Pseutra Not Sutra

I want to teach you a Greek word. Ready? Ψεύτρα. Pseutra, pronounced PSEFF-tra.

English speakers will likely see pseutra and hear it as sutra (SOO-tra). Do not make this mistake. You are not learning an English derivative of a Greek word. You are learning a Greek word. You must forget what you knew before and dive straight into the Greek.

Like a Greek, you will enunciate both consonant sounds in the letter ψι (psi), like upset or psst. None of this silent-p nonsense. The letter ψι is not a pseudo sigma. It is full of lips and teeth and breath. Do not let ψι pass through your mouth unless it passes properly. Psss!

ψεύ = pseff, rhymes with chef

τρα = tra, like the a in achoo. And for heaven's sake, roll the r. If you can't roll your r, then say the exclamation ta-da, and make it a contraction: t'da. pseff-t'da. You can usually fake your way through a rolled r by forcing a fast d over the tip of your tongue.

ψεύτρα = pseutra

Say it: PSEFF-tra

Say it like a Greek: Ψεύτρα! Accent the first syllable with a vengeance: Ψεύτρα! Say it with a snarl: Ψεύτρα! You might even spit at the end of the word: Ψεύτρα! Ptoo!

Ψεύτρα means liar. To my ears, it sounds more sinister than “liar.” To me, ψεύτρα is a vile wicked witch with devil eyes and a forked tongue.

And that’s what my uncle called me. Ψεύτρα! I wasn’t there when he said it, so I don’t know whether he spit at the end of the word. But I bet he snarled.

After three days together, my 90 year old uncle and I shared a tender goodbye. I kissed his cheek and his hand, and he took my hand in his, caressed my face, bid me a fond farewell, and invited me to return in March. The next day, while I strolled merrily around Piraeus, la la la, my uncle phoned my mother, his sister, to tell her that I am a ψεύτρα, ordering her never to speak of me or mention my name to him again.

For pity's sake. At least when I called his son Adolph Hitler, I had the courtesy to say it to his face. Okay, I did not call him Adolph Hitler. I said his ideologies were like those of Adolph Hitler. You just don't go around saying that an entire race of human beings should be swept off the face of the earth without expecting to be compared to Hitler. But that’s another story for another day.

For now, let's stick to our Greek word. I want you to see it, hear it, and say it like a Greek, so I made a video to help you. I hope you enjoy it.

A Tale of Two Airports

Detroit Departure. Here I am with nine beloveds who came to the airport to see me off. Nine! Gods and goddesses, every one.

Detroit Metropolitan Airport Wayne County (DTW)

8 January 2012

*  *  *

9 January 2012

Athens International Airport Eleftherios Venizelos (ATH)

Athens Arrival. Here I am with, well, here I am. Just past customs, travelers and greeters exchanged hugs and kisses while I stood alone looking for my cousin who wasn't there. I felt a little sad, but not much. I was prepared for moments like this, traveling alone. Then my cousin arrived. And so in shadow our tale begins...

  

The Good, the Bad, and the Opa

My first few weeks in Greece were largely a disappointment. I had trouble writing in the midst of disappointment. If I wrote honestly about the bad, I felt whiny, and if I wrote only about the good, I felt disingenuous. So, except for notes in my journal, I pretty much chucked the writing and went on having experiences.

If I can't tell a story with both good and bad, then I can't tell a story.

*  *  *

Not long after I returned to the US, an acquaintance asked me of my trip, "Did you have fun?"

If it was fun I was after, I would not have traveled to Greece during the coldest, rainiest season to work in fields, mop floors, and clean kitchens in remote villages where there are more goats than men. For fun, I would have traveled during the sun-filled spring or summer and stayed at an island resort, drinking and dancing and having a wild, passionate fling with a sexy hunk named Yianni fifteen years my junior so that I could then write every sordid detail and call it Eat, Pray, Opa! Next trip, perhaps.

I was asked a simple question; after a moment's hesitation, I offered a simple answer. "Well, yes. Yes, I had a wonderful time."

I did have a wonderful time, but "fun" is not a word that comes to mind when describing my trip. My cousin and my uncle disowned me, my plan to learn about healing with herbs was a bust, it rained the entire month of February, I cried myself to sleep most nights, and I failed miserably at blogging.

At the same time, I learned from a spiritual healer, gave a presentation to a gathering of English speaking expats, experienced a dream within a dream in Switzerland, revisited the land of the centaurs, conversed with the Muses, drank tsipouro on the Gulf of Volos and heart-opening wine on Souda Bay, under the influence of which I renewed a long-distance romance with a handsome bloke back home whose emails and calls sweetened my lonely nights.

Fun? Not always. Wonderful? Yes. The good, the bad, and the opa, baby. Every bit of it, wonderful.

-------------------------------------
Next up: "How I Managed to Piss Off My Relatives in Three Days," or, "The Devil Went Down to Athens, and I Don't Mean Georgia."

I Am

March 5, 2012

unseen body
merely shadow
a play of light

I am not here
and yet I am

invisible wind
swaying trees
rustling hair

I am not here
and yet I am

when death's cold finger
rests upon my brow
look to the shadows
listen to the wind

beloved
I am not here
and yet I am

 

On the mountain road from the sea to Akrimios.

Storyteller

Happy Birthday, Daddy. Thank you for the gift of life and for the gift of your stories.

Notes: Socrates in Greek is Σωκράτης, pronounced soh-KRAH-teess, or soh-KRAH-tee.

In the story, my father says that Socrates was found by Theia Anastasia and her family. That is the same Theia Anastasia who appears in the photo at the bottom of my post, Sky.

The family photo in the video above was taken in Asia Minor, before my father was born. The woman standing in the photo is my father's mother, Victoria Eugenides Hatzilias. Her first cousin (not pictured), Georges Eugenides, is Jeffery Eugenides's paternal grandfather. If you've read Eugenides's Middlesex, you will recall the story of Cal's grandparents fleeing Asia Minor. That is the same event in which Socrates's story takes place. Except this story is not fiction; is true story.

May the memory of my father Christos and of his brother Socrates be eternal, and may their souls rest in peace.

To Dream a Memory

The day I leave for Greece, I mail a letter to my father's cousin in Switzerland, Niko, and his wife Evelyn, whom I have not seen since 1977 (see Sky). I want to reconnect. I want to share with them the sad news of my father's death, and to let them know how much our travels together meant to me, then and now. I also want them to know that I'm coming to Greece, in the hopes we might have a chance to meet.

Not long after, I receive an email from Niko, Evelyn, and their daughter Aliki, offering condolences as well as an invitation to Switzerland for a visit. Switzerland! How can I afford to take a trip within a trip that I can barely afford? I must be crazy, but for this opportunity, I will spend my last cent if I have to. We may never pass this way again, as the song goes. After a few emails, we settle on March 17-21.





Two days before departing Greece for Switzerland, I surf the Internet to get to know my hosts' town and surrounding area. A little scrolling, a little reading, and one photo jumps out at me...








Murten. Time stands still. A sea of rooftops. Just like my dream. I hold my breath. I blink. No, it's a coincidence. Just a strange coincidence. And then. And then...

 

 
...my body lands in the medieval village. My god, this is it. This is not like my dream, this is my dream. My feet are on the ground, and yet I am floating. Nobody seems to notice.







As Evelyn and Aliki show me around Murten, I am filled with the sense that I’ve been here before. I don’t know what’s ahead or around the next corner, I can’t tell you who lived in which house, but every step I take feels familiar, intensely familiar.

Finally, I share my dream. Evelyn and Aliki are fascinated by my vision of rooftops, but when I add the seemingly insignificant detail about the plane flying over a body of water and my turning to see snow-capped mountains behind the plane, their eyes widen. “This is Lake Murten,” Aliki says, pointing, “and beyond the lake are snow-capped mountains.” All I can see are thick clouds. “Yes,” Evelyn says, “when there are no clouds, you can see snow covered mountains, there, over the lake.” To believe that a snow-capped mountain exists beyond the lake, like my dream, is a little too much for me right now. I prefer to believe the clouds.

I don’t know what to make of the dream and my visit two years later to Murten. I don’t know that I need to make anything of it. I will neither force conclusions upon the story nor trivialize it. Maybe my story and someone else’s story crossed paths, intersecting energetically, and some age-old wrong aches to be made right. Maybe it’s a story meant to stir up the story in you. Maybe it’s a story for story’s sake, a story simply to be enjoyed. Maybe all of the above, maybe none.

Whatever the story is or is not, it is this to me: a gift. The dream, the experience, my brief time in Switzerland, connecting and reconnecting with family, this is indeed a gift. And I am blessed.

Only a Dream

Two years ago, I awoke from a dream so incredible, the feeling of the dream stayed with me for days afterward, and the memory of the dream has stayed with me since. It was not a lucid dream in that I was not aware that I was dreaming, and I did nothing to control or manipulate the dream. Nonetheless, the visions and sensations were as vivid as those of a lucid dream. As is my habit, I wrote every detail of the dream upon waking. This is an edited excerpt from my dream journal, 5 March 2010:

I'm a passenger in a jet airliner flying over a body of water. I look out the window over my left shoulder, and in the distance behind the plane is a snow-capped mountain. The plane descends slowly, silently gliding over a sea of brown rooftops. As it continues its descent, the plane begins to fade, fading, fading until it disappears, leaving me alone, my body floating down, down, gently down, light as a feather, floating slowly, silently, relaxed but upright and straight as if in a tube, my toes pointed down toward the sea of rooftops, now dipping into the sea, floating down, down between buildings that seem to part in order to receive me, down into a narrow street, houses and buildings lined neatly together, open wooden shutters, wooden beams lining each building. It looks something like a Bavarian village.

With my feet hovering ten or twelve inches above the ground, I float my way down the street. People are walking in the street. The atmosphere is festive, yet quiet, as though a carnival or parade had recently passed. The village appears old, yet the pedestrians are dressed in contemporary clothing. As I float along, I wonder whether they can see me. They are all walking with their feet on the ground, and nobody seems to notice that I am floating above the ground, so I assume that they cannot see me.

I love this feathery feeling of floating. I continue floating through the village, enjoying the sensation and the sights.

Upon waking, I still carry in my body the feeling of floating, a felt memory if you will, not unlike the sensation of my body rising and falling in my bed after a day of riding roller coasters at the amusement park. Except in that case, my body really did ride roller coasters. This was only a dream.

Right?

Sky

1977. I'm fourteen years old. Dad and I are traveling around Greece for the summer, just the two of us. We spend part of our trip with our Eugenides family, Niko, Evelyn, and Theia Anastasia. Niko takes us to a beautiful hotel, Eagle's Palace, in Ouranoupolis. Ouranoupolis means City of the Sky.

Tonight, we sit outside, the adults over there, immersed in conversation, me over here, immersed in the sky. A sea of stars inside a mass of blackness covers the earth like a blanket. I love it. I could stay here forever.

Look, there, a swirling cluster, a spiral, a galaxy! My god. Time stops, my breath stops. Can I really see this with my naked eye? Am I allowed? It's a dream. A gift. Breathe. I tap my fingers on the arm of my chair, make sure I'm still here. The sky unfolds, my insides open. So vast a sky, so small a girl, the universe and me, swirling together on this mountain, so far from home, so close to the stars.

The moment, the experience, the feeling burns itself into my memory, wraps around my heart, sinks to my toes. This is what it's like to be in love. I don't think I will ever find the words to describe it.

On the road to Ouranoupolis. Theia Anastasia is on the right, and Evelyn's arm is on the left. Dad is at the table, off camera. Niko snapped the photo. I'm smiling with food in my mouth. 

Home

In twenty-four hours, I will ride a big ol' jet airliner back across the globe to what I've always called home. Except that what I've always called home doesn't exist anymore.

I will probably live in my house until it sells, but with most of my stuff packed away, with a lockbox on the door, and with people coming to view the place, it won't feel like mine anymore. It won't feel like home.

In the weeks before I left for Greece, while packing my stuff and feeling such deep sorrow for having to leave my house, I decided to practice Qigong against/with/through the walls of my house, particularly load-bearing walls, for within those walls are wooden beams that have held up the house since 1947. Lots of energy in those beams. (Thanks to Sifu Dan Ferrera for this teaching.)

I have barely a beginner's understanding of Qigong, but I have an open heart and an open mind. So, standing a few feet from a load-bearing wall in my house, not really sure what I was doing, I inhaled and exhaled, leaned toward and away, cried and didn't cry, felt angry at my circumstances and then accepted them.

Then, slowly, quietly, I let go of the the anger and not-anger, the crying and not-crying, and I simply felt, noticed, listened.

And the house said, I'm still standing.

And I said, so am I.

---------------------------------

P.S.
The house sold. I got the news today,  just two hours after posting the above. Still standing...

Meandering

 

Once upon a time on Mount Pelion, somewhere between Katichori and Makrinitsa, I came upon an entrance to a wood. I entered and walked along the path. I wandered, diverted, stopped, sat, bent, climbed, looped, and circled. I had no other goal but to be there, to explore, and to enjoy.

Scattered beams of sunshine breaking through a tangled web of tall tree branches, chirping birds, a brook rushing over rocks, a wooden bridge, fallen leaves, melting snow. Who would have thought Mount Pelion could look so much like Michigan?

I'm leaving Greece in two days. Two days! Where have I been and why haven't I been blogging? I've been wandering, sifting, sorting, circling, taking it all in, and taking notes.

What difference does it make whether I tell my stories in chronological order, from Europe, as they happen (too late!), or if I tell them to you from Michigan after the fact? Come, join me on a nonlinear walk like the one I took on Pelion, riding tangents without apology, daydreaming with abandon, melting into the past, sneaking into the future, and barely recognizing where we are.

Rock

On my last day at Akrimios, I took a walk down the mountain road to the sea. There, I noticed a rock with several markings. Among the markings, I saw the initial of a certain beloved. I liked the rock. I wanted to keep it, put it in my pocket, treasure it.

So, I cupped both hands around the rock, held it to my lips, breathed his name into the rock, and hurled it into the sea.

 

I watched the rock disappear with a tiny splash and barely a ripple. The gesture was symbolic of surrendering my hopes and desires to something greater than myself, trusting them to the stillness of the bottom of the sea. Isn't that what my journey has been about, surrender? Letting go, not clinging?

Dear Universe: I like holding. I would like to do that again. Amen.

Over the Rainbow

Last week, because I felt a little homesick, I had in mind to post this message to my friends and family on Facebook: Click, click, click. There's no place like home, there's no place like home. And then this happened:

And I realized that I was over the rainbow. 

Click on the photo for a larger view. It's a double rainbow. It felt as if I could reach out and touch it. I think I did.

First Morning at Akrimios

Last night, Ingrid gave me half a loaf of fresh baked bread, butter, and fruit. She told me to help myself to tea and coffee in her workspace downstairs. I found a jar of honey here in my kitchenette. What a delightful breakfast I had, sitting at the window looking out at the sea and mountains. A former me might have felt sad for having no one with whom to share this lovely morning. I do not feel sad at all. I am filled with quiet bliss. And I am not alone. I am sharing it with you.

I am a voice from your future, bidding you come. Let go of those things that weigh you down. Keep to those roots that nourish you, and pull up those that hold you back. Take the risk, spread your wings, and fly.

The Gold

You don’t always have to spin disappointment into gold. Sometimes, all you have to do is change your perspective. Stand in a different place, take another look, and you find that the very thing that disappointed you was a nugget of gold all along.

*  *  *

How did I get here? I know the facts, I remember arriving, and still I wonder, how on earth did I get here?

I am sitting in my own little apartment. An entry hall, private bath with shower, a kitchenette, two twin beds, a wardrobe in which to hang my clothes (maybe that’s how I got here, through the wardrobe), and a huge balcony overlooking the bay. When I first stepped out onto the balcony, the mountains, sea, and sky stole my breath away, and I wept.

Marianna, my previous host, made some phone calls and hooked me up with Ingrid, my current host. Ingrid is originally from Austria and has lived on Crete for nearly thirty years. She and her husband Petros, a native of Crete, have four adult children. They own a retreat center and banquet facility not far from Chania. Above the retreat center are several apartments that they rent out, often to retreat guests. I live in one of the apartments in exchange for cleaning and gardening, getting the apartments and the grounds ready for spring.

There is so much more I want to tell you -- about going with Ingrid to her house this evening, having dinner together by the fire, sharing amazing local wine, fresh baked bread, and enlightened conversation. Then back here to the apartment. I unpacked, took a shower, and here I am, all clean and comfy in my jammies and thick warm socks.

Off to bed. I can hardly wait for sunrise.

The Disappointment

I've been told that there isn't enough work to support two helpers. The other helper will stay, I will leave.

Not much to say about that at the moment. That's just the way it is.

I have a few entries on my hard drive that I wrote while the internet was down. I will add them another time. Right now, I'm going to bed. I need my energy for all the gold-spinning I'm about to do.

Unplugged

No Internet connection in the village for days. Have just a few minutes here at the internet cafe in Rethymnon, just enough time to ask for your patience. Need to post this before I get booted. See you soon.

Crete: Sensory Overload

My Midwestern senses need time to adjust to the endless beauty of this land. For now, I can offer no more than scattered pieces: a peek at the land, a taste of her fruit, a whiff of her fragrance, a brush of her hand, a whisper of her wind. If my camera and my words weave the parts together just so, then you might also perceive that which lies beyond the senses: the mystery of Greece, the magic of Crete, and the power of stepping out of your known world and into the unknown.

Welcome to my fairy tale.

My room in Marianna's house

This is the sun that my sister gave to me 

that I brought with me that I hung over the door to my room:

This is my bed. When I lie here, I feel like a fairy tale character, 

like Goldilocks, but invited and satisfied:

This is the back wall of my room. The house is 12th century Venetian. 12th century! 

At night, before I fall asleep, I listen for stories that the stones might tell.

Just outside my room is an open area used to dry herbs.
Everyday, I breathe sage, cypress, laurel.

Piraeus

My stay in Athens did not work out as I had hoped, but that's okay. I have a way of spinning disappointments into gold. Today has been an absolute delight. My day started with breakfast at my hotel:

Strolling and shopping in Piraeus...

Koulouras! This is the first koulouras I've seen since 1977. Golly, when I was a child, the koulouras did not sit down. He walked up and down the streets with the koulouria on a stick. Well, it's been thirty five years, I guess he's tired. ;)

 

Beggars abound in Piraeus. I felt compelled to photograph this woman. Whereas most beggars stood or sat along walls and curbs, this woman plopped herself in the middle of the sidewalk with her legs crumpled beneath her, as if to say, "Notice me, dammit!" And so I did.

 

Clearly, this driver took lessons from Mr. Bean.

Interesting juxtaposition.