Family & Life

Departing Santorini the ferry steams toward Athens.  Reality pressed to the subconscious in a normal land day surfaces:  Water’s domination of earth is here called the Aegean Sea.  We ride its calm on the slow ferry-Athens eight hours away.  It is not slow enough to preclude farewell.

Islands appear, grow with intensity, and fade just like each day of this five-week adventure.  A brilliant turquoise glows at the center of the ship’s long wake.  From movement on water tranquility floods the human heart.  It is the right place to silently whisper adios, adieu, arrevaderci, andio.

Imagined and dreamed beauty pale in the rich color of what has emerged daily.  Barcelona, Avignon, Le Lavandou, St. Tropez, Rome, Tuscany, San Gimignano, Athens, Molyvos, Santorini-sounds forever changed in our deepened well of human memory.  Gracious people along the way grow our sense of good in the world.  Stepping into the adventure of the unknown builds the heart muscle.

Others note that no matter the distance traveled you never leave behind who you are.  Miles, time, experience in foreign lands is a force that shapes and shapes again.  Its future promise held up for the taking is a life more richly lived.

Even its name flows across the lips like that of a gorgeous woman.  Cities cling to the cliffs of this volcanic creation as a single tree grows improbably from a rock.  Santorini integrates nature and human creation in a beauty that suggests the marriage is proper.

Santorini is not an idea.  It is visceral.  From heights you know the rocks volcanically propelled above the vast Aegean Sea.  Walking the impossibly steep, narrow street etched in the side of a sheer cliff; sitting in a restaurant or bar perched over the edge of a sheer cliff; driving the road that threads its winding way down a cliff; hurtling in a small cable car from Fira’s cliff top to its old port below.  Beauty’s siren call temporarily stills vertigo.  White knuckles one among many Santorini souvenirs.

Oia is home base for three days.  On the evening of the second we live into the red sunset from a restaurant atop the starkly white village.  Luciano serenades.  Beauty defines itself anew.

Islanders charm with the urge to nurture your connection to their home.  English flows almost as commonly as Greek.  A chef could not bear to share in any language the ingredients of his sauce for a lamb dish.  The server seeks unneeded amends with a desert that will long live in memory.

St. Thomas quotes Jesus:  “The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth but men do not see.”  In Santorini, you see.

Standing beside the Parthenon is a factor exponentially too large to comprehend.  Like infinity.  The birthplace of Western Civilization holds more than this singular human can take in with all senses firing.  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle together may have had the last original Western human thought.  It’s too much to incorporate in my conscious human experience.  Perhaps it’s there at some other level.

Time has nearly ground it to physical oblivion.  Much of what stands on the Acropolis is the result of multiple restoration efforts.  That so many care enough to try is a powerful statement of the human condition.

Humbly then you do what you can.  Athens you can see beyond the Acropolis does not show antiquity.  Italy and France show more.  Today’s Athenians are sweetly helpful to the strangers in their land, their food among the best of the trip.  English is spoken as commonly as in Texas.

Dogs wander with not a single leash in sight.  Cars speed on city streets beyond anything on American Interstates.  Mass transit takes us where we need to go, slowly.  Quickly our desire turns to the Islands.

They patrol the sidewalk cafes of Molyvos like a well-ordered regiment.  Seeking their share of the fishermen’s catch at the port or whatever morsels dining visitors will share they put in a full day’s work.  Locals don’t seem to notice.  Cat strategies vary.  Some cruise all the tables.  Some plant themselves at the feet of the likely target.  Those cats are masters of the stare.  Looking deep into your eyes and offer the exchange:  eternal love in return for an invitation to dinner.  I have a cat in Molyvos that will love me forever.

A few kilometers down the road, the hot springs of Etaflou will relieve any stress not conquered by the peaceful beauty of the Northern coast of the Greek Island of Lesbos.  Choice includes swimming communally in seawater warmed by the hot springs or a private bath with 40 degree Celsius mineral water.  Choosing the latter, windows in our private room framed the sea below.

The numbers of tourists dwindle in the Greek September.  We stood alone on a trip to the castle ruling the highest point of Molyvos.  We stepped perhaps where Onetta d’Orio, wife of a 15^th century Genoese governor stepped after strapping on her husband’s armor and leading the citizens of Molyvos in repelling invading Turks.  Fully lit each night the castle casts a beauty that must fill the heart of Prague with envy.

Wherever you step in Molyvos you need only turn to take in an eagle’s perspective of the Aegean Sea.  Life flows with a serene force.

The Aegean Sea yawns and stretches.  Water pushes across the beach its sound singular and undisturbed.  Dry, cool air flows over the sun-drenched Greek Island of Lesvos.

Molyvos climbs the hills of the Northern shore.  At the top a Genoese castle stands unchanged by time.  A quiet, natural beauty enfolds all it protects below.  It is a place to stand naked and unguarded.  It restoreth the soul.

Finding such beauty in the world as exists in Italy exacts a multiple human price.  San Gimignano is one example.  Its price paid in the  leaving.  The call to stay flows viscerally.  Departing the valleys surrounding the shining city on the hill leaves a bitter sweetness.  In San Gimignano time is but one sense that stands still.  The week of rich Tuscan diet to all the human senses includes the inevitable-it ends.  Not before filling the human canvass of memory.

A day trip to Pisa and time to marvel at its famous bell tower.  It leans you know.  It leans a lot.  Much more than the pictures suggest.  Why doesn’t someone issue the quite natural blood curdling scream, “Run everybody, it’s going to fall.”  Last report its still standing.  Living in its shadow the locals must enjoy a certain tenseness.

I would choose the shadows of Montalcino.  Making our way to the treasure of that sky-high city we learned that following directional road signs may be fun but not always wise.  The ones here took us to a narrow gravel road that tightened my already secure grip on the steering wheel.  12 kilometers later I pry my hands open to a most incredible perspective of the walled city.  2 kilometers later we are, counter to expectation, there.  The treasure, of course, is world class Brunello (”the brunette”).  It is a wine that challenges king Barolo.  We waver, momentarily.

Our final winding through the curves that thread the Tuscan countryside take us toward Venezia.  If you do not know intimately Italy’s position in the international space race, you have not driven its Autostrada.  Cruise at 140 kilometers and notice how many rockets pass you by.

Destination Venice-king of the hill of the world’s romantic cities.  Its magic still fills the heart, yet Venice provides a bookend to the poignancy of leaving San Gimignano.  Elizabeth and I became inevitable in 1999 Venice a city that now exhibits a deep wound.  It is over-run with her lovers and the view from ten years ago is tazered by change.  If the world’s best engineers keep Venizia above the sea it’s hard to know how it survives the human flood.

Beauty still startles in the back areas, but the classic spiritual place called San Marcos Square is now shoulder-to-shoulder humanity.  I pass a small group of accomplished musicians there playing, with no show of irony, Send In the Clowns.

The memory rises of that scene on the deck of the sinking Titanic where musicians played into death.  I contemplate my part in this story.

Not accomplished in Italian, French, Spanish, or Greek, not able to access familiar American News coverage or family voices, I’m immersed in an unfamiliar context.  It forces me inside to one more personally driven.  My perspective fills the space formerly shaped by the sense and sensibility of people and things normally around me.  This extreme E (extrovert) on the Myers-Briggs scale shifts to extreme I (introvert).

I love my country.  That I am a citizen of the United States is both an accident of birth and now a life choice.  Our national accomplishments in matters of form of government, in our unequaled diversity, in America’s standing for good, in learning the courage of Americans who face(d) evil and found/find death, I have a deep belief in America.  Our story, of course, is more complex.  For slaves and Native Americans a different chapter of the American book is etched on their lives.

In anguish while following television coverage of the murder of John Kennedy, a previously filmed interview with our new President revealed the change accomplished by a bullet.  Said President Johnson, “Everyone in the world wants to be an American.”  This nationally shared narcissism colors our experience with the world.  On this trip, full engagement with Europe deepens how ridiculous that notion is.  People here are complete in their own citizenship.

Every person is unknown.  Yet I have no fear that one among them packs a gun and is maybe crazy enough to use it.  Encountering passing groups on the streets I don’t mentally prepare for the possibility of violence.  Those I observe, not famous or known especially in their world seem quite content with life, comfortable in their own skins.  I pass as a complete stranger and have no sense of being judged.  America choosing Barack Obama changes Europe’s view.  We no longer walk the cobblestone streets with a George Bush cross on our backs.

Beauty not part of my day-to-day experience in America fires my senses.  Lovely land.  Beautiful people.  Musical sounds of a foreign tongue.   Those not citizens of the world’s superpower live undiminished and unconcerned by that fact.

I’ve long believed in the power of shared wisdom.  Processes to discover it are a gift from a better future.  Joining the perspective of these people with ours would make a better world.  These personal strangers walk beside me unaware they enrich my world.

The trip from Rome to San Gimignano seems perilous.  Italian road designers never met a straight line they liked.  Far fewer natives who parla inglese deepens being lost.  But the strain evaporates as you enter the portal in the walls that encompass San Gimignano.

Perched high on a hill, this town of 7,000 gives a true view of Tuscan country.  It is more like standing before a landscape painted by one of art’s great masters than seeing with the naked eye.  The view from our bedroom window is such a painting.  I sit at an outside table overlooking one aspect of the beauty as I write.  Can you hear the strains of the aria I want to sing?

As New Mexico is my “soul state,” Rome is my “soul city.”  One step after another takes you to connections with the culture that significantly shapes life in the Western World.  Standing in the presence of The Pieta, walking within the great spirit that governs Campo De Fiori, knowing the taste of lasagna in Piazza Navona, life expands.  This wild, untamed city has a central gravitational force.

As thousands from around the world share the streets, locals teach with example.  How to enjoy a meal.  How to speak as though singing.  How to express great passion.  How to be carried away by the simple acts of living.

As a non-traditional Christian the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica offer serenity.  Irony abounds in this great city.  Despite Christianity’s troubled history you get the power and beauty of Man’s longing for God.

The heat, the great physical exertion of navigating melt as Rome takes you into its embrace.

It’s a long, winding road from Le Lavandou to Saint-Tropez.  Endless hairpin turns are interrupted, when you dare look, by blue sky, the Mediterranean, and tiled roofs on beautiful homes.  Old Town nestles against the sea with an ancient, tranquil beauty.

And there is food-food of the gods.  Mussels in a cream, white wine, and garlic sauce dissolve in the mouth.  You are forever a part of the sea.  That dish alone is worth the flight to Europe and the drive to Saint-Tropez.

This shimmering place finds its place on the map of the heart.  We long for a longer stay on a future trip.