Last / First Day

... of the Zodiacal year, anyway. I took the photos that follow on March 19 (the last day of Winter and Pisces) to publish this slideshow on March 20 (the first day of Aries) when Persephone  rises again to Her Mother's realm.

Welcome home, Kore!

It's Spring Day, my honeys.   'Hope yours is twice-lively...
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Last / First Day (rePublished)

Published directly from Youtube, so a better copy. . . I think.

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Rivetectures

i.
As you can see from the blogstyle chosen, I love bodies of water - everything from wee koi ponds to whale-coddling seas.  Salt or sweet, green to marine-blue, black-blue, and all the whites between, by Ladylord, I love 'em!   But from childhood, rivers have shaped my soul.   It isn't just the constant inconstancy that gets to me - "moving and staying like whitewater" (though Wilbur is actually talking about laundry).  My source of existential relief is the fact that a river both is and isn't.  

When we see that glossy haul between two banks, our mind insists on the Thing Itself, a flowing plenum, all isness.   But in English the word river, rive'r suggests a cleavage, one side straying from the other, like watching a train window as the next car begins to glide -- a movement that seems to pull your face from the rack of its cheekbones.   It is that falling away that sweeps my heart, as I feel for the invisible undermine of it.

In a hydroform riverbed, the sheets are always tangling, kicked up and around the flux beneath the flow, a kind of emancipated undertow.  Last week, while taking the curves of the Arta-Ioannina road, I watched the Louros blanche blue and thunder-blue, its Ναιαδες the color of new wheat.  Maybe you can see them?

ii.
The legendary Acheron (pronounced Ah-care-rón, my Greek soundmistress tells me) is more laconic in its personality.  If not as wide as the American Mississippi, it bears a similar gravitas.   By happy accident I landed an apartment just a few kilometers from this marvel, so have been to visit several times - hoping to catch a glimpse (hey! only a glimpse!) of the Ferryman.

Acheron flowing to the Ionian Sea

Though I have not yet made it to Acheron Springs (which are not its headwaters) I did go to the 'footwaters' at Ammoudia, a nearby fishing village.  There is a long jetty built out between the Bay and the river's mouth, and a fair amount of its water is diverted to the Glika Limni, a lagoon nestled against the cliffs that shelter the village.   Even diverted and channeled, the Acheron still wields an impressive presence.   It is about 80 feet (≈27 meters) wide and curves along the south boundary of the village to a flare of cliffs on the left.  To its right is the chalice of the bay, adorned by a small grove of White Poplars -- related to aspen trees and very sacred to this river.

Walking the jetty between the two waters, I reached down to my left and tasted the river a few times to find the place where salt and sweet ran together.   Then realized I wasn't just 'tasting'; there was a zone --mere inches, really-- where the scents of landwater and sea folded round one another.  There I took a seat and removed my shoes, singswearing :: "Gymná pódia sti potámi..." Barefoot on this River, the wet version of my oath :: Gymná pódia sti Gi / Barefoot on this Earth. 

After a minute or two I started to laugh.  Oh Heraclitus! you can't step into this river twice, now can you?   I watched as the river pulsed around my feet, the waterway's heart beating beneath me.  We bipeds are always a-kilter, unsteady on our pins, but here I was shown that the worlds will roll up if we let them, a(rriving, riving, rivering) in wave-weighted steps.

ποταμοις τοις αυτοις εμβαινομεν τε και ουκ εμβοινομεν, ειμεν τε και ουκ ειμεν.

"We both step and do not step in the same river.  We are and we are not."

Heraclitus

Greek Infraspace

I discovered again yesterday that driving in rural Greece is a special experience, not at all comparable to any other roadastry.   Having learned to drive in the endlessness of Texas, then honing my intuition on the glorietas of Mexico City, I thought there wasn't much that could surprise me - until I started driving here in 2014.

(Don't worry, car rental agent, I did NOT drive this road.)

It isn't the improvisational flare of my fellow roadsters or the single-bed width of the village streets or the innocent twitching of the traffic lights that gets me.  It is the fact that distances between cities and villages are wildly miscalculated - based on a Western European technocrat's idea of how far things should be from one another.   Well, suck it, boys - I am here to depone: that satellite tells you one thing, experience another.

The nearest magnet town (can't be called a city really, with less than 200K people) is, by the map, about 100 kms from the coast.   60 miles. But go ahead, try to get there in an hour, I dare you.   And that is on the national highway.  When it comes to state roads --often 2-lane, shoulderless and switchbacky like your mother-in-law's monologues-- double your estimates.

Estuary of the Acheron River (Limni Gliki) 

Yesterday I drove toward the source of the Acheron River, which according to every map, was no more than 25 kms from here.  About 15 miles.  Leaving at noon, it was 1 p.m. before I even got to the prefecture, and still a good 10 kms away from the springs themselves.  Now, I did stop twice and take pictures, but that accounts for all of 10 minutes That's nine miles in 45 minutes (for you Amerikees), on a road with no traffic.  None.  

As I wrote last year, I have a theory that you have to measure Greek kilometers with some kind of toroidal, circular ruler. Yesterday, as I was gazing over the mountain gate to the Limni Gliki, it hit me, for every meter one expects to go forward, add another up or down. Or maybe up and down.

No, blasting tunnels through the Pindus Mountains doesn't seem to help.   Although they are lots of fun to race.