outside and was shocked to see it raining. I slowed down. In a few minutes, the rain stopped. “Whew! Glad that’s over. Blue skies again. We’re leaving.” Then more rain. And so on. It started and stopped raining three or four times before I even left the hostel. The whole day was like that: clouds white, clouds gray, blue sky, all rushing past, sitting close together, sharing the sky. The rainy spells were invariably followed by brilliant sun. I stopped under a tree to avoid a brief shower. Moments after starting up, I stopped again to bask in the glorious sun. Sunny and showery.

 

I mailed my camping gear including tent and stove back to Boston today. Kept my sleeping bag, a big security blanket.

 

I am bored with the English countryside. The only variations my eyes can see are more hilly versus less hilly, the degree of urbanization, where the ocean is, and pastures versus planted fields versus woods. That’s it.

Green grass is everywhere in England. Hiking paths of grass. Tennis courts of grass. Bowling lawns of grass. All the normal grass-covered things too. There’s so much rain that it grows and grows. No one has hoses for watering their gardens either.

Rambo has just opened in Great Britain. Children under 15 cannot attend. One British critic wrote about Rambo:

He is a hybrid of James Bond and Tarzan so, as a result, his adventures afford ample room for certain fantasies which we have come to associate (though not exclusively) with the United States – in particular, the extraordinary fascination with technology combined with an almost primeval attitude towards humans which are similarly associated with the American cinema, principal among them being a magisterial command of technique combined with a gross sentimentality of theme.

It may be politically incorrect, but here goes… I am an American from America. We have American music, American movies and American politics. I use ‘from the United States’ as much as possible, but I’m being trained out of it. Everyone else says ‘Americans do this…’ and so on. Canadians are the main exception–there aren’t many tourists from Latin American running around—they wouldn’t say this. Or maybe they would. I’m an American and they’re Canadian. I must confess to liking the image of America here: big, lively, the land of hope.

I’ve found the sea again, though not quite as planned. I’m in Portsmouth waiting to catch a ferry to France tomorrow. The passenger ferries from this part of England have all moved from Southampton to Portsmouth, 25 miles away. I didn’t discover this until I biked up to the shipyard gates in Southampton. Oh well…

 

On the ferry to France. Another sunny day. I almost with it would rain, as if I have an allotment of sunny days and don’t want to use them all up. How silly.

My first night in France. Now sitting by the ocean. A bright pink sunny prepares to set. To my right the rounded but steep hills of Normandy run up to the sea and drop off.

 

I am apprehensive about traveling in a country where I don’t know the language. Limiting the trip to four countries has do with wanting to have to deal with only three foreign languages. On departing the ferry in France, I quickly changed into my cycling outfit and sped out of town along the coast. I know how to cycle and it doesn’t require talking to people. The ride was a scenic joy. I’ve been on a navigational high. But alas, fear has also done well today. For, in my first day in France, I have yet to communicate with anyone verbally. As a result, dinner is trail mix and dried apricots.

 

Dinner time. At a creperie. They’re native to Normandy. I had three different crepes tonight and each had a different batter. Impressive.

The food shops in these small towns in France are very busy in the morning. Many people walking the streets with a baguette or two. Guess you buy a loaf of fresh bread every day. Fresh lots of things.

 

A magic moment. Sitting in one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever seen. Classical music playing. Off in the distance sits Mont St. Michel, its main spire clearly visible, rising out of the sea, pointing towards the pink sky of sunset. Magnifique.

 

Just ordered dinner. In French. No problem. Who said traveling in France for those who don’t speak French is difficult? It’s true that no one is rushing around to greet me with open arms. The people I pass on the streets are not forthcoming with great hellos or even meek smiles. Tipping my head in acknowledgment generally has no effect. I’ve taking to saluting as I bike by. That works.

In a strange way, it’s easier for me traveling in France. I don’t speak French, so ‘outreach’ would be ridiculous. Hence, I don’t abuse myself for being alone.

At Mont St. Michel. There’s a building here called the Marvel. It’s three stories high, two rooms to each floor. The top floor is the cloister and monk’s dining room, under that the monk’s study room and the banquet room for rich pilgrims, and on the bottom the monk’s storeroom and the meeting room for the poor pilgrims. The layers reflect medieval society’s view of the world. Poor, rich and priests as one hierarchy. Storeroom, workroom and cloister for prayer another.

The only times the monks were alone was when they were in the cloister. All other times were communal. Meals were silent with a priest reading from some holy book. Meditate while you eat. The cloisters were for private meditation and prayer. Closed all around expect open to God above.

I spoke to several tourists at the hostel in St. Malo who are traveling for a year or more. India. Southeast Asia. Japan. I’m now torn between continuing past Greece or turning back to Boston. (Like how I put that?) Enough, enough, is it ever enough? Am I ever enough? Mostly I feel not. I want it to stop, to leave me, this doubting, this self-criticism, this never being good enough.

 

It’s Sunday and the French are out as families. My favorite image of France so far is that of a French family—including children, adults, and often grandparents—sitting at a table by the side of the road eating their Sunday dinner. Huge loaves of bread, especially fat today, adorn the tables. Animated conversation. This afternoon I was eight or nine families eating like this. I was touched. I don’t do this with my family.

 

Puttered around Dinan this evening. These towns are well-preserved. This one has old timbered buildings hanging out over the sidewalks. Block after block of centuries-old buildings. Walking home I felt I was centuries old. But then I imagined I was on a Hollywood set. Hundreds of years ago this street would probably have been a sewer full of shit and piss.

 

Like the heroine of the Margaret Drabble novel I’m reading, my main strategy for dealing with sadness is to keep moving.

One of the incongruities of France is cycling along a back road on Belle Île and hearing music coming from a house—the Eagles’ Life in the Fast Lane.

My generation of Americans, my class at least, is afraidof missing something. We missed the sixties. We missed Woodstock. We sit up at campfires afraid we’ll miss something if we go to bed.

 

In Nantes, another university town. I like the energy in the streets that students bring. That must be part of what appeals to me about Boston.

 

A truck full of champagne bottles in milk cartons drives by. Ahhhh.

 

Entering my paid-for hotel room yesterday, I was very happy. Home. Here were 120 cubic meters that, for a few significant hours, were mine. And it had nice touches like the spacious writing able and especially those big doors opening onto my porch-ledge.

On second thought, this moment of initial possession may be the room’s high point. The relief in having a bed and a home for the day, to be able to close a door and let go of my burdens in privacy. Spending hours there doesn’t appeal to me.

I’m finally starting to enjoy my Margaret Drabble novel. Accepting the various neurotic and tormented characters means of survival as just their foibles. Sad and serious perhaps, but foibles. Issues of emotional, not physical, survival. Similar to my demons in ways, but all—mine included—just the complex attempts of a human being to live in this time and place.

 

Work. All round me are people in cars and buses, on foot or bike, rushing off to work and school. So much more pleasant to be around than tourists. I’m someplace other than a spectacle created by the tourist industry to attract my dollars. People look relatively content and happy going about their daily chores. Unlocking the gates in front of their shop. Fluffing up someone’s hair. Fixing a shoe. Putting out their café chairs. I could see myself as a little shop keeper here, singing to my customers like my grandfather at his dry goods store. I’m not sure I need my work to be as intellectually stimulating as Anita. And as my suffering novel reminded me today, ambition is just another form of defect.

 

The chateau at Angers. A defensive fort, not a decorated home. Never taken in battle. I can see why. The moat is now half formal gardens and half deer park. That’s right, there are a half-dozen white-spotted deer wandering about. The rooftops and courtyard were similarly planted with gardens and sculpted trees. Not quite a restoration to original appearances! I preferred the water-filled moat at Nantes. The water there had a greenish look—stagnant and putrid. One of the few authentic things about these tourist sites is the smell of piss from all the men who relieve themselves wherever it’s convenient.

I finished my novel today. The ending was satisfying. Mostly because our heroine, if you can call her that, was happily reunited with her lover. The beginning of the book was so depressing that, rather than seeming trite, the happy ending was a relief.

 

In a university bookstore buying my next book. Went through the England language titles with a fine-tooth comb. One Hemingway. A collection of Frosts’ poetry. Nabokov. Some popular fiction for the tourists. What was most striking was the number of black writers represented. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man was there. Richard Wright. James Baldwin. Also, more English fiction than American. Lots of Shakespeare. Defoe. Austen. Two by Thomas Hardy. Virginia Woolf.

There were translations of writers I have never desired reading. Gore Vidal. Robert Ludlum. Many familiar titles. Small is Beautiful. Carl Jung. “See how much good stuff is written in English… Carl Jung didn’t write in English.” Whoops.

 

Awesome! I am impressed, pleased, content. It’s 11 AM and I sit before Notre Dame. I left Chartres at 7:30 this morning to board a train to Paris not knowing where I’d stay. I stood with my bike, illegally, in the narrow passageway between cars on the train. I’ve already found a place, checked in, and have the rest of the day to explore. Yippie!

 

Before me all lit up as night falls in Paris, stands the Eifel Tower. It looks just like I thought it would. I’ve seen enough pictures of it. I’ve also seen glimpses of it from afar today, but when I got up close, all of a sudden, I felt tears swelling up. Something about my being here and it being mine now too.

 

I passed an embassy today. The flag looked like that of an Arab nation. A guard stood in front of it wearing a bullet-proof vest and carrying a submachine gun. He wasn’t at attention, just casually hanging out on the watch. (There was a bombing in Rome today at the British Airways office. I’m flying British Air.)

 

My foyer is booked for tonight, so I had to find another place to stay in Paris. Checked out a hotel five blocks away that was recommended by a guide book. I arrived at 10 AM. People were sitting around on pillows eating breakfast with incense in the air. There was only one room available, with a double bed in it. Under the guidance of the Madam who runs the hotel, an American woman and I agreed to share it.

I’ve been so proud of feeling ‘everywhere at home’ on this trip. This is not merely some personal triumph though. There are several reasons why this is true:

• It would be much more difficult, if not impossible, for me to feel as relaxed if money—do I have enough? —were a constant concern. My self-confidence that I can find a job when I return fits in here too. This is more a reflection of the economic conditions where I live and my class background than anything else.
• English is the world’s major language. There are several English language bookstores in Paris, for example. In well-visited places, people in restaurants, hotels and museums generally speak some English. A Greek and a German might well communicate in English, that being the language they have in common.
• This is western civilization I’m visiting. Judeo-Christian heritage. Capitalism. Art and architecture. I would not feel so at home or fit in so comfortably on the streets of Cairo or New Delhi, Tokyo or Beijing.
• English-speaking tourists. I run into many English-speaking tourist: Americans, Canadians, the British, Australians, South Africans, etc. Part of the reason I’m not lonely is because there’s so many of them to talk to.
• Traveling alone is much easier for me as a man and will probably be more so in Italy and Greece. Mostly in ways I don’t notice. The lack of public lavatories would be a problem if I were a woman.
• I’ve seen few people of color in Europe. It would be difficult to feel ‘at home’ if I weren’t white.

Why walk the streets to see the city when the people of the city are all on the streets walking by? I do like this café culture. I still haven’t learned what to order though.

 

People in Paris are more fashion conscious than in London. No punk scene visible. Lots of people looking very nice and beautiful. I’ve never seen more passionate public kissing anywhere (boy meets girl, of course). On park benches, lying in the grass, in restaurants, in cars. Luscious kisses with open mouths as if they were about to wriggle out of their clothes.

 

My new hotel is full of ex-patriate American and British. I don’t want to be part of a ‘lost generation’ in Paris. I may sometimes long for Woodstock, but not for Hemingway.

Sunday. In the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. The organ started playing, the glorious organ. The deep sounds reverberated throughout the church. It was my kind of music: simple, sentimental, transcendent, triumphant. The organ played and was building towards a climax. Something big was about to happen. Something really big! Then everyone in the church stood up. Yes! It was happening. They had arrived. They were here. Christ’s second coming seemed the only thing that could generate such anticipation, such excitement. After a few seconds I saw the procession: altar boy with candles, a couple of priests…

Things deteriorated quickly when they tried to get the audience to sing. A brother in white stood in front and a weak sound drifted up. I left.

 

The Atlantic is behind me, the familiar Atlantic. For the rest of the trip I’m a Mediterranean baby. As I suspected but didn’t confirm, someone did come to wake me up before the train pulled into Avignon. But I had scary dreams all night about trains. Pulling into strange and dangerous cities. One where my money belt, wallet, and camera were left in the sleeping sack on the train.

In Arles, the main café square in town. Van Gogh and Picasso sipped here.

I spoke with an Irish man last night. He picked grapes in the area 20 years ago and is back visiting to see if it’s changed. He’s hitched to get around. The middle-aged American who sat across from ema the restaurant tonight is traveling around in a van. No definite plans. Traveling for a year. These men give me faith that I can travel whatever age I am.

Nowhere on the southern coast of France. A chemical processing town. Each section of town is named after a chemical firm. Ceiling fans rotate overhead. A man bangs away on a pinball machine. Several people sit at the bar. A woman drops coins in a jukebox. This is very familiar. I should be in Oklahoma—industrial, flat and hot… They don’t have café tables in nowhere Oklahoma.

 

I average about a loaf of bread a day, maybe more. I’ve decided that the bread is just the framework and it’s everything else that goes on it that’ important. So tonight, we have three types of cheese, two kinds of fruit, a tomato, chocolate, and preserves to accompany the bread. One of the joys of cycling is that I can eat incredible quantities of food and still lose weight.

 

Yesterday, cycling through the industrial zone on the coast, I actually enjoyed the rows of huge black cranes, the monumental oil tanks, and smokestacks. In a country that tries to downplay modern architecture in the town, it was the most striking modern work I’d seen.

 

This journal sure is focused on me. I like this. I do that. I guess the point isn’t that Europe exists and here’s how it is, but that I’m here and this is what I find.

 

Palm trees. I like palm trees. They’re beautiful and reassuring. “No getting cold here buddie” they say to me. I message I enjoy receiving—frequently. Maybe I needed an extra blanket on my crib. (I was born in March.)

Sometimes I see tour buses drive by, everyone all warm and cozy and safe inside, and I want to be in there. Then I remember the smell. I couldn’t handle having the smell of a bus as a dominant theme of my trip to Europe.

A middle-aged American and I are sharing a hotel room in Nice. He has lived in Spain the last few years teaching at an American college there. He describes it as a glorified high school. They only had two courses for him this year and so he took a leave of absence and is traveling. His major activity appears to be lying in his bed. He wants to sit and talk with me all day, but I have little interest. He is troubled. His traveling companion has left to travel by himself and our friend is a diet-controlled diabetic who is gaining weight and consistently spilling sugar.

As usual, I’m thinking about my tomorrow—cycling up the Riviera into Italy. Where he going tomorrow? “Nowhere. I guess I’m waiting for something to happen.” Ick! Waiting for something to happen and he doesn’t even know what. I thought I had problems. I told him it seemed he was looking for a traveling companion, made a good suggestion about how to find one (a suggestion he took up), and left to explore Nice.

Cycled past the casino in Monaco. Stopped to gaze at the gaudy and famous building. I was loitering on their pristine street and was told to move on. Cycling along the Riviera is heady stuff. The road clinging to the edge of cliffs or rolling by the frequent beaches. The water down below is the glorious blue of legends. I went swimming in Nice; the water was warmer than the air.

 

October 8. The Italian Riviera. Lying on the beach. Warm sand. Warm water. Warm sun. But the beach is almost deserted. I’m not used to having the beach all to myself. Where is everyone? I’m lonely.

 

I was picked by a Dutch man my first night in Italy. “You’re an American.” “Yup. How can you tell?” “Oh, you’re prepared for whatever might happen. You have your raingear and your knapsack.” Like every Dutch person I’ve met, he speaks excellent English. I had drinks with him, an English woman, and an Italian friend of theirs. The woman had lived in the small Italian resort town for four years and the Dutch man for three months. He had been passing through town when he fell in love with the place and decided to move here. The woman’s story was similar. They both live in one of the town’s two campgrounds. We had difficult imaging each other’s lives. Their seemed a relaxed beatific bore to me. My rushing off the next morning an affront to their chosen home.

The Italian, who knew a little English, tried to start a conversation with me by bringing up Dallas. They all loved it. Dynasty too. The two shows are on the same night and everyone here stays home and watches. This led to a long conversation between them about Dallas. They knew all the names: Sue Ellen, Bobby, etc. I’d forgotten all except J.R. His attempt at finding common ground failed.

Genoa. I found the restaurant I was looking for. It’s friendly, calm and cheap. The decor is also in love with America. A row of posters, big full-sized ones, lines two walls: Evil Knievel, U.S. college basketball action, surfing under Golden Gate Bridge, an Oakland Raiders running back, Sly Stallone as Rocky, Paul Newman, James Dean (cowboy), Steve McQueen, John Wayne (also cowboy). The two most prominent lights have crepe paper over them: one Italian flag design and one the Stars and Stripes. Behind the tv are actual Italian and American flags. On the lower wall is a poster of a U.S. flag with a huge aggressive eagle bursting through it.

Most telling perhaps was a single poster in place of honor; it was right next to the tv over the bar. It was a photo of a single man taken from slightly above him. He wears a blue jump suit. His clothes have a hint of officiality, but are comfortable and functional. Functional because he is standing atop a mountain with many snow-covered peaks ranged behind and below him. Colorado? The sense is that he’s standing at the top of the world. He has ‘American’ written all over him. He wears reflector aviator sunglasses. Most important is his pose. Sunglasses on, hands on his hips. This is mine, he seems to say. With confidence, I am lord of all this.

Unconsciously, I take this post frequently myself. I get off my bike to gaze in wonder at the world, my hands on my hips. I am here. I conquered this. This is mine. So American.

The tv in this restaurant is on. Some terrorist deal involving a ship with all safe and a dead American. A small crowd watches intently. Someone asks me if I understood and explained that the hostages had been released. [This was the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro in Egypt by the Palestinian Liberation Front.]

 

I stumbled across a church in Genoa. A mass was being said, out of sight, in one of the transepts. The service was in Italian. For centuries the Mass was in Latin and few people understood what was being said. It felt like that, mysterious again.

Then the priest started a part of the Mass that I could recognize simply by the cadences and breaks. I haven’t gone to church regularly in ten years, but I knew exactly where they were in the service and what they were saying. The priest sang ‘hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah’ in the same sing-song tune that I grew up with. The pleasing effect was ruined. The best comparison I could think of wat McDonalds—serving up a product worldwide that is remarkable for its consistency from franchise to franchise, country to country.

 

A recent dream. I am with my father in my parents living room. I’m talking about some personal failing of mine. “I suppose you blame your mother and me for this problem” he said. “No. I blame your parents.”

 

Mickey Mouse and Snoopy are very big in Genoa. I saw shops whose windows were willed with nothing else. Lots of people wearing them on their shirts and motor bikes. It looks good. So colorful, light and refreshingly new in a town that is crowded and dirty and old.

 

Pavia. The Po Valley. There’s a university here; a strong presence. A hundred students gathered in the town’s main plaza this evening, standing in groups talking. My eyes have been in the shirts here again: two St. Louis University (?!), one Boston Red Sox, another Boston something indecipherable, one University of Wisconsin, one Kansas, along with the ‘typical’ Mickey Mouse and Snoopy. I also saw a pet shop named Snoopy.

Arriving in crowded town looking for obscure streets with no map is not great fun, especially after spending the day with the body glorious out in the country.

I’ve been rather lifeless today. One of my guide books recommends a four-day ‘vacation’ in the middle of your trip. I’ve been traveling for seven weeks with no such break and none planned either. At least this café is the perfect place for a lifeless tourist to do nothing and see Italy.

Firenze, I am yours. A glorious morning. The sky an eggshell Florentine blue. I sit before a fresco of the crucifixion. A simple composition. Christ on the cross, dead. Blood dripping from his hands and side, a river of it flowing out of his feet and down the base of the cross. Kneeling at the foot of the cross, gently caressing the wood, is a monk. He looks up at Jesus. His face sad, calm and reflective. I have been wallowing in Christina images for months. While usually recognizing the scenes depicted, the emotional content has mostly passed me by. My Catholic upbringing gets in the way.

 

An hour later. Again, sitting in front of this fresco. The walls of this rectory are filled with the works of Fra Angelica. All Christian. The bambino suddenly became little Mark. Pure and powerful and good with the world before him. This was almost too painful to imagine. The judgement day scenes made me laugh. Lots of blood and fire in hell. All varieties of activies with monsters and pain. In heaven there was just a circle of people holding hands, a scene of placid happiness. Heaven looked a bore.

 

At the museum with Michelangelo’s David and other sculpture by him. The pieta, his fourth, is remarkable for the weight of the limp Christ’s body slumping to the group. David doesn’t look Jewish. He’s a Greek God, slingshot over his shoulder, stone in an oversized hand. His eyes full of intensity staring at an unseen Goliath, confident of success.

 

The Italian government has fallen thanks to our pal Ron. The U.S. intercepted an Egyptian Boeing 737 passenger aircraft carrying four Palestinians who hijacked a ship and killed an American. The U.S. took the plane to a NATO base in Sicily where there was a confrontation between Italian soldiers and 50 U.S. Marines in battle dress who’d been told to ‘get the Palestinians.’ The International Herald Tribune has been editorializing on this daily.  Applause for Reagan—terrorists dealt with at last—and criticism for U.S. allies—Italy and Egypt—who didn’t do enough.

I am happy. At San Gimignano. Another gorgeous sunset. I am staying at the rectory of one of the two historic churches in town. When I cycled up to the church to see if they had a free room, I pulled my one pair of pants on over my biking shorts and pink striped leg warmers. Fortunately, they did have a room. They had a short man come to show me to my room. He was like the village idiot character from a Fellini movie. We started at room one and counted up each room till we got to my number. As we walked by the room before mine, we heard music coming from a radio. I thought it was really rude of a guest to be playing a radio in the rectory.

A few minutes later a priest came into my room. He didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Italian. I did somehow manage to say that I wanted another blanket in Italian. He lived in the room next door. He said something about ‘vino.’ Not knowing what he said, I said something about ‘bira.’ I went out for dinner, heard a concert in another church, wandered the historic town in the dark. Thinking about the priest who came to my room, I realized that perhaps he was inviting me to visit him and was offering me a glass of wine. So I headed back to the rectory and indeed the door to the room next to mine was ajar. I knocked and went in. He lived in a two-room suite and had a beer for me. We somehow managed to chat away happily for thirty minutes despite not having a language in common.

It is one of those moments that last a long time, when I gaze out at the world and feel content, quiet and very alive. Before me is a mountain plane with layers of peaks rising in the mist behind it. Rows of trees. A collectuib of stone farm buildings here close and another further off. Finally, rising over the trees, the outline of the towers and the buildings of the hill town I’m heading to.

Gubbio. Two other cycling tourists were staying at my hotel last night. They’re Americans. We chatted in the hall. This morning we happened to leave the hotel at the same time, were on the same road, and so ended up cycling together. They’re the only people I’ve cycled with the whole trip. We stopped for a break in the pass. I casually mentioned that I was from Boston. “Where in Boston do you live?” “North Cambridge.” Where in North Cambridge?” they asked. “Do you know where Verna’s Coffee Shop is?” “Don’t tell me we live on the same street.” We had one of those poignant it’s-a-small-world moments high in the mountains of Italy, discussing Jose’s, our beloved neighborhood Mexican restaurant, and other local wonders. Trips like mine now seemed a common affair and not a unique adventure at all.

Lying in bed. In Pescara in the Abruzzi. Not on the itinerary. I’m in the home of an Italian family. The son and I found ourselves chatting in front of a train schedule in Ancona. He was going to his parent’s house, two hours down the cost on the way to Brindisi, my destination. He invited me to spend the night at his parents. I sized up the situation and said yes.

He speaks very good English and is talkative. His life is in turmoil. He describes his life and problems much as I expect a friend of mine to, except he talks about and expresses an emotionality not generally found in American males. His mother asked if I was traveling with someone. “Solo,” I said. She said something in Italian and made a gesture. Her son translated. She said it took big balls like a bull’s to do that and her gesture was indicating the size of the balls, a handful.

Brindisi. Picking up my bike up at the train station, the song in my head was ‘reunited and it feels so good” I enjoyed arriving here. Walking off the train into the warm most air, the night dark and mysterious, the sea nearby.

 

Singing to myself is a major form of entertainment when cycling. My songs are usually upbeat and exuberant. “There’s no stppping me now…” “I’m so excited. I just can’t hide it…” “FAME! I want to live forever, I want to learn how to fly…” “Just once in a lifetime a man gets that feeling, to soar like an eagle and take to the sky…” Lots of John Lennon “hold on Marco, Marco hold on” and Elton John “I’m still standing. Yeah yeah yeah.” You get the idea. It’s just as well that I’m traveling alone. Anyone with me would get sick of the repetition.

 

I’m on the ferry to Greece. After a wonderful night’s sleep on the ship’s deck, I awoke to sun and blue skies in another land of myth. The boat is at this moment slowly pulling out of the harbor at Korfu. Off to the left, for hours now, large stark mountains have risen out of the sea.

There’s less than three weeks left in this grip. A way of life about to be set aside. I’ll be ready to return to Boston in three weeks. My friends. Bagels and the Sunday paper. Talking in English until I forget there are places where it’s not understood. Long warm baths. Mahler on a cold winter’s day. These are some of the pleasures that await me.

 

Outside Ancona, at my last rest stop in Italy, a sad mood enveloped me. It was cold and overcast. I was on the ugly edge of the city. I was struck by an urge to simply walk away from my bike and to disappear from friends and family (and myself?) Would they ever be able to find me? A painful rebirth this would be, but simply walking away from all the luggage I’ve collected and carry appealed.

I didn’t do it.

Two hours later I was sitting on the edge of the train station talking with my new Italian friend. The next day, on the train to Brindisi, I felt a warm glow from all the human interaction.

At Bassae, temple to Apollo, God of the Sun. At 1,200 meters, high in the mountains. Nothing but shrubs and rocks around for many kilometers. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a Greek temple before. It looks very familiar. Where I dislike so much of the monumental architecture in the United States decorated with columns, this feels right. 15 columns down one side, 6 columns down the other.

Cycling back to town from Bassae, I saw a full moon rising and stopped… Now sitting by the wide of the road at that stop. The moon coming over the mountains, the little town that I’m staying in tonight is in this valley. Its lights are coming on now. I can hear cars and dogs and children.

 

This trip is nearing its end. The cold nights tell me that. Now the mountains of Greece, a small town in white, a waning moon before me. On arriving in Boston, I will walk in the front door with my luggage and be home. My room, oh so familiar, will look as it did three months ago. I have a history with every item in it. My friends will be running around the town, sitting at the end of telephone lines. The mountains will seem so far away. They will be far away. And this life I’ve made for myself and my bike will be over. That’s sad.

But this trip must end. It’s an adventure, not a way of life.

I am here. This trip’s highs have often been merely stopping to acknowledge that to myself—and then bending to the wave of feelings that though brings.

I am here. And being here moves me.

Sartre thought that adventures weren’t enough. I think he’s right. But sometimes I wonder. They’re certainly glorious excitement and a great substitute for substance. (I still find no moral basis for this trip.)

 

At one point on the ride to Bassae I stopped to rest, the mountain dropping off steeply to my right. I stood there and listened, my chain and derailleurs and wheels now silent. I heard dozens of bells. The hills were alive ringing with the sound of innumerable bells. I thought of the fiction of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the mysterious moments in the film El Norte. The sound was so magical. I couldn’t see a single goat. The sound just rose from all sides of the mountains and surrounded me. I was in the presence of a great power.

Cycling back to town later, I thought ‘up ahead is the spot where I heard the bells.’ I turned the corner to see 15 goats blocking the road at that spot. They stood their ground and stared at me with their intelligent faces. Gods visiting me as goats. I don’t know what their message was. I cycled on at them and they jumped the guard rail and scampered out of sight.

 

The next day. When I went outside yesterday after dinner, the moon was a pale orange, only a corner of white light remaining—a full lunar eclipse. But there’s no earthly interference tonight. The moon’s beams are bathing our planet. What is she saying to me? I fear it’s making a request I’ll be unable to fulfil, a sacrifice I’m unwilling to make.

When I first moved to Boston I was often lonely. I would sit in my bedroom and call to my friend the moon. A familiar face who had never abandoned me. Tonight, I want to dedicate myself to the moon. To love and follow her. I may do most of the talking, but aren’t relationships sometimes like that? I should pack up my belongings and leave my hotel to spend the night in communion with the moon. It’s not nearly as cold as last night. Ah, but here’s the problem. The world of men interferes. Lights. Roofs. Activities. Relationships. Comforts that draw me away from the moon. This saddens me. Why shouldn’t I leave my hotel room to sleep under the moon?

My friend has spoken to me tonight. She says I’m not to worry. She understands that I must live here on earth, that I will forget her, ignore her, leave her form the comforts of my white sheets. She says that’s OK, good even, as it should be. She’ll still be there for me. Whatever my choices, I am cherished. She’ll accompany me till I die. Thank you.

Prego. (She speaks Italian too!)

This is a peasant culture. Many donkeys on the roads carrying people, wood, trees, everything. I expect to see Joseph leading Mary and the Bambino up the road any minute. Many shepherds with dogs watch over flocks of goats. The women wear dark colors and scarves around their heads.

 

Half an hour ago my sweetly supportive voice turned vicious and mocking. I faced what appeared to be two long killer climbs over the main mountain ridge of the Peloponnesian Peninsula. Climbs of 2,000 feet each, across the range and back (because that’s the way the road goes). There was an easier way I could have taken this morning that completely bypassed these climbs and the two I’ve already made. I decided against it. So, this afternoon I mocked myself. “Where’s the strong cyclist we were so proud of yesterday? Hey big man, you have to pay the price!” and so on.

Then the wind turned against me too. I felt and spoke like Odysseus, asking the gods for mercy and help. The wind god, at least, has clearly not been favoring me. As I swooped down a hill erasing hard work—I want to climb the ridge—my torments were at a fever pitch. I wanted to throw my bike down to stamp my feet and rage. “So, test yourself. Here’s your chance.”

Then, miraculously, a pass in the mountains appeared. The best I’d seen all trip, bar none. The mountains parted to let me through. And with little additional climbing I was on the other side of the mountains screaming and hollering and praising the immortals.

Turning north, I quickly made to my second climb. And lo, another great pass appeared. I now sit at the high point of this pass. To my left is the sea on the west side of the Mani Peninsula. To my right I see the water on the Githio side. Before me lay two cloud-capped mountains, a distant town, olive orchards, a beach. The gods be praised. Riding my bike now Im flying, as close as I’ll ever come. The wind is at my back, the ride is downhill from here. I’m flying!

In Sparta. I stuffed myself at dinner tonight. Two pizzas and spaghetti with meatballs. Blub blub. It was an expensive meal by Greek standards – 1,000 drachmas, or $7 U.S.

I’m sitting on a bench in the main square in town. It’s Saturday night and everybody’s out, especially the young. There are more of them than I expected. The square is paved, longer than it is wide, with outdoor cafes, ten tables deep, lining one side. As I entered the piazza, I noted all the people walking here and there. Sitting down I asked myself where they were all going, so many for a town of this size. Finally, looking at people more closely, I noticed that the vast majority were just walking with friends back and forth along the length of the square. On reaching the end, they turned around and headed back the other way.

This afternoon, the bars were full of men drinking, men talking, men playing cards. Where were the women? It’s a question I’ve asked before in Greece. At home working, I assume. At least tonight there were many women out. Mostly teenagers though, the new generation.

 

The words I use to describe my cycling are very aggressive: I rip through the countryside, power over the hills, blast through the towns.

 

Up at 7. Had my breakfast and daily shit already. Sparta bores me. A good sign. I must have lingered here. Does this trip lack for the boredom that would force me to be more inquisitive and perceptive? I have few illusions that I am living the life of the natives. How could I? I spend my days perched atop a bicycling careening through the countryside. At night, I eat in restaurants and sleep in boring hotel rooms with balconies. I’m a tourist traveling by bicycle. I’m an American tourist so I go-go-go. I have a checklist of things to do, places to visit. I carefully ration my days to different activities and towns.

The Cardinals were on my mind. Two nights ago, I dreamed I was at the seventh game of the World Series in Saint Louis. I was there with my family and we were all very excited. The outcome of the game is unclear, but the impression is of many people and great energy.

This is a bad omen. In 1968 I was at the seventh game of the World Series. The Cardinals had never lost a seventh game before. They did that sad day in 1968. They lost one this last week too. Boo hoo.

The Celtics lost in the Finals to the Lakers in June and now this. It leads to pronouncements on the essential sadness of existence—and the ridiculousness of basing regional pride in for-profit entertainment. It also leads to thoughts of the new basketball season. The Celtics are 2-1.

Today I fell in love with a town and stopped for the night. I stopped 30 kilometers short of my goal for the day. “Oh, impetuous Mark, no slavish follower of plans, no.”

Greece is certainly western civilization. The familiar smells and mood are what arrested me. High in the pine-covered mountains, the air crisp and sweet. The town square graced with huge trees whose yellow leaves have mostly fallen. Autumn. Small town. A slow Sunday. The square ringed with little cafes and taverns. I stopped and stared. When the proprietor of the unmarked hotel approached, I took it as a sign from the gods.

Many yards in town have chickens ang goats and a donkey or two. New houses are built next to old stone walls and abandoned shells of stone house. Slow winding roads and paths, most gravel and some paved, connect the houses huddled on the hillside.

As usual, the men are in the cafes. The older Greek men are very attractive with their bushy grey hair and thick moustaches. Among the men filling the taverna I’ve chosen are the town’s police officer in uniform and the Greek Orthodox priest, also in his occupation’s garb.

Later that day. I went for a wonderful walk. I left the square by a stone road. It quickly turned into concrete and then gravel. I followed a dirt path past the cemetery and came upon a flat spot high in the mountains. It was paved in stone, ten meters across, like a circular dance floor. The piece in the middle of the stone had some words in Greek and the year 1942.

In my mind I envisioned country fairs and romances, music and dancing and people laughing. A Greek Music Man. I sang Broadway show tunes at the top of my lungs, played a wild air guitar, and danced around the stone floor.

The leaves rustling in the trees. The mountains standing silent. The soon starry sky. The sounds of my voice. It seemed I was home.

I’m reading Laurence Durrell’s Bitter Lemons of Cyprus. I began it reluctantly. I had so enjoyed the classics—Sophocles, Aeschylus, Homer—and the mood they set. But I am pleasantly surprised. Durrell is modern, yet calm and generous. His journey is near enough in time and space to provide useful light, but far enough away that it doesn’t drown my insights with its glare.

I stopped and asked a woman running a gas station what time it was. She, like most Greeks I’ve met, thought I was German. Is it the blue eyes? The fair skin? The cycling outfit? That I don’t try to communicate in English? Maybe it’s my blond hair. ‘Americano’ I told her. That sat much better with her. Like the proprietor of the hotel last night, she has two brothers in America.

 

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus is sadly becoming a metaphor for the end of my trip. The book has gone from quiet evenings with friends under the Tree of Life to bombings, reporters and revolution. The Cypriots are attempting to gain independence from Great Britain. Reading the daily paper again, thinking about what I’ll do in Boston, and now this book make this calm seem a lie. The mountains and scenic fortresses and emerald sea a fantasy world that exists, but will soon disappear. Today I feel doomed to a life of suffering, the only relief in escape—like this trip—to dream worlds. Can I live in such a dream world? Is it morally justifiable? Do I want to? … Perhaps I merely need to finish this book.

Each of the four evangelists had a symbol. Mark’s is the lion. The Cathedral in Venice has his body. It’s called San Marco and the city ‘s symbol is the lion. I like it. Grrrrrrowl.

Beth should come to Greece. The mountains and sea lying together. The mountains muscular, rounded peaks and valleys. Where the mountains turn back forming a large back is a neck, gentle and soft. The sea is changeable, now calm and flat, tomorrow raging. Lovers lying together. I’m kissing the nape of the neck.

My last night by the sea. Tomorrow at this time I’ll be in Athens, crowded rushing dirty Athens. If my sleeping bag were any nearer the water, I’d need a raft. But enough talk. It’s time for action and if lovemaking is the theme, then look out sea here I come …. Splash!

I was ready for this trip’s end a couple of days ago, but that was easy. It wasn’t so close. Now, lying in my sleeping bag, the recently risen sun lighting a lone fisherman, white rocks and brilliant trees, I’m sad.

As a child I used to get upset because the Acropolis had been used as an armory and blown up. But for all of the damage done, the Parthenon is one of the best preserved Greek temple I’ve seen. Almost all its pillars stand. It sits atop a hill; this I knew. I hadn’t realized how it stands out. As I cycled into Athens, it appeared in the center of town as a glorious plastic model atop a flat mountain, it’s white a perfect color for cheap reproductions.

Sunday. I went to a Greek Orthodox service this morning in a small old church that was very dark and beautiful. The church sits smack in the center of the street. It predates the layout of the city and the street has to bend around it.

I followed a woman inside and stood in the back watching. Then I took a seat; there weren’t many chairs. A group of six men—more came as the service went on—sang in deep mournful tones. A couple of times during the service, the choir broke in to light fast-paced tunes, suddenly sounding like a barbershop quartet. While they sang, the priest loudly mumbled prayers at the altar.

As more people came in, I noted that all the women were on one side and all the men on the other. I was with the girls. Only two seats from the center, but definitely on the wrong side. I debated moving. The little church was now packed with people, most standing shoulder to shoulder. I didn’t want to give up my seat or to attract too much attention. Besides, I rationalized, I was one of the tallest people there and to move would mean blocking six person’s view. (The Greeks aren’t a very tell people.) I stayed put.

The worshippers often made the sing of the cross, sometimes three and four times rapidly in a row. Some kissed pictures of Mary on entering the church. Once, the priest walked through the congregation carrying the gold-covered New Testament (I’m guessing) over his head. All with lots of incense raised with a noisy clanking of the burner. All the lights, save two, were candles set in the ceiling chandeliers.

The four central pillars of this Byzantine Church were collected from ancient Greek buildings—white marble amidst a building of dark brown. The columns and capitals didn’t exactly match and all the capitals were different. When they’d built the church, they’d found these pillars lying around and had incorporated them. Maybe this was the site of an ancient temple.

 

There’s not much action at my foyer and I have been looking for some conversation. Sitting in the sun this morning, an attractive woman took the other end of the bench. “What’s the news today?” she asked our paper-clad hero. And so, a conversation began. She’s from Australia, traveling for a year, and heading from Greece to Egypt and Israel. We visited a museum together. I asked her a question I’ve been wanting to ask other tourists. “Why did you come on this trip?” Her response: “To meet Mr. Right.”

 

I saw the film Kiss of the Spider Woman for a second time. Cost under $1 US. In English with Greek subtitles. Just as disturbing this time around. Now like a Greek play based on legends we all know. I’m still more identified with William Hurt, the faggot into beautiful escape and love, than to the political revolutionary. Though given a chance, I might identify with Marta, the journalist’s bourgeois lover—‘she has everything: education, looks, money… and freedom.”

I feel indicted by the movie. As if the attacks on Molina were directed at me. I sometimes write that this trip has no moral basis. The words had no sting. Now the privilege strikes home again. Barbara said I would be much more like Molina if I didn’t have such strong internal compunctions about what I ‘should’ do. She might be right.

Images and feelings swirl up and drift back down. One day when I was 15, I said to myself that if I were alive in Christ’s day I would have stood with him. If I were alive during the 1840s, I would have fought slavery. If I were in France during WWII, I would have been part of the Resistance. Then came the realization that although I didn’t know what they were yet, injustices just as great were happening at that moment.

On the plane to Boston. I already feel like I’m home: flight attendants with British accents, classical music, the whole milieu. It’s not a completely satisfying sensation. My mind, always rushing ahead, doesn’t see the now familiar rituals of a bike journey: rising with the sun, eating breakfast, stretching, packing up, saying good-bye to my home for that night. Then off to new vistas: mountains, small villages, country stores, the warm sea, obstacles overcome through physical exertion and will.

No, I don’t have a life in Boston. Friends, a home, familiar haunts, fond possessions, I’ve all these, but I am the life, the gift that makes them move.

 

 

 

 

 

It is December 31, 2017. I have never put much stock in new year’s resolutions. Deciding to make a change (such as exercising more) must be done daily, not annually. I think that technically my sabbatical starts tomorrow and I am excited about that. I fly to Saint Louis on Thursday and to Johannesburg on January 22. Let the adventures begin!