Postcard From Crete

      You should be here, sitting at my outdoor café table in this market square on Crete. I hope you’re doing okay.

      What an amazing place this is. Hookahs, baklava made from Egyptian nuts and honey syrups, grape leaves drenched in olive oil, large flat silver trays filled with phyllo, feta and spearmint stuffed lamb. Middle Eastern music, veils, and rippling jeweled bellies.

     Near Chania’s old town, narrow streets are filled with backgammon competitions, card games and cigar smoke. Hundreds of locals are meeting for Saturday night socializing. Parea. I hear them speaking choppy English while bobbing in-and-out of Arabic, Turkish, Greek and Farsi. You should be here.

     Beans are selling, cheeses are marinating, goats are moving, pistachios are cracking,  rugs are weaving, figs are jelling. From the taverna next door, three-hundred-year-old traditional laments are pouring out of hand-made clarinets in evocative, minor keys.

     Merchants are pulling their ceramic donkeys, Byzantine iconas, miniature marble Parthenons and wool scarves inside for the evening. It’s 11pm.

     I’ve just ordered a chilled bottle of raki.

     You need to be here - to take in the colors, choas, languages, scents of kabobs  and absence of anything digital. If you were here we would dig up every fact we could remember about Roman Civilization and how The Ottoman Empire ruled the world for over 400 years.

     “The world has changed in a million ways and yet nothing has changed at all,” I would say.

     “Oh, no, the world has gone to a new level of crazy,” you would counter.

      “It’s reached crazy like this before.”

     You would insist the world has gone beyond mad, mumble something about greed, buffoons and boorish behavior. “It’s just not possible to ever have reached this level of crazy before,” you would shout. “I refuse to believe otherwise!”

 We would pour more drinks and shift the conversation. As always we would talk about the possibility of buying real estate in a new country.

     “How far do you think our Euros can go on Crete?” you would ask. “For 100,000 euros, do you think the villa comes with the olive grove and a hot Greek gardener?”

    I’m thinking about all the escapades we’ve shared exploring the world together over ten years – florentine omelets in Provence, Tawny Port, Fado and Posadas in Portugal, Oscar Wilde and Jon Keats graves in Ireland, Tango in Toledo, Flameco in Sevilla, Hans Christian Anderson and mermaids in Copenhagen, hot homemade cinnamon buns and foot-stomping fiddlers in Halifax, lemoncello birthday cakes in Orvietto, flirty sponge-divers in Symi and hand made ceramic tile collections from almost everywhere. 

      At this moment, you’re processing test results, meeting doctors, starting treatments. I know you’re a super-human baddass who out-smarts everybody. I know you’ll get through this.  But you should be here.

   It’s getting late. The temperature is dropping and the bouzoukia music is amping-up.

   You should be here, but of course you are here.

   Drinking cold raki with me at my outdoor café table in this market square on Crete.

Rituals

Besame Mucho - Sitges, Spain

A hot, strapless linen night. Damp cleavage, whirling skirts, mojitos, flickering votives.

My cheek on his shoulder. His hands on my waist.

A full white August moon. Shimmery waves lit with lunar light.

Heads swing back. I shake my hair. Lovers and guitars and splashes of pool blur past. 

Vietnamese Market – Hanoi, Vietnam

 Bamboo. Tuk-tuks. French Indonesia post-Ho Chi Min.

Indigo, celadon and fuschia silk scarves brush my arms as I walk through evening Hanoi markets.

Blends of cumin, turmeric and ginger float beneath my nose. Fresh orange blossoms and other large round soft blooms turn my head.

A trio playing instruments move toward me through the crowd. The drum veers right, a

wooden flute and collection of bronze Buddhist bells swerve left. My head follows the bells, absorbing the twang of Asian sounds.

Dry carp and cod hang from a thatched roof across the road.

Dozens of lively merchants shout hải sản, cơm, hoa.- determined to get dong or dollars for rice, fruit and fish before sunset.

Smelts, shark fins and stringy sea creatures stretch across piles of ice in white plastic buckets.

A man with one tooth smiles at me from his stand. 

Small Cathedral – Avignon, France

 Large. Quiet. Empty. Unplanned.

Peeking through the door, I step into an unattended mass in an 800-year-old cathedral in southern France. Flames inside red votives reflect from the altar’s glass icons.

Cold marble chills my feet thru the soles my sandals. A young a capella choir sings pure, clear, ethereal French hymns in four-part harmony with other-wordly sopranos. I move quietly to a back row and sit down. No one notices the creaking old worn church pew.

Dionecia's Decision

             I was never sure if I actually believed it — the story about my Yia Yia  and the way she decided her fate. Choosing between two men and two countries. I’ve always been intrigued by this tale, and would ask her or my aunt Bess, uncle John, cousin Georgia or any other relatives sitting around our dining room table on Sundays —to please clarify anything they could remember about this great story.

            My grandmother Dionecia Safari was born in 1906 Amaliada, Greece, a small village of 200 people. She loved writing and reciting poems about living there - she wrote pieces about orange blossoms, ahhh to louloudia to anthisma, others about parrots, to prasino papagalos efage to koukla mou, (This is actually a poem about a parrot that pecks the eyes out of a doll.) She wrote other prose about bright moons, fengariki mou lampros, and her favorite theme, The Mediterranean. “M’aresee to thalassa,” she’d sigh. “I love the sea.”      

     My grandmother was also a huge fan of Sappho, the ancient Greek writer whose poetry was often sung while accompanied by a lyre. 

     Dionicia loved sitting on her balconia, breathing in magnolias and playing her mandolin. “Promenaders linked arm-in-arm, would wave to me in my veranda,” she’d recall. “‘Kali spera Dionicia,’ they’d shout. ‘Kali spera, good eee-veh-ning’ she’d nod back.

     Everyday Dionicia passed the chorio fountain and pine trees walking to her eklesia, a 700-year-old church, run by Pateras Ioannis— Father John, the priest who christened her, said prayers at her mother’s burial and splashed Holy Water on her forehead each New Year’s Day. 

          My grandmother spent a lot of time with women. In the mornings, with women she knew from church, she’d embroider bright pink and orange poppies on pillow cases created for dowries. On many afternoons they’d stuff sugar-coated almonds into tulle, then tie the netting with slippery white ribbons. These small koufete bundles were passed out at wedding and baptismal celebrations where friends danced the hasapiko, and yelled OPA!

            At night - snels (snails), manestra (orso), and horta (dandelion greens) simmered in large metal katzarolas (pots) for family dinners.

            When Miss Safari reached 18, it was time to date and think about marriage. Unexpectedly she received two marriage proposals in the same week: one from an Amaliada - based scholar, the other from an Argos-born businessman.

             “At 18, how well could I have known these men?” she shrugged. “Agapou ke tous thio, I thought I loved them both,” she shrugged again. And there was more —the scholar wanted to marry and live in Greece; the businessman wanted to wed and move to America.

            After weeks of uncertainty, Dionecia took two cards and wrote “America” on one and “Greece” on the other. “I put theeeeze cards in my pocket and walk to the eklesia,” she said. “My heart is loud. Kane etsi, etsi, etsi. Boom.Boom. Boom. Inside church I light orange candle and push into sand in front of silver Panayia, Virgin Mary icon. I do stavro, make sign of cross. No one is there.” 

             Kneeling, she placed the names of both countries face down on a cold marble floor and shuffled the cards in front of the images of Jesus and The Four Apostles painted on a gold altar. “Christai mou, fotise me. Please Lord, tell me what to do,” she whispered. Following a long prayer, she closed her eyes and reached for one card: “America.” Her card said, “America.”

           Dionecia Safari married Peter Balamos in Amaliada in 1924, then waved goodbye to Greece with a white hankey from the deck of a westbound ship. After clearing Ellis Island and dozens of train station stops on a journey taking two months, Dionicia Balamos arrived at her new home in Decatur, Illinois, where Peter Balamos opened The American Ice Cream Company. They had three children.

           My grandmother never really did learn to speak English or give up cooking snels, manestra or horta. Into her mid-eighties, she continued to write Greek poems about love, the moon, parrots, and dolls; and on many nights sang sad ballads playing her mandolin. S’agapo, s’agapo toso poly agapi mou.

           Dionecia passed away in 1997 at the age of 91. Her life-size marble statue of Sappho remained in her dining room long after she died.

Why I Write

Rumi was right. “Let yourself be silently drawn to the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” I write to see what happens. Hear the voice-behind-the-voice. Catch a whisper from a deep silent core.

I write to pull-up hunches, sense tugs and be all - in. I write because there is no other way. As Alice Walker puts it, “I think I’m creating a story, but I’m really creating myself.” 

Writing is not a thing I do. It’s a place I go.

I write to have joys revealed – insights, details, colors, shades, shapes, depths, hues, hoots, textures, scents, breezes, blooms, flavors, rhythms, sounds and silences conjured.  

I write to see connections I would have missed, find themselves together on my screen. I write to capture images I love. I write to plug-in to new understandings. I write because writing is the portal that leads to an expansive creative journey. Frequently, something happens that is larger than making a story, essay or blog. There’s a distinct shift. A palpable change.

I write for myself. And sometimes others. Just to make something. And have fun. And explore. I write about the human experience and significance of lingering, slowing down and savoring Life. I write “Live-Like-You-Mean-It-Life-is-Now” clarion calls.

I write to laugh. I write to remember. I write to see what’s true. And possible. I often write from and about other countries.

Writing is the best. It’s pure, inexpensive and free-ing. Writing evokes prize bits and pieces. Stokes Action. Affirms what’s awake and alive.

I write to welcome the entire creative landscape - knowing for sure it will draw me in and I will proceed as the way opens.