The Black Friday Post

Not to be too immodest about this, but I've always a special skill for finding things, gifts,  that bring my friends/family to near-swoon upon receipt.

I honestly believe that I was put on this earth to slip something into your pocket, next to your plate, under your pillow while you weren't looking - and a day later comes that phone call: "Where did you find this!?" 

My joy is then indescribable. Well, almost. . . my giftees usually wish it was by the end of a five-minute lecture on the provenance of the hechito. 

Hans Bellmer (Untitled)

Anyway, I love playing denturefairy, mammy christmas, auntie valentine, birthday goddess. So this list, Voulezvous is what happened when I was poking around Amazon, thinking about you. I promise, one day this  will wander up to your doorstep. It will. Just like that. 

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Yes, I also have a wishlist.  Well, up here in the wilderness, it is closer to a needlist (all that wine *is* a necessity).   It is based on the UK's Amazon site because going to the nearest city's Customs offices is out of the question, and most of what comes from the States has to go through Greek Customs.

(Here's where you get to exercise a little kitchen magick.  Even if you don't actually choose & send anything, laughter will help move things a little closer to the drop.  So read up!  Thanks!)
  
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'Windy, windy is the stuff of stones...'*

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The weather has finally made it to Preveza from the Peristeri... down from heights that are just a few kilometers north of here, but many, many meters UP!  Friday and Saturday suggested its power; and last night I saw my first thunderstorm on the mountain.

Since I am apprised that this weather will persist through the week (and ensure my hermitage), I launched myself into a short walk this morning, feeling how *crisp* water can be when pulled into these forms.

Even as I write, the brief clearing is gone and a lacy fog has drifted into my garden.  The Gods are curious - well, we are curious about each other.  One of Their emissaries blasted through a main window last night, setting a small hurricane loose in the house.

As water poured through the windows, I climbed into my son's leather coat to venture outdoors and close the shutters.  Despite the turbulence, I was surprised by the warmth of these winds -- anemos in Greek.  They may have come from the north, but were altogether chthonos, born from caves and riverbeds.  Once I figured out their provenance (the Powers are either olympian or titanic all up in here, and woe to the human who cannot tell the difference), I gently praised them back to what we call the 'out-of-doors.'

(As 'in-of-doors' is ever only temporary in this part of the world.)

 Zöés Thea.

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* The post title is a riff on Richard Wilbur's poem "Epistemology."  (Look it up, lazyboy...)

Rainways...

I have been in this little house on the mountain for 20 days now;  that is, two of my 10-day weeks (1). The first wave was a little more social than I was expecting - people from the settlement below (too small to call a village) were intensely curious about this 'Amerikani' and couldn't resist showing up, unannounced, the first few days.

I wasn't as surly as I could have been.  Really.  But by the end of the first week, traffic dwindled to an occasional sheep-drive-by, with their throaty little bells.   Perfect.

The second decajour saw my first visit to the real village - about 18 kms down the mountain.  There is only one bus a day out of this area - and getting to it involves a three-kilometer walk in the mornings before dawn, interfering with my current ~cough~ 'lifestyle.'   Which is to remain unconscious for as long as possible each morning.  

Why?  Because I wake up to this:  "Oh.  Quentin is dead.  No, wait.  That can't be right..."  I squeeze my pituitary for another amber drop of soporismo, but a few minutes later the truth of it comes rolling through. "Quentin AND Sarah... " There, in the chiaroscuro of my sleepstyle, young master Chevy Chase is reading from a news desk on the set of SNL, "I repeat, Quentin and Sarah are still dead."

Fuck.  Fuck, I say.  Back to sleep.

~~~

A taxi ride up and down the mountain costs about the same as renting a car for a day, so a few days ago I decided to pick one up from a small town about 40 kms from here.  My goals were to visit a sanctuary near Ioannina,  and round up provisions for a two-week hermitage with The Writing.

Goddess he'p me but I am an American.  As soon as I was behind the wheel of that little Nissan, my entire demeanor changed.  I suppose this has something to do with the way Americans interpret the word 'freedom,' and how that is expressed in velocity.   Velocity and wanderlust:  besides worshipping sleep, in this season of grief and sudden grace I revere not-knowing.  Not knowing the human sounds (a.k.a. language) surrounding me, not knowing how capital flows into my world, not knowing who I will kiss this week or next;  and best of all, not knowing whether I've taken the high short road, or the long low one ... until I've arrived.

I returned the car yesterday - glancing North to a few clouds, I threw my umbrella into the bag as an afterthought.   No need, the first drops came a couple of hours after I got home.   Now, on the last day of Scorpio, we have a soft, meditative drizzle - the rain not falling so much as wheeling in, windlessly.

~~~

This week seemed especially rough on my people back in the States -- as Paris went briefly under siege on a signal day - Friday the 13th.   Venus'day and Her lunar count - we did not miss the implications.   Three of my younger friends spun out pretty hard, a dear one who supported last year's journey to Cyprus is wrangling a stalker, and other darlings are breastdeep in a feeling of indefinable malaise, or are grimcheerfully swinging from their rosaries, mantra volume up to 10.





This transformational scheiss is not for the lily of liver, I tell you.

~~~

It being November, my own emotional and spiritual tasks have been typically Scorpionic: what/how/when am I feeling?  Mourning my children alternates with a kind of happiness that seems to have no sugarburn to it, no ache that comes with the secret story of our transience.   Not to suggest that I am in a two-colored rainbow; this week, others' suffering has dislodged another layer of my own - probably biological at its root.   So now I learn to distinguish grief from the vespers of a sinking thyroid (2).

    
The trip to the sanctuary also brought some new information I am still processing.  The effable story is that last year's hero-dog, Hector, died two months ago - but I was accompanied by his daughters during my overnight at the temnos.     And having left my little offering, there is a new layer in the emotional body - a form of postpartum elation tinged with sadness.

Like giving birth, one is no longer 'inhabited' - but there is something new in the Time stream; its qualities and effects still enfolded, tight as a morning glory.  

Not-knowing doesn't mean ignorance or foolery, it means not-knowing-yet.

And that is precious - possibly even sacred.

I just don't know... yet.
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1. A measure which seems to be slow in catching on, despite clear evidence of eight other planets, a Moon and a Sun. 
2. Not to worry.  I have requested an herb that brought the matter to heel last year, and it will be here in 10 days or so. 

Odysseus' Tree

Before the Millennium I studied Spanish for a good five years before I was able speak it.  But speak it I do, lapsing into my cousin-tongue when giving birth to Quentin, and slipping into it again as I was dealing with Sarah's death.   Under such conditions, one is surprised to get six words out in any language.  But then again,  I am not known for my taciturnity.

In any case, I thought five years was too damn long.  Now that I've pursued French and Greek for the last 3 decades and am still clobbering both languages, I guess five years wasn't that bad.

Initially I wasn't interested in speaking Spanish so much as  reading it - particularly the Hispanic and Latin American poets who were wiping the floors with North American modernism.   So for the first couple of years my tutorials consisted of memorizing long swathes of novels and poems, most of which are lost to me this year (hypothalamic shrinkage - part of the grieving dealio), but I can recall some of their rhythms...

"Sobre los arcos de la noche
Sus luces llegandos y despidiendos
Sus altiplanos de estrellas verdes..."

The public library in Austin used to have a fabulous section of Spanish-language poets reading their own work - the sounds embedded in huge, black platters of polyvinyl chloride.  I would check out a dozen at a time, put one on a record player next to my bed, set it for 'repeat' and drift away to Los Alturas de Macchu Picchu, or Platero y Yo or Fragmentos a Su Iman.  The next day a few lines would bubble up, but I remained mostly oblivious to their meaning.  No matter.  Meaning would come later;  for now, a map of the language was being drawn inside my dreams.

Here in Greece, as I struggle with the charitable brain damage that comes with mourning, my handful
of daily demotic seems to scatter 20 minutes after I've gathered it in. But it occurred to me today that I haven't put into play my earlier technique:  Read the poem, hear it; write it out and in; sleep with, wake to and ensoul the poem.

The language will follow the music.

"The Little Orange Tree" by Odysseus Elytis (Nobel Laureate, 1979)