Vajra-Bath in Aetolia

Easter(wood) Everywhere hasn't gotten much love during this journey ~ or really, since last Spring after I returned to Texas.   As mentioned in the preceding post, I've been here in Greece since late November 2017, intending to stay until mid-February.   I had hoped to set up the merest framework for living/working in Greece, but was surprised (again and again) by the challenges of establishing the communication system upon which my work depends. 

So... much of this trip has been spent in technical quagmires, which made the respites and unveiled beauties more welcome.  One of those was discovering that the second apartment I rented was mere steps from the Corinthian Gulf.    I have walked on the beach almost daily, and been gently surprised by its many moods - including nights in which the water was almost flat, becalmed as a lake. 

The sea is backed up to the western edge of the Agrafa mountain range (the one that includes Parnassus), though at this point in the geography, those are foothills, not mountains.  My front balcony has hills to my right; but the sea, on the left, is much closer!

Although daily temperatures have been from 10-16ºC (45-60ºF), and the waters are pellucid and mild,  I haven't been able to shake off my quasi-hibernation to consider a swim.   The other day it struck me that I could take some of the sea to my bath and mix it with the warmer tapwaters.  'Thought a few gallons would make a nice addition.  

I hauled 10 gallons in two trips, and since the apartment is on the second floor, it was four trips.    I was still muttering-through the workshop I came here to create, so I decided to wait until later in the evening to set up the bath. 

Intuition:  This water would like to be left outside, please.   So I set the buckets on the back balcony.  More intuition: Got any seastones for us? Went back down and collected a handful of shore pebbles and put them in the water.  Thank you. 

The workshop I am developing comes in odd little bursts, so I was twirled up in that work until 3 a.m.  Too late (early?) for the bath.  I fell asleep and woke to thunder and downbursts of rain. Thought about the buckets of seawater, went to the balcony to check on them.  Yes, they had collected an inch or two of the storm, but all cloud-birthed - no run-off from the roof.  I watched lightning play through the trees behind the apartment and realized the new water would descend from that flashing mirror.

It was going to be an excellent bath.

On the chemical side I was hoping the sea water would stand in for some of the magnesium sulfate I didn't have.  As it had been almost a month since my last Epsom salts bath, my body had a background ache that I had managed to ignore, but it wasn't sweetening my mood. 

Turns out that the Med has an small, almost homeopathic percentage of both magnesium and sulfate, but still higher than ocean water.   Per litre? Let's see, 10 gallons is around 35 liters, so I would be soaking in, say, 200 mgs of magnesium sulfate. About one aspirin-worth.   But the carrier, oceanic sodium chloride, seemed to make a potent difference.

After checking on the balcony buckets, I discovered the storm had knocked out my electricity, so no hot water until it was restored (six hours later!).  One of the more sensible differences in European household management is the attitude toward hot-water: 'what is this, a hotel? heat the water when you need it.'  So water stays cool in the tank until 20 minutes prior to bathing.    

When I had written as far as I could ruminate, I drew the bath, pouring the cooler sea/rain water into hot tap water, then added the stones.  "No soap." Okay.  By now I had picked up on the presence of a few curious sea nymphs, who came up with the seawater to check me out.   I don't see them with what my friend Bobby calls 'meat eyes.' I perceive their presence with my visual imagination (the eye's mind, as it were), a kind of liquid architecture that was both structured and mobile, like music. 

I once rested in a garden in Mexico between two atmospheres, cooler on my right, warmer to the left, and felt them meet and resist one another just over my face.  Conversing with this presence was a little like that, as we misunderstood and resisted each others' eidos, being from two very different realms.  They asked me what kind of 'dolphin' I was - and it took a while to understand that they were joking, as they knew full well that I am human and mostly landlocked.

The bath was so rich, even as it cooled the water felt heavier, like melted tapestries.  I dozed and soaked, occasionally waking up enough to scrub a patch of skin. I didn't use soap, but I did put handfuls of sodium bicarbonate on the bath brush.  To my surprise, I peeled as though I was sunburned, layer after layer sloughing anything I could reach, even the inside of my arms and the backs of my knees.   The body that emerged felt lighter, less knotted, cooler somehow.  Stood up and rinsed the soda-seawater off me, then reached for the plug.  Wait.  The question was light but clear: could I take the water back to the sea?  Some of it, anyway?  I agreed, but added that this needed to wait till tomorrow.  Fine...  I hauled 3 buckets to rest on the balcony, left about 8 inches back in the bathtub.

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It has continued to rain off and on through the day.  The water isn't as limpid now - winds have whipped the waves, which roils up the silted seafloor.  But I caught a few minutes of sun and hauled the buckets downstairs, down the half-block to the gentle, curling edge of the sea.  As I approached, the waves got bigger for a minute, throwing themselves a few feet beyond the water line.  "Happy to see us, are you?" as I poured the first 3 gallons back into the bay.   The wind rose and sky brightened to silver, then swept back down to pigeonbreast blues.
 
I don't think I've ever been so clean.

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