Bob Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone
Mike Oldfield: Tubular Bells
Steely Dan: Rikki Don’t Lose That Number
Santana: Samba Pa Ti
Bachman Turner Overdrive: American Woman
Rolling Stones: Honky Tonk Women
Led Zeppelin: Heartbreaker
The Eagles: Hotel California
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Sweet Home Alabama

Journal Entry

This afternoon I was pulled out of line at Passport Control, trying to re-enter Athens. The guards were yelling at me in Greek and pointing at my passport. They pushed me backwards through the crowd, one on each arm, one of them carrying my bag. They pushed me into an office and I sat on the couch while the two officers yelled at each other and at me. This went on for several minutes, the officers getting more and more agitated, demanding my wallet, my birth certificate, receipts, pointing to a calendar impatiently, speaking quickly in Greek. Then the door opened and the passport agent I’d befriended on my way out of Athens came into the room. He looked down at me and said, “What are you doing here?” I shrugged my shoulders and he looked up and the three of them got into an argument, with a lot of waving and barking. After several heated exchanges, it was clear my protector was winning the argument because the two Custom’s agents picked up my passport and left the room without saying a word. After they’d gone he explained that I hadn’t had my passport stamped when I left Athens and there was a 200 Euro penalty (about $360) for breaking the rules, but it would be okay because he was their superior and could verify that he had seen me leave for Cyprus the week before. He told me to relax, that they were getting authorization to let me through with a special stamp. When they returned and handed me back all of my things, I shook hands with my savior, thanked my captors, and was led to the gate, where D. was waiting. She had already picked up our luggage and put her arm through mine. “You can tell me in the cab. Let’s get out of here.”

Every morning and afternoon I had been to her taverna to buy a coffee to go. The first day we’d gotten into an argument of sorts—she’d asked me for 50 pence (about a dollar) for a double cappuccino. “What???” I said, “That’s too little money! It must be much more!” She wouldn’t take any more money, so I paid her 50 p. and poured the rest of my change onto a saucer on the counter. We had repeated this argument every day since—”No, you must charge more. I would pay much more.”

Today, after she gave the barista my order, people continued to shout and push in front of me while I stood, patient and motionless as a statue, not knowing what I should be doing. Several minutes later the owner returned and looked up at me and turned to the barista and scolded him severely and slammed a large coffee cup in front of him. He made my coffee and for the first time since I’d been in the taverna that morning he turned around and handed me my coffee, bowing slightly. “Epharisto” I said, and “Epharisto!” I called out to the owner over the roar, as she walked away from me. “Thank you” I said, waving a Euro coin over my head, pointing toward her jar, having to leave immediately to get Layne her coffee before the class began. She stopped and walked back to me and shoved me away from the counter. “Ah, get out of here. No charge today. It’s St. Eleni’s day.”

This morning I was sitting on my front porch, listening to the Sunday morning singing of the liturgy that was broadcast on speakers throughout the town. And as I was listening I heard a couple making love to my left. Her moaning did not seem disrespectful of the liturgy but an important counterpoint to it, the missing part, the part that was living and continued living. At times the liturgy seemed to be driving the lovemaking, like musicians playing to the dance. And then, for a moment, I heard the singing of the mass as rising from their lovemaking, as if the liturgy was the sound of God singing in the completeness of their lovemaking. And then I heard them as two facets of the same thing—not one underlining or driving the other, but the same song rising into the sky to meet the sunlight that was streaming onto my porch, heating the stones, shining in my eyes until I became nearly transparent.

Milk
Honey
Wine
Olive oil
Water
Flowers
Shells
An altar cloth
Ribbons
Lighters x 2
Candles
Plates
Cups
Round cakes
Bells, bowls, and drums.

On the Path to Aphrodite’s Rock, Cyprus

The improvised
brush of lips,
the arch of her hip,
her fingers pressed
into my neck,
these simple
fragile pleasures
stolen in the shadows,
as snowflakes melt
before they hit the ground.

Today after we finished our ritual on the beach on Cyprus where Aphrodite is thought to have come ashore, a woman I didn’t recognize came up to me and said “1 want to tell you that there are revealed angels, and you are one of them. I’ve only recently come to understand that I am one as well, so this is very new to me, but I thought I’d let you know that you are one too because we can recognize each other. See,” she said, “you wanted to meet your guardian angel, right, you wanted proof? Well, here’s your proof. You’re Layne’s Guardian Angel. That’s who you are. Isn’t that ironic?”

Him:
I want her and when I want her I want her to give me
          All of her.
When she comes to me she will come to me and give me
          All of her.
When she comes to me she will come to me and I will give her
          All of me.

Her:
I want him and when I want him I want him to give me
          All of him.
I want him and when I want him I want him to give me
          All of him.
When he comes to me he will come to me and I will give him
          All of me.
He wants me and when he wants me I will give him
          All of me.
He wants me and when he wants me I will give him
          All of me.
When I come to him I will come to him and give him
          All of me.

Him:
She wants me and when she wants me I will give her
          All of me.
She wants me and when she wants me I will give her
          All of me.
When I come to her I will come to her and give her
          All of me.

Together:
Her:
I want him and when I want him I want him to give me
          All of him.
When he comes to me he will come to me and give me
          All of him.
When he comes to me he will come to me and I will give him
          All of me.

Him:
I want her and when I want her I want her to give me
          All of her.
When she comes to me she will come to me and give me
          All of her.
When she comes to me she will come to me and I will give her
          All of me.

* * *

Today while Layne was drumming, I was concentrating on the beat, trying to learn how to hear the beat. At one point I finally got it and I was dancing from inside the beat when Layne stopped drumming and walked over to talk to a student about her drum. During the break the class relaxed and talked and did this and that, but I turned toward the wall and continued to tap out the rhythm with my foot, afraid I’d lose it if I stopped. And then, when Layne was ready, she walked to the front of the class, picked up her tambourine, paused, and then began directly on the beat. And I realized Layne wasn’t creating the beat, she was hearing it.

The years have devoured everything
without nostalgia. Below us, a pine forest
tumbles into a jumble of boulders,
nothing in the heather except a dog
and the slanting sun’s long shadows
across alpine flowers and stones
we choose not to notice as we
rush past to where we’re going,
nowhere really, desolate and derelict,
no longer a thing of beauty wild in its
embroidery, no longer ornate, or
transcendent, or even visible at all.

* * *
It had been a long drive to Delphi and we were still driving late into the night, and I was sitting by myself on the bus, looking down a valley of scrub between the road and the Corinthian Bay, wondering how archeologists knew where to dig for ancient Greek sites. From folk stories, I imagined, and oral histories. And literature. And a name appeared in my head, surprising me: “Like Plato.” And I thought, “No, that’s not right—not Plato—he didn’t write history.” And at that moment Layne stood up in the front of the bus and said, “Randy, have you read Plato: Neo-historian? It’s about how Plato was really writing a history of the previous 8000 years.”

This morning I went to a Greek Orthodox shrine across the street from my hotel in downtown Athens. It was a sort of grotto, its four walls covered with golden icons of Jesus and the saints—most of whom I didn’t recognize or understand. It was crowded with young businessmen on their lunch break and grey-haired women in housedresses. There was a pile of amber beeswax candles near the door, and I grabbed one and dropped some coins into the collection box and stood at the end of the line of people waiting to approach the altar. After people planted their lighted candles on the altar, they walked through the shrine, kissing every icon in turn. There was also a pile of paper by the altar where people could write their prayers and drop them, face up, on a small table. The line was long enough to give me plenty of time, but when I got up to the altar I still hadn’t begun to think of what I wanted to pray for. I held back and stared at the scene—a crisscross of lit candles in a box filled with sand under two icons, one of Jesus and one of Mary, the gold-leaf paintings glittering in the candlelight. I could feel the eyes of the others in line on my back while I stared at the flickering candleflames and tried to think of what I could possibly pray for. I don’t know what is best for me, my life is already over-full with joy, and did I really want a new girlfriend? I stood there, my candle lifted, inches from the flame, waiting for something to come to mind. I examined the two candles—one lit, leaping and flaming, and one aloft and separate, cold and inert, not yet alive. It was just a lump of wax and string but when I touched it to the flame it would burst into light. Composed of only a wick to hold the flame and wax to fuel it, it was designed solely for this moment when it would be touched by another flame and come to life. And once lit its light would rise through the tiny shrine, flickering through the room, making the icons blink. And when another candle came close enough to touch its flame, it would pass the fire and light onto it, and it would burst into flame and become what it was designed to be, what it had been waiting to become, its purpose revealed to it only through the touch of another’s flame. This was something it could never do on its own—it needed to be touched by a candle that had once been just a lump of wax and string but had been touched by another candle, beginning the process that would lead to its eventual end. Jesus, I whispered, set fire to my heart.