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