The days drift lazily by like they can only in beachfront
island villages.
The day is swimming, reading, sunning and eating local
foods. The evening is drinks and conversation with travelers from all ends of
the world. The night is silence and stars. And this life is beautiful and good.
Despite the goodness of things at the moment, my winter of
pneumonia is never far from my mind. Seven months sick, thinking I would die
and now I sit in the fading light of day, staring at the sea, eating fresh olives
and drinking homemade wine. I’m fortunate to have lived. I have long forgotten
the majority of my brushes with death, but this one was so protracted that its
memory refuses to dissipate. So I remember and fear death more and more even as
it stalks me less and less.
Death may haunt my nights, but during the day I am focused
on the characters of this place who are slowly beginning to emerge and, oddly
enough, even mingle with the characters in my book. Zorba the Greek is what I am reading. Written 80 years ago, it is
about a man here on the island of Crete who spends his time philosophizing and
wishing he was more impulsive. One of the men here on the island (a man from a
rural area not 5 hours from my own small, logging town) is obsessed with this
author, in love with Greece (if not the actual place, then at least the idea of
the place) and writing his own novel.
I never meet rural Americans so it is strange that I should
be staying in the same place as one. He seems to have (somewhat bitterly)
rejected the culture of our homeland. I thoroughly understand this sentiment
but I believe the final understanding lies in realizing how arbitrary it all is.
No need for rejection, just objectivity (which is far more challenging but
ultimately more peaceful). He seeks the magic of the exotic and imagines it to
be found somewhere on these islands. When I briefly told him about my travels
he played the guitar and sang a song in order to process the information but
while this description might make him seem like something of a hippie, he does
not, in real life, come across as one.
Orientalism, or exoticizing the ‘other’, only works in books
and movies. In real life, neither humans nor land are magical and in my
opinion, to imagine that they ought to be does a disservice to both them and
oneself. He does not seem to understand people enough yet to know this, but it
is impossible to imagine that someone who tries so hard and seeks so genuinely
won’t eventually learn this truth.
No lands are magical, humans are only exotic if you don’t
bother to get to know them and life is so, so much more than a novel. On that
note (and with a hypocritical wink) I will introduce other characters later.
Daily Spending:
$4.69 - Lunch at Restaurant (Tzatziki, Garlic Bread, Tomatoes)
$0.39 - Fresh Olives
$0.43 - Tomato
$0.28 - Pear
$0.25 - Cucumber
$0.90 - Bread
$2.69 - Canned Dolmades (rice wrapped in grape leaves)
$3.69 - Gelato (Strawberry and Strawberry/Chocolate)
$11.19 - Accommodation
Day # = 3
Daily Total = $24.51
Grand Total = $217.15
Daily Average = $72.38
Greece Total = $217.15
Greece Average = $72.38
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