The Cheezits made it all the way from their place of origin (I bought them at the Safeway in Lander), down the western side of the Colorado Rockies, on a Delta flight from Denver to La Guardia, and on a NYC Airporter shuttle to JFK; they sat patiently by my side as I negotiated a time/flight change with a harried Turkish Airline clerk (he kept dealing with a broken printer with long-suffering angst while his colleagues sat around talking about shoes, and his boss chatted up the ladies). The Cheezits got a little banged up and lost some of their number as the Safeway bag began to disintegrate before my eyes. They were transferred into another bag for the long flight to Istanbul and offered around. No one wanted them, though--and I wondered, "Why are these all the rage at home but unwanted on the road?" The Cheezits just sat there at my feet as we were feted and wined and dined on the flight--Turkish Airlines is awesome once you've got yourself on the plane. The Cheezits didn't notice a difference from Delta, but I sure did. Delta is an efficient waiting room; Turkish Air is like being at an old European hotel.
The Cheezits might have yelled "Attaturk!" in tiny, yellow voices, as we landed in Istanbul. I wouldn't have been so insulting. They rode along as we all walked through what I told Thaddeus was "New York on steroids": Another, more ancient crossroads of the world, Istanbul at one time was the pearl of the world; as I saw the massive, endless, ancient city from the plane, with the two great bodies of water on either side shining like great mirrors in the morning sun, I thought of the Emperor Justinian and his former-circus-performer wife, Theodora; I thought of the Western Christian knights in their ships outside the city deciding whether or not to attack it. The stones last, and are silent; the people, the players, have disappeared like clouds in the heat of the sun.
The Cheezits and the rest of us were poured into the crowds streaming down the hallways--the juxtaposition of the modern building and the clothing from Africa, the Middle East, Western Europeans, Russians, Indians made me feel like I was at a costume party. Dizzy and sleep-deprived, we went into a place called "The Kitchenette"--a Turkish attempt at cool kitsch. Some song by Queen was playing--but it was at a slow jazz pace, and I tried to eat 'oat flakes with pineapple.' It was just raw oats. The Turkish tea was great, though. No one wanted the Cheetos.
As we got ready to board the plane to Athens, I realized why I'd been so very anxious for hours--sometimes what is at the bottom of our heart does not show itself in our conscious mind but rather in the form of a vague anxiety. I realized I was more excited than I've been for a long time. I live in a Zen mode most times--I've made a truce of sorts with my life; many failures, disappointments, a lot of grace and blessings, but it hasn't been what I expected at all--it has been stranger and much more dangerous in places I'd not expected--the battles I thought I would be fighting, beside Aslan and Peter have turned out to be battles of a different sort: courage in living each day, courage to be kind, to love past knowing, past understanding, to smile and love on, knowing it could all be gone in a second. And Greece was gone, it seemed, in a second, and turning the corner meant a different road, always slightly unexpected.
The Cheezits are much simpler. They don't think. Or feel. I realized I was holding on tight to their bag as I hoped with much more fervor than is rational that the flight would be on time. It was. I asked for the window seat so I could see Greece when we landed; it was cloudy over the Mediterranean, so I accepted that I would probably not get to see--I instead showed Ana the map-- and we flew right over where Xerxes ordered the water to be spanked at the Hellespont, and over Troy--we did much of Odysseus' planned journey in twenty minutes. "I bet that makes him feel kind of stupid," said Ana.
But as we entered Greek airspace, Greece began to show her infinitely varied beauty; the islands and the mountains of the Peloponnese stretched out, black, between the wine-dark sea and the lighter, chiascouro clouds, silent and serene; the sun, as it flowed down, turned red and shot out last glorious color over everything; the lights of Pireaus and Athens sparkled and winked, and we landed. I could see the particular shapes of the mountains around Athens, the shapes of Greece, and I felt at home again; these are the shapes that taught me about about placement and beauty, in an elementary and fundamental way. The contrapuntal feel of the straight, tall cypresses, like spears, and the islands shaped like the delicate outline of a woman's hands at rest; well, they are beauty.
As we entered through customs, the Cheezits had to go--the ones left are lucky. They will feed Greek seagulls at the Greek landfill.
We got on the Metro and the kids started listening to the Greek with their eyes sparkling. Dizzy with exhaustion, we got out at Monastiraki and walked the two blocks to Attalos. On the front desk, they have masticha, a Greek liqueur, available with little shot glasses, as a welcome. My parents found us: "Your family have been asking for you--I will call them and tell them you are here" the front deskman had said, politely; then my sister found us. We went upstairs to the roof bar and I pointed out the Acropolis, lit up at night, still an anchor and focus for the entire city, for my life, in a sense. Thaddeus couldn't quite believe it was really sitting there--"That's real?" he asked, as he stared at it.
As I began to interact with Greeks, I remembered them; I remembered myself. A mix of sweetness and ready humor, they are not uptight or snooty--sometimes impatient, but very real and yet ready for any available joy. It brought me back to what I like, what I knew in my years of forming.
I also felt some sadness, too. Greece is struggling; I just learned that someone we knew, an American who lived in Greece when we did, is head of the IMF for Greece. I am just glad because I know he must, like his father did, like I do, love Greece and will do what he can to help her; also, Greece will further find her identity as a nation (still rather a new nation, though an ancient people--"Greece" was first separate empires and city-states, part of other empires: it became modern Greece in 1830) through the decision whether or not to stay with the Euro. We are waiting to see if a deal is made or if a snap election will be called to see what the Greek people want (July?).
The true Greek identity is somewhere along the 5000 years or so of her history; some say Greeks live almost exclusively in the past--at Anatolia College in the 70s, only ancient history was taught, for example; others, especially the young, are forging an identity through the hardship, and some are dying in despair. But I know something of their identity, I know them. There is a certain feeling of "ah"--a familiarity that is hard to describe even to myself--I know it in the subtle nods between people negotiating traffic, in the simple delight in children, in the pride they take in hard work, always leaving time to rest and create art--art is part of life. So many things.
The highlight of today was watching Thaddeus make Marylynne laugh, and walking on the shiny stones--polished by milennia of human walking, sitting, and laying--of Mars Hill, the Aeropagus, where Paul said, in part, " that they would seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; 28 for in Him we live and move and [b]exist, as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we also are His children."
The beauty in that sermon, to me, is Paul's appealing to the Greek sense of beauty by declaring that God had made all this in hope that men would seek Him, to know who had given them life, habitation.
The swallows were flying low as we walked around. Marylynne said, "Gretchen (childhood friend) used to say that when the swallows are flying low, we'll have rain." We wondered about it together and I was happy, as when I saw Ana, Sophie, and TJ looking around at the city of Athens, excited and grateful for the chance to be here.
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