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?