FULL FATHOM NONE

Writing Bliss

2012-01-15T22:57:00.000-08:00

Sunday, January 15, 2012—Long Beach, CA

An overcast day, with the slightest amount of drizzle. I slept kind of late, watched a little of the Ravens-Texans game, listened to Ian Masters’ Background Briefing (which I do on most Sundays), and then went for bike ride along the beach and a half-hour soft-sand walk. Then I road downtown to Portfolio Berlin coffee shop where I am now. The rest of the day will consist of trying to get some stuff done for school and BSP, maybe watching some more football, studying some Greek, and perhaps working on my current short story. I’ve also got to write an application letter for the Ventura job, which I also might try and start today.

I mentioned in my last entry (I think it was that entry) that I’ve been feeling really good about things lately. I still am. But I’m also feeling restless too, like it’s time for a major change in my life (the job apps, the Greek option, and even my foray into the world of short-story writing are of course symptoms of this). A part of me just wants to do something radical like sell almost everything I own, buy a really good road bike, and just start riding—to anywhere. I think the only thing that’s stopping me from doing that sort of thing is BSP—I really want to keep the press going, build it into something that matters. There can only be so much wandering while that dream is still around.

I’m sure part of my restlessness is coming from the fact that I can feel myself embarking into new places in my writing that I’m anxious to go deeper into. Though I’m only maybe two-thirds of the way thru Girl in the Orange Bikini, the short story I’m working on, it’s already showing me a way into a big new world, in regards to storytelling; I know it’s going to be the first of many stories that as a whole will be something really substantial. It’s so refreshing after writing two novels to work on so much smaller of a scale, to put things like atmosphere and feeling in the forefront—it’s so great to leave the tyranny of plot behind. My dream of approaching storytelling like painting is already coming true in my first effort! This amazes me. I’ve had this idea floating around in my head for a decade at least, but I could never before realize it (though it crystalized into prose here and there in my novels). I’m also now seeing how I can explore aspects of my life that I’ve never been able to before. The first story is set in Seal Beach—the Seal Beach of my youth. I’m envisioning stories being set in Hawai'i, where I live for a sizeable chunk of my twenties. Maybe my travels to places like Australia will make an appearance at some point. Most of my life, before I was about thirty-five, has been a dead issue for me as a writer. During those years I was essentially in flight—from everything: from myself. Because of this I’ve had little to say about it: my denial made those years lies in very important ways—and it’s the admittance lies that matters, not their details. But there were moments, staggering moments of beauty and wonder, if not clarity, that haunt me, that demand to be refashioned into some sort of art. Now it’s finally happening! How can the coming days not be good ones, when things are suddenly so right for me that my long-bolted doors are now gently opening?

I’ve been looking back at some of these diary entries recently, and they worry me a bit. As I've earlier feared, this on-line format is limiting me. There are certain things about myself I simply do not wish to discuss in a public forum. More troubling, is my continuing reluctance to write about the people in my world. It’s privacy issue. I have every right to put my own existence on display, but I don’t have the right to do that to other people’s lives. This, combined with the areas of my life I won’t go into, has left my path thru this project a somewhat narrow one. Maybe it’s a blessing, though, in that that things about a writer’s life that are most important to his readers are those aspects that have something to do with his relationship to the written word—and that’s the area I’m most comfortable going into here. I could be that when I look back on these pages a decade from now I’ll see that my instincts were right on, that I was doing exactly what I should have been doing. Still, these pages seem a little strange at times. I’m a largely solitary person, but not to the extent these entries imply. Hopefully there are enough hints to the other aspects of my life that they can provide a bit of context. I’m of course too close to all this now to know for sure.

Mellowing Out

2012-01-13T00:15:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 12, 2012—Long Beach, California

Strange warm winter days continue. Today was sunny and in the mid-seventies. I guess we’re supposed to start getting Santa Ana winds at any moment, which could jack the temperature up even more. It’s the middle January and we’ve hardly had any rain this fall/winter. I keep waiting for things to turn and a big deluge to come in. It may not happen, though: sometimes we go years without substantial rainfall (we can also spend a few winters in a row under water). I know intellectually that we need the rain and that I should be hoping for it, but I’m really enjoying this warm spell. Like I’ve said before, winters like this is why I stay in Southern California.

Feeling pretty good lately, less stressed. This is an especially good sign because I’m managing to remain mellow even though I’ve been pretty busy. One thing I’ve really noticed about myself in recent years is that I tend to turn everything into a job: the doings of my life all become work I have to get thru, as opposed aspects of my existence I get to experience. Another way of putting it is that I’m always trying to get thru things I have to do so I can then experience my real life. Those things of course ARE MY REAL LIFE, or at least parts of it. Last semester this attitude really spun out of control for me and I very much lost my center. A big symptom of all this is that I’ve been finding myself worrying about the future, where I’ll be in five, ten years. This is a foolish mindset. There is only now (the future and the past, by definition, don’t exist) and as long I’m living my life the way I should the future will take care of itself. To worry about the future is to destroy the present, to be taken out of the moment, which, again, is all there is. This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t plan, only that I shouldn’t sweat the potential outcomes, especially the elements I have no control over. Just write, Rob, I keep telling myself. Just write and think and dream and love and get as many good nights of sleep as you can along the way. The rest of it all just isn’t that important …

Now, as to the nature of my recent busyness … School has started at Irvine Valley, which has meant coordinating with my mom to use her car, as my scooter is still (still!) in the shop. I’ve also been filling out job applications for full-time teaching positions, to Irvine Valley and also to the Ventura Community College District, who just posted a position a few days ago. I know I’ve been hemming and hawing over this, and I’ve been leaning against going down that road, but I think I need to apply, if for no other reason than I don’t want to find myself regretting not at least exploring this option (this all may be moot—the odds are very much against me getting either of these positions). Part of my less-stressed attitude is explained, or perhaps represented by, my rapidly evolving attitude towards these jobs. Namely, I don’t really care if I get them or not. If I get one of them I’ll deal with that decision then. If I don’t, it’s an opportunity to leave teaching and go down perhaps more productive roads. Either way I know I will come out happy—I can make my life work just fine in either situation.

What else has been happening? Steve E came down from Sacramento for a few days, which was great. It’s nice to hang out with someone my own age who shares so much of my background and who is also going thru some at least broadly similar life changes. I wish we lived a little closer together. Been writing some on the “The Girl in the Orange Bikini” (I’m slightly stuck and am not trying to force it). I also finished reading The Long Goodbye. It’s a good novel, longer and grungier than any of Chandler’s other novels I’ve read. It’s been interesting experiencing how the Marlowe character changes thru these books. Thru the early novels he’s cynical, but there’s a strong streak of the hopeful romantic in him. By The Little Sister, the fifth novel, he is simply angry, maybe even enraged; the slimy side of L.A. life has finally broken him in some important way. With The Long Goodbye it’s a return to the romantic cynicism from a different angle; it’s like he’s moved past his anger, rediscovered certain good things about himself and life in general, but he’s also lost something too, his, youth for sure, but also his hope—he’ll happily take the little victories in life because he now believes that those are the only ones possible.

I’ve decided to keep this classic crime fiction phase of mine going a bit longer. I just started Playback, Chandler’s last completed novel (most reviewers consider it his weakest). I’ve picked up his collected short stories and The Thin Man, by Dashiell Hammet. I’ve been meaning to onto his stuff for a while and now seems like a good time. Still plugging away at Gay’s first Enlightenment book. Great stuff, but it’s going on a little longer than works for me.

One other things I’ve been doing is selling stuff on Half.Com. I’ve always hated “stuff” and lately my life feel bloated materially. I’d love to dump about two-thirds of everything I own. Lean and light is how I want to live. If it’s not playing a useful role in my life it needs to be pitched out the door. Hopefully over the next few months my shelves and closet will start looking mighty empty. Stuff not in use is just stuff I have to dust.

Raymond Chandler Weather

2012-01-06T22:45:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 04, 2012—Long Beach, CA

Another beautiful day here in Southern California. According to the weather report it’s made it up to eighty-two today, and that feels pretty accurate. It’s also bright and sunny with little in the way of wind. It’s days like this that remind me why I’m willing to live here, why I’m willing to deal with all the bullshit this place lays down on a daily basis. There aren’t too many places in the world where summer days are slipped into the middle of the winter. It’s probably gotten to the point where the weather is no longer enough to hold me here, but I have to admit it’s still a strong pull.

I’m having a kind of lazy day today. I couldn’t sleep last night and was probably up till around four, so I wasn’t able to pull myself out of bed until eleven thirty. After eating some breakfast, I worked on a lecture for an hour or so and then headed over to the my library branch on 3rd Street to pick up a book they had waiting for me (The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler). Now I’m sitting at Portfolio coffee shop tapping away on my netbook. Later I’ll head home and finish the lecture I was working on earlier, put in an hour or so studying Greek, and then put some work in on the short story I'm tackling. Throw a naked girl in there somewhere and it would pretty much be a perfect day.

This little bit of time off I’ve had is again really making me see how misplaced I am teaching anthropology. The discipline has given me a lot and I’m glad I got those degrees, but I’m feeling more than ever that I’ve come to the end of the part of my life. This of course means I’m up for a big decision very soon because I’m supposed to be applying for the full-time teaching position at Irvine. Now that I’ve started writing again (and gotten my head out of anthropology long enough to gulp a little literary air) I’m realizing how much I’m missing that world, my true world—I’m also once more realizing how my next move in life is to dedicate myself to a life of letters. I’m also now seriously thinking about trying to get a job teaching English in Greece as my first move in that direction. This issue is how to do that and still run BSP. I’ve got some ideas on that, but their pretty sketchy. What it all comes down to is that I’m not happy when I’m not writing and anthropology pulls me away from the muse. If I were to apply for that full-time job it would mostly be for the check. No, my future lies with my books and maybe BSP—I think I’ve already made my decision.

Still trying to figure out what I’m doing, reading wise. I know I need more fiction in my life, more stories, but I’m having trouble figuring out what writers I should be reading. I’ve abandoned Paul Bowles yet again—he’s just not working for me right now (there must be something there, though, or I wouldn’t keep going back to him). As I mentioned, I picked up Chandler’s The Long Goodbye today, so I guess I’m back to my study of crime fiction. With him, though, it’s of course more than that—he’s just a great writer period. While I was at the library I also grabbed The John Fante Reader. I’ve long since read everything in it, but I thought it might be interesting to see how his writing works in that format, in collage. Plus, since so much of Fante’s career parallels Chandler’s time wise, and because they both write about Southern California, I thought mixing Fante’s stuff in with The Long Goodbye might be interesting. I also checked out a novel by Isabel Allende, A Portrait in Sepia. I know little about her work, but I read the first few pages and it felt like something I might get into.

OK, that’s it—back to work. I’ve got to keep the boring anthropology beast at bay (as well as the Greek gods, who now apparently expect something from me).

Writing Again

2012-01-04T15:54:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 02, 2012—Long Beach, CA

Impatient-ass Rob. In my last entry I discussed how I was in a fallow period in my writing. A couple days ago, though, an idea for a short story I’ve had for a long time suddenly came to life; I’ve put down three pages of work on it and I’m very happy with what’s come out so far. It’s the real thing too—I can ultimately always tell when I’m faking it: everything seems contrived in one way or another and the writing is usually slow and difficult. This one, though, feels very right, and it’s just falling out of me. With it I’m also putting into play my ideas for stories with little movement, stories that instill the feelings one can get when looking at a worthwhile painting. It’s working title is “The Girl in the Orange Bikini.” It takes place in Seal Beach, California sometime in the mid-1970s, and concerns the sexual awakening of a boy, probably aged around eleven. I don’t want to jinx it by going into it more than that (I also don’t want to give it away—even to myself). With this story I’m also now seeing ways to approach other ideas for stories that have been rolling around in me, in some cases for quite a while. This little breakthru has really opened some artistic doors for me, I feel. Suddenly I’m now in a much better mood than I’ve been for months.

I still think my earlier point about being in a fallow period is valid. I’m sure I will be feeling my way thru these story ideas very slowly; this will be part of my transitioning into a new period as a writer; I’m not ready to dive headfirst into any kind of sustained narrative. What I find really interesting is now that I’m taken the first baby steps down this new road it makes perfect sense to me. I REALLY NEED TO GET AWAY FROM THE NOVEL. That structure is an incredibly demanding one and I’m burnt out on it. I need to go gently into new characters, new universes, which don’t demand all my heart and soul at once. I still have a lot to give, but for the moment I need to dole it out in smaller amounts. For the foreseeable future I want to write in the manner equivalent to painting a small canvas on a bright summer’s day—and when that one’s done I’ll start another and then another … Together they’ll hopefully add up to something bigger, something in some sense unified …

What else is going on? Not much. I’m still trying to de-stress, to figure out ways to retool my life so it isn’t so demanding in all the wrong ways and places.

Today’s a beautiful day out, a genuine 80-plus degree summer day dropped into January (California at its best in other words). I slept late (I was up till three last night). After eating a little breakfast I road my bike a bit, down to Belmont Shore and then to Portfolio Berlin, a coffee shop in the East Village, where I am now. The rest of the day will invole studying Greek, working on a lecture for school, and hopefully working on my new short story a bit more. A pretty typical day in other words. Feeling the need to be outside more. I hope this nice weather holds for a few more days.

Dynamics of Not Writing

2012-01-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

Saturday, December 31, 2011—Long Beach, CA

Late night, just after midnight. Feeling stressed lately, about all sorts of things, work, money, etc. I realize that I’ve also been stressed about my writing. For months now I’ve been searching for my next writing project. I’ve been toying with ideas for a book on Greece, short stories, and the third Backwaters book. I’m now finally realizing, though, that I’m simply in a fallow period—the reason I’m not writing anything besides this diary is that there is nothing else right now I should be writing. As of the moment there is no Greece book—there’s nothing going on that area that really moves me. The short stories might start arriving someday, but right now I’m just forcing it. The third Backwaters book will happen, but for the moment it’s a little green (I’m thinking it will be at least a few more months before I can bring myself to work on that one in a sustained way). The reason I’ve been stressed and in such denial about this is that when I’m not writing I begin to lose my identity as a writer—which is a very scary.

We writers don’t have very much to keep us going. Most of us don’t make much money, or get much else in the way of rewards—except for the work. When I’m not writing I really start to question my life, why I’ve given up so much to do this thing that I’m currently not even doing. From this point it’s just a short jump to depression and self-doubt. The thing I have to remember is that not writing is part of writing. The writing is really the last step of a long process of internalization, of figuring out what I really feel and think about myself and the rest of the universe. Besides, the point isn’t just to churn out book after book, but to write the books I should be writing. So far I’ve done mostly that: Heaping Stones, Edgewater, and the two Backwaters books are exactly what they should be—honest expressions of what I’m about. There will be others like these—I just need to have faith. I never want to write a bad book, or another false one (What Love Is, my shelved second novel, to some extent, falls under this second category, I think). The way to avoid these fates is simply to wait for the book to come to me, so to speak. I am a writer—I’ve already proved that. I shouldn’t need to be continually hitting the keyboard to understand this.

More Taking Stock

2011-12-28T23:53:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, December 28, 2011—Long Beach, CA

Feeling tired. Still recovering from Christmas, too much food, drink, and socializing (I’m at heart a solitary creature). I’ve managed to get some work done for school the last couple of days, which is part of the reason I’m feeling a little burnt out. I’m trying to adopt a new policy/attitude about how I approach teaching. It’s simply taking up too much of my time; I don’t get paid anywhere near enough to justify the kind of hours I put in. I’ve decided to try and put in no more than four hours a day on school- related work, beyond the actual time I spend teaching. This will make for about a forty-hour work week. Anything that I can’t get done in that time simply will have to wait or will not happen. I think that’s a more than reasonable approach given my paychecks. Hopefully this will allow me time to write and live something approaching an enjoyable life. Teaching has not been a good time these last couple semesters. It either has to start becoming more fun or it needs to go away. Right now I can see things going either way ...

Speaking of teaching, I’ve been investigating teaching English in Greece. It looks like that might be a real option. More on this when I’ve got a better handle on how that might work.

Been frustrated in my recent attempts to write; nothing much is happening when I sit down at the keyboard (beyond my work on this diary). I can’t tell if this is because I’m so stressed and out of practice and therefore can’t settle into the groove or if it comes down to the fact that I don’t have much to say right now; when I try to write ideas that seem great in my head come out stillborn—it’s like they’re not quite ripe or something (to mix metaphors). Nothing much I can do about this except try and put myself in a good place overall in my life and then see what happens with my work—if the words aren’t there there not there, and if they are there and not ready to come out there’s nothing I can do to force the situation. (Man, how many long years has it taken me to accept that reality!)

I’ve decided to give Paul Bowles another chance. I picked up the Black Sparrow collection of his short stories and Virginia Carr’s biography on him from the LB library today. I’ve been reading too much non-fiction lately—I need stories, art. Despite the fact that I found the ending of Let it Come Down so disappointing, I love Bowles’ writing, stylistically. I’ve heard he’s a better short-story writer than novelist. I’m going into them with some fairly high hopes. Like I said, I love his approach and I’m very interested in the North African locales that dominated his work. I could really use a new writer in my world—my life’s immeasurably poorer when I’m not reading a writer a love.

Painting Stories ...

2011-12-26T01:55:00.000-08:00

Sunday, December 25, 2011—Long Beach, CA

Having a fairly lazy Christmas day. I didn’t wake up until around ten, and then I just lay in bed reading for the next hour. Since getting up I’ve cleaned the apartment a bit, worked on some stuff for school, worked out, and I just finished on my day's Greek lessons (actually, when written down like this, my day doesn’t seem all that lazy—though it is my by standards, of late). I needed to relax a bit: I had a long Christmas Eve with the family over at my sister’s house, plus I’m not feeling that great—I think I’m fighting the edge of a cold.

It’s been a good Christmas so far: there’s no issues of note within the family and I didn’t receive, nor apparently have I given, any gifts that are off the mark. It’s also been good because nobody really went overboard on the gift giving. I like being with the fam and eating the good food that always comes down the pipe this time of year, but I don’t care for the commercial aspects of this season at all. We used to have a real problem in my family with smothering the holiday with overwrought gift giving. We seem to have gotten a handle on that, though, which has really improved things, from my perspective (for a lot of years I really didn’t care too much for Christmas). Tonight we’re going to top things off with what will no doubt be a great dinner at my aunt-and uncle-in-law’s house. Every Christmas, Bonnie, my aunt-in-law, picks a place in the world and cooks food from that region. This year she’s chosen Russia. I know very little about the cuisine of that country, but it should be interesting. If nothing else she’s told me we’ll be having caviar, which will be a first for me. I’m just hoping I can make it thru the night without this cold I seem to be fighting winning the battle. I often get sick around Christmas, mainly, I think, because it’s just after the school semester has ended and the stress and general wear and tear of the previous months finally catches up with me. I had to leave early one year, the year Bonnie did Indian food, which really pissed me off—because even though I was sick I was still really enjoying the meal. I’m crossing my fingers at the moment.

Between Greg having been in town and Christmas prep there really hasn’t been much time for much else. I did manage to burn my way thru a short book on the Barbary Wars, which has been interesting (I knew almost nothing about them going in). I’ve also still been working steadily on the first volume of Peter Gay’s two Enlightenment books. Reading a book on Plains Indians as well, as prep for a class I’m teaching. I ‘ve also been playing around—in an extremely small way—with the Greek book and an idea I have for a short story. Hopefully once Christmas has passed I’ll have time to really dig into them both—this forced hiatus from serious writing I’m going thru is really starting to piss me off.

Since I started working on the short story I just mentioned I’ve been playing with an old idea I’ve had for a book of short stories. For a long time I’ve wanted to experiment with writing stories that feature very little in the way of plot, of movement; I’ve wanted to write “stories” where the focal point in the feelings of the situation being described (or perhaps "essence" would be a better term for what I’m striving for). What I’d like to do is write short prose pieces that would take writing as close as it can go to painting, where the universe of the story is presented as a kind of crystalized moment (which in its composition of course implies all the moments leading up to the one being presented). What I guess I’m saying is that I want texture and color coming to the forefront, not for their owns sakes, but as the vehicles that carry the deeper aspects of the writing. I’ve always felt that viewing stories having a “setting” (or worse a “backdrop”) is a complete missing of the point. A story’s setting, in the end, is the story; a truly worthwhile piece of writing couldn’t possibly be divorced from the locale (in the deepest sense) in which it’s set. There are of course universal themes (all themes worth exploring are universal, I’d say), but there are flavors, routes of expression that come from specific places of origin—and these “flavors” are as much the story as anything that “happens” to any of the characters involved: if you can pull characters out of a story or transcribe its plot, you’re dealing with bad writing, the manipulation of stock characters and interchangeable scenes. All of this is a long way of saying that I want to “paint” stories, have the emotional-intellectual elements of the writing’s meaning be one with its compositional techniques.

I want to write Degas, in other words, Matisse, to be less obvious (and far more adventurous). Shit, I want to write Brice Marden if it’s possible (how would that even work?—I can give no reasonable answer, but I can sense it’s possible). I can’t be original in this quest, I know, but I also believe there’s a unique kernel in this little fantasy of mine, in my approach to this quest—which is more than enough to dream from, to write from …

Dumb Broken Scooter Stress

2011-12-22T19:22:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 16, 2011—Long Beach, CA

Done. I’ve finally made it thru my nightmare (or at least nightmarish) semester. True to form, it ended on a really stupid, ugly note. On my way to give my final yesterday morning my bike cut out in the middle of the intersection of Westminster and Springdale; a fuel pump/line issue, I’m sure. The one thing a professor can’t do is miss a final. So I pulled out my cell phone and was going to start calling people for a ride. As I was doing this, I realized that both my sister and mother—my two best hopes for a no-warning ride—had just moved and have new land-line numbers, which I had not yet put into my phone. I doubted that my sister would answer her cell at that time of the morning, but I tried it anyway. She didn’t answer. I then got desperate and started calling people, some of whom I haven’t talked to in months, hoping I might get lucky and find someone who was able and willing to truck me out to Irvine. No dice. Finally I decided to call the Auto Club and just get myself towed to work and then deal with my bike later. This should have been a good plan. But the Auto Club’s computers were down and a pickup that should have taken a half hour ended up taking nearly an hour and a half (luckily I left the house early to take care of some business on campus so I had more of a buffer time wise than I would normally have had). I ended up getting to campus a half hour late, stressed and a little angry. I was able to bring off the final, though, so I guess things turned out OK, but it was definitely a major drag of a morning.

Getting my bike “home” turned out to be a continuation of my dumb-ass morning. Though normally the Auto Club gives only one tow per breakdown I talked them into a second because the first one was so late and had inconvenienced me so much. Unfortunately I ended up having to wait just as long for this second tow, so long that by the time the flatbed got to me it was nearly rush hour, which meant a mostly slow freeway crawl all the way to Long Beach Motorsports. The fun wasn’t over, though. Literally the second I got out of the tow-truck’s cab the skies opened up and I got soaked in the five minutes max it took to get the bike off the flatbed. Then finally something cool happened. I was planning on walking the hour it would take me to get home, but Kim, a girl who works in the service department of LBMS offered to give me a ride home. My day, which started when I left the house at about 7:40 AM came to a soggy end about 6:00 PM.

As I was standing by various roadsides yesterday waiting for tow trucks, I really began taking in my general life situation in a very direct way. My life as I’m living it now simply isn’t working. I am overworked and bored and can see little in the way of a future on the path I’m on. Now more than ever I understand that it’s time for me to write—full time. I need to grab hold of my life and make it work the way I need it to work. All the things I’ve written about—about becoming a free agent, building up BSP, traveling more—needs to be what I strive for. Full-time teaching jobs are not what my life should be about. Nor should my life be centered in Southern California anymore. This place is just too expensive, too difficult … too mean. As I move thru this place I have a very hard time relating to most of what I have to deal with, people, infrastructure, politics, general values. I don’t know where I should go, though. A part of me just wants to head out somewhere in the world and teach English or something for a while. I need to keep BSP rolling, though, expanding. Which limits this kind of mobility. This is the main issue I have to resolve: how can I have the physical freedom I want/need and still have my press, my for-sure publishing outlet? Once I solve this I’ve solved a lot of other issues …

I think my current situation can be summed up with my current relationship to poetry. When I’m feeling right, in touch with the world around me I write and read poetry. Poetry to me is not about asking questions, but expressing answers; it happens when one has come to certain conclusions. I haven’t written a poem since 2009. For a year or so before this I wrote some of the best poems I’ve ever written (which were also some of the best things I’ve written period). My poetry drought coincides almost perfectly with when I started teaching more or less full time. Not an accident, I’m sure.

Beginning to think even more seriously about the Greek book, about its structure, tone, it’s reason for being. I like when the thing’s heading in my mind. I’m going to start on it in the next week or so.

Been reading some. Still working the first book of Peter Gay’s Enlightenment duo. Reading Penguin Renaissance Reader as well. I have a book on Magellan that I want to tackle as well. Too much reading theses day, I think. Not enough writing.

Treading Water

2011-12-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

Monday, December 12, 2011—Irvine, CA

Pouring rain today, but patchy: there are spots here and there where the sun is shining thru and there’s hardly a drop to be found (there are also areas where the sun is out and the rain still coming down hard). I had a wet, miserable, and dangerous trip out to work today—this is not the kind of weather in which to be driving a 50cc scooter. I did see one of the best rainbows I’ve ever encountered. As I turned from Edwards onto McFadden it was suddenly there: a pastel green, yellow, and rose arch that looked like it was right out of some kids picture book terminating into a bright sunny section of McFadden some mythical distance beyond. Makes one understand the basis for religion, in the days before our hyper-empirical world, before the triumph of materialism.

Feeling myself slipping out of school mode. This was time in months that I spent a day only doing non-teaching related things. It felt good, to the point where it’s got me back to really trying to figure out how to end this sojourn in the academic world. My current job has been much on my mind for another reason as well. The full-time position that I knew was coming down the pipe at Irvine Valley finally has arrived; I have until February 28th to apply for it. Though I’ve already contacted some people about writing rec letters for me, I’m leaning against going for it. Teaching has been a good experience, but I’m a writer—and to take a full-time academic job would all but end that. I’m realizing that I’m facing the same decision I did when I decided to bail out on the Ph.D. program at UC Santa Barbara several years ago. Then I felt my true identity, my true purpose on this planet being slowly devoured by my then still-widening commitment to anthropology. I made the right decision then when I left UCSB and avoiding this job is probably the right decision now. Still, it’s hard to pass up the opportunity to make some decent money and not have to live a hand to-mouth-existence. I just have to remember that I’ve got two great books in the can and more on the way, that I’m not a wannabe writer like a I was a decade ago. I am now a real writer, which means, by definition, that that’s my future as well. Still, I’ll agonize about all this for a while—that just seems to be my nature …

What else. Feeling a strong need to start the Greek book. I’ve decided to print up my diary entries from last summer and start reworking them into … something. I’m beginning to see the book as a collection of travel sketches, connected in an Impressionist kind of way more than thru any linear narrative. This will work well for a lot of reasons, but perhaps most importantly it will solve the time issues that will crop up because the book will be based on at least two trips; I can mix and match experiences, collapse time, do whatever I need to make things flow and not have to worry about it all making temporal sense. This will also probably mean that each section of the book can be read on its own, which will also mean that I might be able to sell a few of them as travel pieces with little to no reworking. Getting excited about this project. As I mentioned in the previous entry, I’m really feeling the need to write these days—it’s time for another go round with the muse …

A Little Mental Roundup

2011-12-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 08, 2011—Orange, CA

Feeling pretty good today. The semester is coming to an end and I’m finally getting to catch my breath a little bit, finally finding the time to integrate other activities into my life. I have a bunch of work I need to do over the break, but I’ll also be recharging my batteries, which is something I desperately need to do.

For the last several weeks I’ve been feeling a bit out of it at times, kind of lost. I’ve begun to realize that this is because for months now I haven’t been writing (except of course here). When I stop writing like this I begin to lose my center and to a lesser extent my identity; I begin thinking of myself more of an anthropologist, which sucks, because in terms of my employment situation in this field at least, I’m a pretty low-end social scientist. Last night I reread the tiny bit of work I’ve done on the third Backwaters book and really liked what I read; I could most definitely see its potential. More importantly, reading those few pages really reminded me who I was and what I should be doing. Somehow I’m going to design my life next semester so that I can write regularly, on the Greece book for sure and perhaps Backwaters three as well. Social science is only part of what I do—a relatively small part. When I understand this and can place it in the proper context in my life I’m happier, and also a better teacher and writer—everything fits together and makes sense, in other words.

I’ve also realized (once again) that it’s time for me to break out as a writer, for me to find a substantial audience; I can just feel it in my bones that something’s about to happen for/with me, that something’s needs to happen. I’ve done all the prep, put in all the hard work. I have the books and my books have something to say—they matter in this world. As usual, though, I’m not sure how to proceed, how to go from where I am to where I need to be and should be. The first step, I know, is to throw myself back out there. I need to get the Kindle version of Heaping Stones out and then put out a small run of Edgewater, my long-delayed poetry book. Then once I have some fresh work out it will be time to launch Backwaters of Beauty (either thru an outside publisher of myself). This will all begin happening soon, within a matter of weeks. Then, slowly perhaps, everything will begin to change. Like I just said, I know I have written stuff that matters—once I launch it it’s only a matter of time before it finds it audience and its route to that audience. Exciting times. Or at least they’re about to be.

As has been the case for months, there’s not too much going on in my day-to-day life. Hopefully I’ll be heading up to Santa Cruz for a quick trip over break. Steve S. is coming down from Sacramento in January, and it will be really nice to see him. For now, though, it’s just getting thru the semester and then Christmas prep. Still working on my Greek (though not quite as much as I’d like—busyness and evening exhaustion have caused me to slack off a bit). Still reading a bit as well. Looking forward to more human contact in the coming weeks. I’ve become far too much of a loner these last several months—I’ve surpassed even my extreme need for solitude, which is saying quite a bit.

This and That / Revolutions

2011-12-01T14:55:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 01, 2011—Orange, CA

Busyness (as usual); I haven’t had the time to write anything here for two weeks. It’s probably just as well, as I haven’t had much to say—getting thru the end of the semester and the Thanksgiving holiday has pretty much obliterated most of my creativity, my ability to think clearly outside the little box I’ve been working in. I can see the end of the semester, though—in just a little over two weeks I’ll be done. I can’t wait until I can start a blog post with something other than a chronicling of my annoyance at the rhythms of my day-to day life.

I have managed to continue my Greek studies. I sent away for a series of introductory Greek videos and CDs, which should really help me with my pronunciations. They of course will also give me other routes to internalizing the language; just working from books has started to a get a little frustrating, in that I’m not sure if I’m getting the sounds right, and because working from one angle like this gets boring. However, I’m still enjoying Greek a great deal; I’m just getting anxious to kick it up to the next level.

Somehow I’ve managed to get in some reading as well. The week before last I finished the Let it Come Down, the Paul Bowles novel I started a few weeks ago. The last quarter of the novel was very disappointing. After building up a fascinating universe amongst the exiles of Tangier Bowles abandons most of his characters to follow one of them as he leaves the City for Morocco’s Spanish zone. The novel completely breaks down when he does this, to the point where over two-hundred pages of some of the better writing I’ve ever read seemed kind of pointless. It’s been a long time since I’ve been so high on the first part of a novel only to be so disappointed at its end. I’ve read that The Spider’s House, another Bowles novel I was planning on reading, sinks itself in the same way. I think I’ going to back off him for a while: at this point I think I’d be too leery of where his books might lead to really enjoy them. Still, he’s a fascinating writer whose stuff is about topics and places that really interest me, so I’m sure I’ll give him another go round at some point.

Other than Bowles, I’ve been delving into texts for my Native Americans class I’ll be teaching next semester. I’ve been reading chapters from Cambridge’s History of Native North America and have been really enjoying The Four Voyages, which is a compilation of writings by Columbus and other early chroniclers of his journeys, including his son. Columbus’ own words are especially fascinating. I’m not sure what role what I’m learning from this book will play in the class, but the perspective its giving me can do nothing but increase my depth of knowledge, which is always a good thing.

Not much going on besides work and reading. Been watching the police and the mayor chase Occupy L.A. from the scene. What an asshole Villaraigosa is. I’ve always known he was a slimy player, but I thought he’d at least fake it a little bit better than this, not side with the moneyed powers so openly and quickly (I mean, on paper at least he a fair bit left of center). My favorite recent blathering of his happened early in the demonstrations when he claimed the need to remove the protesters because of the toll they were taking on the lawns and trees downtown. In other words, the price of having to re-sod a park is too high a one to pay for the people’s right to assemble and protest, for democracy! What’s really telling about the L.A. situation is the way these protesters have been treated in relationship to the homeless community.

There has essentially been a homeless tent city in downtown L.A. for decades. While of course these people are sometimes rousted by the cops, as a group they’ve been tolerated, have become part of the everyday scene in this part of the city. The Occupy protesters, however, were immediately seen as a problem by the City government and police. The main difference I can see is that the latter are challenging the system, questioning the way the city, state, country, and world are run—they’re challenging the global-capitalist structure, the true powerbases of the planet's political sycophants. The homeless, on the other hand, are seen as victims, annoyances that have no ability to take on the world order that has been part of what's led to their homeless. In a way this attitude is a good sign. It shows that the people in charge understand how vulnerable they are, how much power we the people really have; they know that the system they set up is a house of cards the rest of us can knock over with only a moderate amount of organization and drive. They’re of course fighting back the wrong way (as they usually do). Instead of trying to stifle protest they should be trying to make the income and power distribution of the world a touch more equal—for if they do not they’re only increasing the pressure and anger in the general populace and risking inviting much greater losses down the road. In other words, if they give a little they’ll probably get the people off their back and be able to continue their general pillaging, (for a bit longer, at least).

A look back to the U.S, in the 1930s really backs up my point, I’d say. It’s become a cliché, but Roosevelt really saved capitalism—by interjecting a modest amount of socialism to counter its more extreme tendencies. If we would have had another four years or more of Hoover-like policies (or non-policies) this country could very well have experienced a leftist and perhaps all out communist revolution. Obama has turned out to be our era’s Hoover light, in that his policies exist primarily to meet the needs of the rapacious one percent. But to repeat, Obama is the “light” version of this mentality—he does not completely ignore the needs of the vast majority of the country’s people.

If those of the financial world’s upper echelon got what they claim to want policy wise it would mean a complete crushing of the middle class of this nation (what’s left of it anyway). With the middle class gutted we would become a country of angry newly poor people with personal and cultural memory of how things used to be, could be (we also have two-hundred plus years of the mythology of classlessness and upward mobility to stoke our anger and inspire our dreams of the future). If this were to happen, if we were to find ourselves with an ultra-right Republican House and Senate topped by a President Gingrich (or someone similar) this country would become radicalized in no time, matching the speed of the collapsing economy and the crumbling of our last (somewhat) democratic institutions. What happens at this point is hard to say, in that we no longer have a convenient counter-point to capitalism in Marxism. What would for sure happen, though, is a revolution that would make the Arab Spring look like a mild warm-up action. And since the economy of this nation is more tightly linked than ever with the rest of the world’s finances it would become a massive world-wide movement. Again, I’m not sure of the specifies at this point, but the pseudo free-market capitalism of today would be a thing of the past and elite heads would role (in some cases literally) throughout the world.

All of this has gotten me to thinking about what would be best electorally for this country in the long run. To continue with the Obama and a right-leaning Congress will probably mean no major changes in a system that’s eventually bound to collapse—in other words, we’d just be kicking the revolution down the road a ways. However, an ugly reactionary government would push us over the cliff in a matter of a few years at most—and maybe that’s what we need. To bumble along like we’re doing means a slow bleeding to death of the potential of most of our lives, years of low-to-moderate levels of misery. One big blast of stupidity, though, followed by the cathartic, but relatively short-lived super pain of a post-collapse revolution, might mean better lives for us all more quickly (those of us who survive, that is).

The BIG problem with this is of course the military firepower at the disposal of anyone in power, which includes nuclear weapons. Though a part of me just wants to push the destruct button on our system and get it over with quickly another part of me realizes that the price for this has the potential to be far too high. The third path, and best in my opinion, would be to build a movement with electoral force that comes out of the Occupy movement. It’s hard to see how this might work, beyond a progressive take-over of the democratic party, in the same way the far right has taken over the Republican party (a third part is possible, but given the way the system is set up, a lot harder road to travel). This would have to be a true internal revolution, though, or, again, we’d just be kicking the can down the road. Is this possible? I hope so—I don’t like any of the alternatives very much.

Grinding it Out, (Re)Discovering Paul Bowles ...

2011-11-17T16:41:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 17, 2011—Orange, CA

Feeling tired, ready for some new rhythms in my life. I will get them pretty soon—after today there’s only three more weeks of the semester at SCC and three and a half at IVC. My “break” will be busy, but at least the commute will go away for a while. I’ll also have a much more reasonable schedule time wise, by which I mean I’ll lose the stupid 7:00 AM class I’m now teaching. There’s so much I want to do, need to do right now and I’m chomping at the bit—it’s hard to have any kind of life when all you do is sit around grading tests and papers weekend after weekend.

There are a few other things going on. I’m prepping Heaping Stones for a Kindle edition. It’s weird doing a close reading of that book after five years. In many ways it really holds up. It’s definitely not me anymore, though. This is a good sign. The reason a person writes a book like that is to but a phase of life behind him. The fact that I’m not close to the work anymore shows that I’ve done that. I've also reread parts of What Love Is, Heaping Stones’ companion novel, which I shelved a couple years back. I’m now really glad I pulled it. It’s definitely a step backwards from HS, both in the quality of the writing and in its revelations. With it I think I was trying to keep alive things that I didn’t really need in my life anymore; I was done with that Rob but couldn’t quite admit it.

Been thinking some about my next writing project. As I mentioned in a previous post, I think I’m going to put the third Backwaters novel away for a while: I just don’t have the enthusiasm to tackle that project at the moment; I’m still too burned out on its universe from all the work I did on its two companions. I’m more convinced than ever that I should be working on my Greek book, starting next semester. Both the change in subject(s) and the move to non-fiction will really stretch and refresh me. Plus, I really don’t want to force out a third Backwaters book when I’m not ready. That “legendarium” has been so successful and fulfilling that it would be a tragedy to produce a dud final out of some misplaced feeling of obligation. The book will happen when it’s ready to happen.

I’ve managed to squeeze in some reading this last week. Still working on Pounds’ Economic History of Medieval Europe, still getting a lot out of it too. Been dipping into Mallory’s Arthurian tales a bit more as well. The last several days, though, I’ve been diving into Paul Bowles’ work. I first tried to read The Sheltering Sky, his most famous work, years ago and couldn’t get into it. I’ve been hearing great things about him, especially lately, so I thought I’d give his stuff another whirl. I picked up Let It Come Down, his second novel, from the IVC library on Monday and it’s great. He writes some of the clearest, cleanest prose I’ve ever read (it makes me wonder if I might be a bit sloppy at points). His explorations of expatriate life in Tangier are also compelling, in a dark tawdry way. Gore Vidal considers him to be one of America’s all-time great writers. It wouldn’t surprise me if I eventually end up agreeing with him. I grabbed The Spider’s Nest, another one of his novels, to get started on this weekend, by which point I should have finished Let It Come Down. It’s rare these days when I feel the need to dive into a writer’s work headfirst. This can be nothing but a good sign. Reading Bowles is making me want to get back to my own writing even more.

A few more semesters like this one and I’ll be finished a writer. I of course won’t let that happen. It’ll be interesting to see how I save myself.

Riding out the Wave / Retrenching a Bit

2011-11-10T14:58:00.000-08:00

Thursday, November 10, 2011—Orange, California

Busy days are these. But I do seem to be getting a handle on things. I can see the semester closing out and a reduced work load on the horizon. Still, there’s not much going on besides school I’ve been too busy to work on the novel lately (or much else in the way of “personal” writing—that’s why I’ve only been doing about an entry a week here). Greg came down from Santa Cruz this week and it was nice to hang out with him. (Unfortunately he’s down because his brother was in a nasty car accident, which really took the edge off his visit.) I’ve been doing some interesting reading lately. I’ve decided to put down the Brothers Grimm for a while so I don’t get burned out on that stuff. I’ve picked up Part 1 of Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, which is something I’ve been meaning to get to for a while. I’m also reading NJG Pounds’ classic An Economic History of Medieval Europe, which so far is really good. I’ve also started the process of prepping the BSP books for Kindle editions, which is something that’s been hanging over my head for a while. I can’t wait till break, though, when I’ll have time to see more people. Feeling OK these days, but a touch isolated. My life’s also far too narrow at the moment for my tastes. Just about five weeks to go, though, and then a bit of freedom will come by way …

Forgot to mention that I’m still working on learning Greek. I’m also still enjoying it. I wish I had the time to dive into it head first—right now all I can do is nibble around the edges of the language.

I’ve been looking back at my last couple entries and can now see how tangled they might seem to the average person, how big and crazy. This is because I’m going thru a period where a lot of different streams of thought are coming together for me—I’m beginning to realize how interconnected everything is; those posts are me wading into this understanding and trying to make sense of it for myself and others. They are of course first steps, so they’re bound to be a bit messy.

After getting some comments from people who’ve read them I also understanding a bit more what I’ll have to do to both develop these ideas and get them across to other people. Most people have only a light understanding of history. Or more specifically, they don’t really understand what it is. This, I think, is because they’ve been so poorly taught in regards to this subject. History, especially at the more introductory levels (which is all most people experience), is taught as series of events that have little reason for being except that people are doing things—in other words, force of personality drives human events. This turns history into the study of a kind of political psychology. This, though, is only a tiny part of what’s going on. What’s often all but ignored is the ecological and economic contexts in which humans make their decisions. In other words, many of the mechanisms that drive human socio-cultural evolution are largely left out of the equation.

I now see very clearly that if I want to write about the issues that now interest me I have to explain this broader context along the way. Human cultural evolution is driven not by "great" men and women, but by resources and our attempts to control them—human actions are a byproduct of these quests. History then is really the study of human ecology—understand the nature and value of resources (including their geography) and you understand a great deal about why our societies have developed in the ways they have and what our future options might be. Any book I write on this subject will have to start and then work out from this basic understanding. This means that the first essay in this book will have to be a broad overview of human biological and cultural evolution up to the beginnings of agriculture. From there I will have to explain the massive changes that came with the domestication of plants and animals. From that point on I can begin to branch out into the cultural ecology of our current predicaments.

Ok, I've got to cut this short. I'm sure I have more to say, but I just can't spare the time right now. Onward!

The Brothers Grimm Launch Point

2011-11-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

Thursday, November 03, 2011—Orange, CA

Still trudging thru this difficult semester. I feel, though, like I’m getting a handle on things—finally. My hip/back is more or less back to normal and I’m getting caught up on my school work; all I have to do is rework a few lectures and then my semester will mellow out considerably. What’s really frustrating me, I’m beginning to realize, is that I have so little time for serious writing. This is especially annoying in that the main reason I teach to begin with is that it’s supposed to leave me with the time to write. Oh well, at least my schedule next semester is looking much more reasonable. Maybe this forced fallow period is a blessing. I was a little burned out after finishing Mother Earth and probably needed a break. I just don’t like being pushed into anything—I want my writing to wax and wain because of my own internal dynamics, not because of forces coming from the outside.

Still, I’ve been getting into some interesting places intellectually lately. I think I mentioned earlier that I’ve started learning Greek. So far I’m really getting into it. Unlike romance languages, the structure of which I always found a bit counterintuitive (I’m already enjoying learning Greek far more than I ever did French, which did little beside drive me up the wall), Greek grammar makes sense to me. I also like the sound of the language, the way it feels in my mouth and brain. It’s of course very early in this journey for me and my opinions may change, but for now at least Greek really seems like I a language that I could learn well. Crossing my fingers on this one …

I’m also continuing with Grimm’s fairy tales. Telling stuff. Though I’ve long been familiar with a lot of the stories, or at least their basic themes, in other incarnations, reading them one after the other is causing me to see some patterns I only sort of noticed before. The one I find most striking is the role of the forests (the woods) in these tales. They’re always places of mystery, of strange and often dangerous happenings. They’re also places of darkness, places inhabited by bears and wolves and other creatures that inspire fear in the story’s human characters. A lot of these stories go back to the middle ages at least, I’m sure, and the social-environmental juxtapositions really bear this out. What these are are stories told by people living on farms and in towns that are surrounded by then widespread, but now mostly long-gone, European forests. As farmers, though, these people have long lost most of the important connections with their ancestral foraging past. In other words, these stories are byproducts of living near wild wooded ecosystems, but not really in them. When their (our) ancestor’s traded their foraging lifeways for that of agriculturalists they lost their knowledge of these environments—and fear tends to fill knowledge vacuums. In Grimm’s fairy tales then there is a direct connection with the advent of agriculture and our general loss of ecological knowledge. Forests have become a place to gather berries and get firewood, but little else. They are something to be tamed, culled, destroyed, turned into fields “safe” for farming. This, I’d say, directly correlates with the current collapsing of the world’s last wild ecosystems: we destroy that which we don’t understand, both out of fear and because on many levels we don’t even realizing what we’re doing—ten-thousand plus years of agriculture have left us that divorced from the wild world which spawned us.

All this ties into broader views I’m developing on human history. Like most people in the Western world I grew up viewing history as a series of political decisions—the disgusting doings of one scum-bag king after another. I now see this as a side show, the outcome of bigger forces. What history really is is the evolution of how we relate to our environments.

So far there have been two overarching modes of human behavior: the lifeway of the forager and the lifeway of the agriculturalist. The forager gains his/her living thru complex interactions with what are essentially wild ecosystems: they shape these systems only to a slightly greater degree than most other creatures in these realms. Agriculture, however, is about control. It is the mass simplification of ecosystems to meet short-term human needs, (or perceived needs): everything that does not directly serve us get ripped out and replaced with a plants and animals that will do our bidding, so to speak. We lived the first of these lifeways for millions of years (if our full hominid lineage is included). Agriculture is only 12,000-10,000 years old. Until extremely recently the most important intellectual lineage it has given us is the aforementioned diminution of general ecological knowledge—this informs nearly every move we have made, from our diets, to disease, to the nature of our towns and cities, to our rising populations, to our general social systems, to our intellectual accomplishments, to our religions, etc. etc. However, this lifeway, as we currently practice it, cannot go on.

The instability of socio-economic systems based around unthinking ecosystem simplification have always been striking—human history since the advent of agriculture can be viewed as one long series of wars over dwindling resources. As the planet hits seven billion people and we sit on the verge of planet-wide environmental collapse it has become apparent that we’re going to be entering a new phase in our existence—one way or another. If we continue as we’re going cascading ecological collapse is a given. If this happens there will be planet-wide war and famine, of which only a relative handle of people will survive, if any (the lifeway of these survivors will be the equivelent of picking thru the garbage heap of our socio-ecolocial failure). The second option will be to enter a phase in which we begin to infuse the re-aquired knowledge of our forager ancestors into our lives. The result will be a worldwide compromise with the rest of the living world. Smaller human populations. Many more wild ecosystems. Farmer as ecologist. Economics and political science taught as small subsets of ecology. A demise of the religious structures that have arisen out of predatory agricultural societies and the emergence of philosophies which combine science with the values of ancient animist-pagan notions of land and spirit being co-joined (think a kind of Daoist-sacred woods religion that both informs and learns from science instead of battling it). A human mindset thru which we see ourselves once again as part of the planet instead of its owners.

Wow, that’s a lot to get from the Brothers Grimm! It doesn’t surprise me, though—I’ve been living with these massive kind of thoughts, developing them for years now—and they’re ready to come out. One of the writing projects I see for myself in the coming years is a book of essays where I discuss these kinds of topic—in a much less tangled and better realize manner that I’ve started doing here. What I’m doing, I can now see, is using this diary as a warm up for this book. Now I’ve really interested to see where this diary will go in the coming months—I apparently have a great deal to say.

More Massive Thoughts -- Big Pagan Rob

2011-10-27T16:03:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 27, 2011—Orange, CA

Not much new going on since my last post. I’m still buried in school and dealing with my hip/back injury, (which has gotten quite a lot better). I’m writing a bit: I’ve added some to the new Backwaters book. Not sure how I feel about it. I can tell it’s going to be a slower, more contemplative book than the other two and I’m still getting used to that, to writing with a mindset that accepts that slower pace. I have some ideas for short stories that have been rolling around my head. I’m thinking of playing with those for a while and letting the Backwaters book sit for a bit, as it’s feeling a little green, like I might have started it as touch early. I’m also thinking of working up some of my material for the Greece book, some squeezes based on the places I went. I’m really wishing I had more writing time—there are some ideas I have that really need to be played with on paper instead of just my head …

I’ve been doing some interesting reading lately (and, I believe, some interesting thinking). I’m in the middle of a book on European paganism I’m really enjoying. I’m also starting to dig into Grimm’s fairy tales. Though it may not seem like it on the surface, I consider these books to be closely related. One thing I’m interested in these days is the transmission of cultural consciousness. Specifically I’m fascinated with aspects of Western culture that have survived from deep in its past: something close at least to the bedrock of my cultural heritage. One of the hardest parts about being of the modern Western world is that we seem to have no understanding and little interest in what has made us the way we are—we are adrift in a sea of rapidly proliferating technology, which provides almost constant excitement, but very little nourishment. We have lost connection with the basics of life, like getting our own food and water and dealing with each other: life is series of housing tracts connected by strip malls, into which our necessities are brought in from the outside in truncated form: shrink-wrapped food and cultural interaction largely as something virtual (TV and the internet); so much of the time I feel that we’re simply consuming as opposed to living. I want to dive deep beneath this unpleasant surface and find, well, our soul, whatever that might be.

Part of the key to this for me is scraping off the thin, destructive layers of the religions of the book—Christianity mostly—which I see as odd Middle Eastern imports that have smothered so much of the indigenous European consciousness. The native Pagan beliefs and rituals of Europe were (are, in some cases) local, or at least highly adapted to the cultural-environmental matrix into which they entered. This, by definition, makes them more relevant to their practitioners than Christianity, which sees the divine as being separate from the “natural” world in many important ways, which largely sees humanity as something separate from the rest of the existence and everything else on the planet as being created simply for the use (and misuse) of humans. This is why it can spread so easily—it’s not really connected to any place, and therefore it can occupy any cultural space. The problem is that it occupies this space by in large part destroying the aspects of a culture that keep it in touch with the world around it. In other words, it takes people from regional, highly adaptive socio-ecological systems and deposits them into a global abstract belief system that by definition keeps them one step from their local environments. It’s not an accident that early Christian missionaries insisted that the sacred groves of European Pagans be cut down, for they represented a very tangible connection between local gods and day-to-day life in real environments, which is a massive challenge to a church that can offer no such local relevance. Christianity then means local subordination to an outside god, which goes in tandem with the outside political structures that brought it in. This is religious colonialism, an imperialism at the level of belief, that paves the ways for the loss of local control at not only the religious, but the governmental level as well—“Onward Christian Soldiers” is one of the most honest songs ever written …

All of this is an incredibly long-winded way of saying that I want to search for those fragments of my European heritage that have survived the Christian invasion of Europe. To understand who I am I need to hear the echoes of the deep past, maybe those of events going deep into the Paleolithic. A good first step in this journey, I think, is learning what is known about our Pagan past. I want to do this not only thru written records and archaeology, but also thru trips like the one I took to Crete where I can commune thru the eons thru Pagan landscapes themselves. I also want to begin sifting thru our storytelling tradition: for it is thru art that these ideas most likely have the chance of survival (albeit often in highly mutated form). The Grimm stories perhaps can’t trace their direct heritage any further back than medieval times, and they’ve also been deliberately Christianized in spots (often by the Brothers Grimm themsevles). But they are a good starting place to look for the echoes I’ve been discussing. After them? Hans Christian Anderson. Irish fairy tales. Arthurian romances. The Decameron. Beowulf. Icelandic sagas. And hundreds of other stories I right now have no idea exist. I’m just at the beginning of this journey, so much so that in many ways I really don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for …

What started this? All sorts of things, many of which I’m sure I’m not consciously aware. A big part of it, though, is the Backwaters books, which I’m now seeing as fundamentally being an attempt to reconnect with place, to break free of the globalist abstraction that I believe (ironically) is leading the planet to ruin. Who am I? I am man of Europe extraction whose ancestors invaded and colonized a lands to which they do not yet belong, after leaving lands they lost touch with. Like most children of this kind of colonial diaspora I’m largely free floating, from a place, but not really of it. My life’s work as a story teller, I’m beginning to see, is to help contribute to the immensely difficult task of turning that "from" into an "of" for us all.

Post in a Minor Key

2011-10-20T16:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday, October 20, 2011—Orange, CA

Feeling strange today, a bit untethered. I found out that Irvine Valley college is going to be hiring a new full-time anthropologist for the fall. I will apply for his job, but I doubt I’ll get it (I’m not even sure if I want it). Assuming I don’t get it there’s a very good chance that there won’t be any more classes for me to teach in the fall, or that I will be cut back to maybe one. Either way, it will mean that it’s time for me to move on. I don’t know what this means, though. I want to be a free agent, but I’m also not quite ready for that move (or maybe I am but just don’t know it). I know in the long run leaving there is a good thing: my life is only sort of working now and there are lots of things I’d like to do I can’t while I’m so buried in work. Still, feeling the anxiety that always accompanies any life change. I’m trying to look at every change in life as an opportunity—somehow I know that I’ll use this as major starting point for something, something big . It will be interesting to see what that something is … And of course how will I pay the bills? An incredibly boring question that always seems to be popping up in life …

I should be ready to send the Backwaters books off to two publishers next week. Feeling very ambivalent about this: I’m not sure if this is the right thing to do. These days it’s hard to figure out what a publisher even is. Maybe I should just try and build up BSP and stay the fuck away from these teetering gatekeepers of the old guard. Do I need a publisher? Does any writer need a publisher these days? Why should I put my work in the hands of someone who probably won’t get it? My distaste for anything that has to do with marketing is also playing a role. I really believe on books finding their audience thru word of mouth mostly, thru a literary brother and sisterhood. The idea of someone hawking my books like their dish soap really bugs me. Fantasizing about building an audience up person by person, under the radar, away from the toxic inquiries of the mainstream media. “In dreams begin responsibilities” –Delmore Schwartz. Hmm …

I’ve been putting quite a bit of work into the third Backwaters novel this week. It’s far too early to say how or where it’s going, but I’m definitely enjoying the effort so far.

Still dealing with pain from my injury. It’s getting better, but slowly. I get the feeling it will still be with me to some degree months from now.

Burnt out on teaching, on having time to do little else. Back around to the beginning of this post, my fear/hope of a lost job. Once again, maybe I’ll just stay in Greece this time. Picked up a beginning textbook on modern Greek. Haven’t had time to delve into it yet. See what I mean?

Occupy Everything

2011-10-15T20:11:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 15, 2011—Long Beach, CA

Finally feeling better. Three weeks almost to the day of pain—which has been moving from my back to my hip to my hamstring in a kind of circle—finally broke a bit yesterday. It got so bad that I had to take three classes off so I could heal a bit. Now, though, I can feel that I’m on the way to being myself again. I can now definitely understand now how people with long-term pain issues can become addicted to painkillers or in extreme situations off themselves—continuous pain just wrecks your life and eventually starts taking away who you are.

Because of my injury there’s really been nothing much going on in my life: I’ve mostly just been trying to get thru what I have to to keep my life functioning. One big thing has happened, though. This weekend I broke ground on the third novel in the Backwaters series. It’s been welling up in my for a while, so I wasn’t surprised, but it’s still a great feeling to have it underway. I’m only a handful of pages into it , but already I like where it’s going. Also, ideas as to what I can do with the book are also flying thru my head, which can’t be anything but a good sign.

On the subject of the Backwaters books, I’ve started the process of finding a publisher/agent for them: I’ll have them off to Canongate, a large independent based in Scotland next week. I’ll also be trying Soft Skull, a smallish U.S. house based out of Berkeley. As usual, I’m not expecting anything, but I’m not pessimistic either: I know I’ve written something special and it’s just a matter of time before these books land in their proper home. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if maybe this “proper home” might be Burning Shore Press. I’m so soured on capitalism at the moment that I just can’t see how any publisher operating in that world will get what I’m trying to do; these novels are so beyond capitalism, so beyond the socio-economic structure of today that I don’t think they can find an audience except thru slow word-of-mouth methods—they need to percolate up thru things, like the cultural equivalent of groundwater becoming a spring. Then again, who know where things are going culturally?

For years—decades really—a lot of us have been wondering when people would finally hit the saturation point and start rising up and take down those who have created this incredibly exploitive world economic infrastructure, which is designed mainly to funnel wealth from those who actually work for it upwards to those who don’t. I think this saturation point has finally been hit. These “Occupy” protests that are now spreading around the world will just get larger and more radical. We want nothing less than to control our own neighborhoods, cities, countries, our own economic systems, our own environmental relationships—we want to control our own lives, in other words. I keep hearing people say how these demonstrations will fizzle out. I doubt it. So many of us have hit the wall—we simply have nowhere else to go: our futures are being taken from us, have been taken from us. When you have no future you fight in the present. The bailout of the banking system (with our money), for its benefit, not ours, combined with the collapse of the housing market and employment opportunities, seems to have been the final straw: it really brought home to the average person how things work. Now that this has happened people will start to really figure out why they work the way they do—the mechanics of how they’ve been getting screwed their whole lives, to put it another way. How things will proceed for this point is hard to say. I do believe, though, that we’re in for nothing less than a complete restructuring of huge aspects of government and economic systems. If these systems don’t exist to benefit the vast majority of us then what do they exist for? Once people get this one the whole house is coming down. I can’t wait until that wrecking ball starts swinging …

Some Big-Ass Rob Ideas

2011-09-29T13:57:00.000-07:00

September 29, 2011—Orange, CA

A difficult week. I injured myself working out last weekend, which is really slowing me down. I felt a pop right where my back and left hip connect and have been barely able to move since then (I’m not sure whether to classify it as a back or hip injury). Teaching has been a drag because of this (so has getting to and from my campuses), and when I’m at home I’ve been pretty much bedridden. I’m still in a fair bit of pain, but the back/hip has loosened up a bit and I can get around better. I’ve had similar injuries before—they usually hurt like hell for about a week and then cause me discomfort for at least a few weeks after that. In other words, the whole thing sucks mightily.

I’ve been really busy too—lots of work for school. For next semester, I’ve been asked to teach a class in Native American cultures, which I’ve never done before. This is going to entail a massive amount of research to do right, research which I’ve already started. Add this to my normal workload, the reading I’m doing for the new cultural anthropology reader I’m putting together, and the stuff I’m doing to revive BSP and I’ve got a lot on my plate. Because of all this I don’t have much of a life at the moment. This will eventually wear on me, I’m sure. But right now I’m so into what I’m doing that I haven’t really noticed how narrow things have become (physically and emotionally, if not intellectually).

Still, I’m feeling good overall, happy about where I am in general in life. This happiness is coming most directly from the fact that I can really see where I’m going as a writer and how my work will tie (is tying) into the world around me.

Right now I have at least three books I see myself writing in the next few years, books that will be combining my literary interests with my studies of anthropology and ecology. I’m starting the third Backwaters book, and soon I will expand into non-fiction, which will mean the Greek book I’ve got planned, plus a book worth of essays that explore the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of my current fiction. What are these underpinnings? I’ve hit a place in life where I’m completely rejecting capitalism and even the idea of the nation state; both are institutions of totalitarianism, by definition. I also reject the idea of “growth,” as the term is generally used—more oppression in the name of “progress” and “improvement” that is in reality the destruction of the wild world and human socio-cultural systems in order that their components can be more easily exploited by a foolish few. I now realize that I am an anarchist in the way Thoreau was. This also makes me a conservative, in the sense that I’m actually interested in conserving things, such as our ability to live as free beings in a world where other creatures are allowed to do the same thing. I’m getting more radical in every way as I get older, as I learn more. But only radical in comparison to the radically strange and destruction cultural phenomena of our age, which are actually way out of line with the rest of human history. I am a radical only as a conservative counterpoint to the insanity of the permanent-growth economy and the corporate state. All this and much more lies at the roots of my fiction and will lie at the roots of my non-fiction. I am not an angry man, just one with increasingly clearing vision. I am a man who just wants to live a free wild life and take as many people with me on this journey who want to come along …

Big words. Big thoughts and ideas. Too big, feeling swamped by them. That’s why I write formally, so as not to drown in all I’m thinking, understanding, and feeling. Jesus, where’d all this come from? …

Chugging Along

2011-09-23T09:48:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 19, 2011—Irvine, CA

I’m tired. And I have a headache, have had a headache off and on for days now. I’ve picked up sinus infection, which is not only giving me headaches, but messing with my vision; it’s been really hard to read, which is a bummer because that’s pretty much all I’ve been in the mood to do lately. There’s nothing I can really do about it, though, other than let it run its course. I’ve tried antibiotics on them before and they don’t help much, plus they make me feel like garbage in other ways. They also seem to lower my resistance, which means I get more sinus infections than I would if I just let my body fight them off. So that’s what I’m doing—toughing it out. If this one plays out like my previous sinus infections I can look forward to feeling crappy for at least another couple weeks (I’ve already been battling it for at least two weeks already).

Like I said, this sucks because I’m feeling really anti-social lately (or maybe it’s the sinus infection that’s making me feel this way) and want to do little besides get lost in books. Despite it being uncomfortable, and sometimes painful, I’ve still been doing a bit of reading, continuing with the Patrick Leigh Fermor book I’ve been working on, as well as some archaeology literature for school. Last night I also pulled the Richard Beringen’s collected poems off my shelf. When I first read him a few years ago I was quite impressed by his technical abilities and his erudition. His stuff didn’t really hit me on anything close to a gut level, though. I’m enjoying much more this time around (I planned on only reading a few poems and ended up reading thru the first sixty-five pages of the book). He really is good, clever, but not in negative way. He seems like a poet one needs to read thru multiple times to get a good understanding of what he’s about. I almost placed the book in my to-sell pile (I’ve been thinning out my library). I’m now really glad I didn’t let it get away.

Been working on some of my own stuff as well, editing mostly, not writing. I’ve finished the final edits of Edgewater, and now only formatting issues remain on that book. I hope to have it up to Eric for final formatting by next week. I still have to redesign the cover. Don’t know when I’ll find the time for that. I’ve also been going over Backwaters and Mother Earth again, fixing typos and doing some minor revisions that I think are really helping the books. Speaking of these novels, I’ve decided to give myself one year to find a publisher and/or agent for them. If I don’t I will put them out on BSP. I’m not thrilled by this, but they are the kind of books that could help build BSP. The publishing climate it so bad now that I’m afraid if I don’t have this backup plan I could end up having to sit on the manuscripts for years, which would be a tragedy—these works need to see the light of day. In fact, as soon a I’m done with the design work on Edgewater I’ll begin playing with book cover ideas for BWB and ME. I want then ready to go if and when the time comes. I Will be contacting my first English publisher this week, in regards to these books. Crossing my fingers. Expecting nothing, of course.

Not much else to report. Working, reading, and feeling shitty is pretty much all that’s going on. Exchanged an email with Steve about a possible Sacramento reading during Winter Break, assuming Edgewater is out by then. Hoping to do one in Santa Cruz too. A (very) mini Northern California reading tour.

Still feeling disconnected to my surroundings—my post-Greece alienation from this place isn’t going away. Trying to figure out what this means, what my next step is. Having stomach problems on top of my sinus issues. I was having all sorts of stomach issues before I left for Greece. Once I was there, though, most of them mellowed or went away (except my growing issues with dairy). Now they’re back a bit. I wonder if stress has anything to do with it? Just existing in Southern California these days is somewhat of a white knuckler. How much longer am I willing to deal with this increasingly stupid place?

Fallow Period / Getting Reading for Something, Many Things ...

2011-09-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 15, 2011—Orange, California

It’s been a whole week since I’ve added an entry to this diary. This is because there’s really not all that much to report. Plus, I just haven’t been in the mood or had the time to write.

There have been a few developments in my life worth noting, though. I’ve been making some revisions to the Burning Shore Press site, getting it ready for when I relaunch the company with my first poetry book. It’s looking good, clean and to the point. Speaking of my poetry book, I think I’m going to redesign the cover. The one I’ve posted on the site looks OK, but I’ve decided I’m over photographs, especially black and white ones, as the focal point of my covers. I have an idea for a cover that harks back to those great concert posters of the sixties. I want to design it myself; I’ve got some ideas rolling around in my head that I know will work. I’ve also come to the conclusion that my poems, whatever their merits or faults, contain a lot of color—and I want the cover to reflect that. Besides, the current cover of me looking out over Long Beach from Signal Hill now looks a bit pretentious to me, a bit obvious too.

I’ve also started looking for more freelance writing jobs. Like I’ve said before, I want to be a free agent in life and writing is my only ticket to that goal. I’m just beginning this project, so I haven’t any successes yet. My hope it to find one new paying outlet for my work a month. Given how little time I have at the moment to pursue these jobs, this seems like a doable goal.

What else? Lately some very interesting ideas for the next Backwaters novel have been percolating to the top of my brain; the opening scene has begun forming in my mind. This is important because when scenes like this starting coming together it usually means I’m getting ready to start putting pen to paper, so to speak (actually fingers to the keyboard). For months I’ve had the basic story idea, but the details still feel very green for the most part, and my characters, including my first-person protagonist, are still a bit vague. Again, though, once scenes start forming clearly it’s the sign I’m getting ready to roll. It could happen anytime, next week, next month, a few months down the road. I’m not pressing it. Writing a novel is like childbirth—the thing will arrive when it’s ready, and not a second earlier (besides, I’m still a bit burnt out from my work on Mother Earth and am not yet in the mood to give the time and effort that its takes to dive into a long piece of fiction).

I do want to write, though. I have all sorts of ideas for essays, as well as short stories, which is an area I haven’t gone into much. There’s my Greek book as well, of course. But none of these ideas are quite ready to come out either. Some of them are close too, though. Once the flood gates open I could be a suddenly very busy man.

Still feeling good about most things overall. Anxious to get back to Greece even though it’s months away. Am still also feeling a bit alienated here. Long Beach, Southern California, simply doesn’t fascinate me like it used to. I feel as if I’ve given everything I have to this place and haven’t gotten anywhere near enough in return. I want to move on. It looks like the next stage of my life will take place in a new watershed, a new land. I hope a man in his forties can successfully learn a new language.

Getting antsy to start my Greek language studies. Thinking of trying to pick up my French lessons again as well.

Been reading a lot, culture theory stuff primarily, partially as research for school, partially just because it’s a part of what I do, who I am. Finishing up Fante, Dan Fante’s first memoir, which juxtaposes his life with that of his father’s, with alcohol, too many women, and writing being the connectors (unfortunately in that order). A good, if somewhat limited book (blackout drinking, fucking , and the [strangely under-described] redemptive power of the muse are all that Dan seems to be able to write about). Starting to tackle Patrick Leigh Fermor’s travel books. I’m only forty pages into the first one and really starting to get into it. I have also been rereading all of Gary Snyder’s essays. I’ve taken a break from that, though. Will probably pick them up again after I’ve finished with the Fermor books I have.

Not getting enough sleep. Early morning and night classes combined don’t mix. More budget cuts likely to be coming down the pipe. Wonder if I’ll soon be out of work or more likely seriously under employed. I’m not really worrying about this, though. Though I don’t know why, I can’t shake the feeling that the gods have my back on this sort of thing these days. Feeling a little special, magic, like some sort of destiny is looming on the horizon I'm more than ready to deal with.

Home / Not Home

2011-09-08T17:16:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 9, 2011—Orange, California

I got back from Greece slightly more than a month ago, was then thrown into prep for teaching almost immediately—I haven’t had time to evaluate the trip much. I have decided, though, that ‘m heading back there next summer. I’m now sure that writing a book on Crete and the Dodecanese is something I want to do. It’s become obvious, though, that last summer alone has not given me the perspective I need to do this, if for no other reason than I really haven’t visited much of the Dodecanese. Next trip I plan on flying into Patmos, the northern most island in the Dodecanese of any size (and the farthest north one with an airport) and then filter my way south thru the islands until I again reach Crete, somewhere near the end of my trip.

I want this trip to be different than the last trip. First off, next month I’m going to start teaching myself Greek. I don’t expect to become anything close to fluent before heading back, but I would like some sort of baseline to help me start picking things up once I’m there. I also plan a more rugged trip this time, lots of camping, of both the legal and not-so-legal variety. I’ve decided that I simply don’t want to spend money like I have in the past (in regards to Greece and my life in general). I really don’t need much in way of comfort and I don’t want to work my ass off to save money; I want to enjoy life while I’m here too—so it’s jam econo time for be in a big way. I’m thoroughly convinced that most people I know spend their money on things they don’t need or really even want; they’re just so conditioned by society to buy shit that that’s just what they do. I want to get off that train, am getting off it—I’m thoroughly sick of capitalism in all its forms …

Lots going on here. Besides the aforementioned school, I’m attempting to revive Burning Shore Press. Hopefully it will be putting out short-runs of Dan Fante’s Boiler Room and Edgewater, a book of my poetry, in the few months. I don’t want to have to out Backwaters of Beauty or Mother Earth thru them, but I want to bring BSP back to snuff in case I have no other choice. On that subject, I’ve been talking to a few fellow writers on the agent/publishing scene and things look pretty bleak—nobody is signing anybody. Thinking of trying to get a deal in the UK first. I have a bit of a name there and their publishers might be easier to break in with.

What else is going on? I've gone more or less vegan since coming back. I just don’t digest dairy well these days and not eating meat is making me both feel healthier and is saving me money. I was originally planning the vegan thing as a one-month cleanse after getting back from Greece, but a month has past and I’m in no hurry to start eating meat again, and, like I said, I can’t eat diary. So I plan on keeping on with my current diet for the foreseeable future. The only problem is that I’m getting skinny (even by my standards): I’m starting to look like Iggy Pop from the neck down.

Feeling less at home here in Southern California since getting back: too many people, too many rules, too much bullshit in general. I’m tired of living in the twilight of the American Empire; I’m tired of being of the country with plenty of bombs and no healthcare. I want something different, something smaller and more human. Maybe I won’t come back from Greece this time.

I’m also now becoming (even more) dissatisfied with teaching. I want to be a free agent. I just want to write. As soon as I get a better handle on this semester I’m going to start researching freelance writing opportunities; I’d like to start transitioning out of the college world as soon as possible. Starting in October I’m going to make it my goal to make just a little more money from writing each month. I’ve spent way too much of my life working for others and I’ know I’ll never be fully content until that has stopped. All this ties in with my no longer wanting to spend money. It’s all about freedom, of not giving away my precious dwindling time for dollars.

Despite the problems I’ve been writing about I’m feeling good, relaxed, fairly content—Greece really calmed me down. I can see my life shaping up in front of me, can where I’m going, just not how I’m going to get there. Enjoying the second part of this equation as much as the first: not knowing the exact path to freedom is a big part of the fun of becoming free (kind of pretentious sounding, but true).

What else? Lots of reading. A relationship I bailed out of just as it was getting started, no harm no foul, I hope. Just floating thru life at the moment—in the best sense. Making big plans. Letting the little ones take care of themselves.

Home

2011-08-10T12:45:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, August 10, 2011 - Long Beach, CA

Home! And man does it feel weird ...

Lendas Photos 2

2011-08-07T00:30:00.000-07:00

Just a few more Lendas photos. I think the first one really shows how dry and rugged that part of the island is.

Lendas Photos 1

2011-08-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from in and around Lendas, including some views from where I stayed and a shot of one of the in-town archaeological sites (the whole town's a site really).

Windy Plakias

2011-08-06T23:18:00.000-07:00

Saturday, August 6, 2011—Plakias, Crete, Greece

Back in Plakias—and man am I bummed about it. I was hoping to stay in Lendas until the day I had to leave, but then I realized that I had me dates slightly off and had to get out there. The reason was the bus schedule. Now the Cretan bus routes have bugged me at times, but this is the only times that they’ve truly screwed me up and pissed me off. As I think I mentioned in a previous entry, there are no busses in and out of Lendas—going anywhere—on weekends. Because of this it worked out that I had to be out of there by yesterday, because my flight out of Hania is the crack of dawn on Monday. So, in other words, I had to leave a place I was perfectly happy with, a place I wanted to be, and go somewhere else for my last two days here simply because of a quirk in the bus schedule.

What makes this do frustrating is that Lendas was the perfect place to end my trip: it was relaxing, uncrowded, and had a great vibe to it. Because I have so little time left here my options upon leaving Lendas were limited. I could have hung out in one of the north coast cities, but I’m in no mood for urban life right now. I also could have gone to another beach area, but the ones in range didn’t interest me much. So I choose to come back to Plakias—which I was fairly luke-warm abou—because I could make it here in half a day and I know I can get a bus out of here on Sunday. I’m not happy about any of this, but like I said my options were limited.

So I’ve spent a little over a day here, mostly just resting and reading (I tried to go to the beach today but it was so windy it wasn’t much fun. Mostly now I’m just killing time until the noon bus north tomorrow, when I will begin making my way to Hania and eventually its airport and my first plane on my journey. I’m more than a little bummed out at the moment: these last couple days I’m having are a kind of lame way to end what has been a good trip.

Nothing much else to report. Like I said, I’m pretty much just killing time now. Tonight I’m just going to take it easy, buy some food and cook here in the room (I have access to a kitchen): I’m really tired and am over going places, even down the street to eat. So I guess this is it—unless I post something from Hania tomorrow this will be my last post from Greece (though I have a lot of time on my hands at Heathrow, so I may post something there). So, so long from Crete! Like I hope everyone has enjoyed reading these posts. Sorry to end on such an anticlimactic note. But these things happen. Onwards!

Two Lendas Entries

2011-08-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, August 2, 2011—Lendas, Crete, Greece

My second day in Lendas. It took me a while to get here, though. I left Hora Safakilon on Saturday for Iraklio, where I was supposed to catch the bus here (two busses, actually—this place is kind of hard to get to without a car). When I got to Iraklio, though, I found out that the busses down here only run on weekdays. So I got stuck in Iraklio, the last place in Crete I want to be, for nearly two days (I really wish the Lonely Planet would have mentioned the no weekends thing). I finally made it here, though, on Monday afternoon, in a fairly foul mood because of the hassle and expense of hanging out in Iraklio. But I’ve mellowed since then—Lendas is a nice and quite relaxing place.

It’s not exactly what I expected, though. I was hoping to find something more backwoodsy, like Gavdos. What I found instead was more of a resort, though a tiny, very laid-back one. This is OK with me, I’ve decided. All I want to do my last week in Crete is relax and this is a good place for it—there really isn’t anything to do besides hang out at the beaches (which are actually pretty mediocre by Crete standards), watch the sunset (or rise), sleep, and eat and drink. Today, for example, I ate breakfast at a little café just up the hill from where I’m staying. Then I hung out with this French couple who’s staying in the room next to mine (she’s actually Italian, but has lived in France since she was very young). After this, I hiked the kilometer it is to the first beach west of town (the little town beaches are crowded with middle-aged Germans—of course, as I’ve mentioned many times, not my thing), where I swam, read, and lay around for about four hours. Now I’m typing this, eating some white grapes, and drinking a Mythos (a Greek German-style lager I think I discussed in an earlier post—meh). Later I’ll head out to dinner and maybe have a drink at one of the several “clubs” they have here, which are little outdoor bars really. And that will be my day. (It will also be my day tomorrow, except that I plan on hiking to the first beach to the east of town).

My only goal here, besides relaxation is to finish reading Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet. I’ve of course read it before, but I’ve never done all four novels in one go. In other words, I’ve never tackled the piece as a single entity, which it of course is. I’m enjoying it a great deal. More importantly, as I hoped, I’m getting more out of it reading it this way. The only problem is that I’m going thru it too quickly: I may be in Lendas until as late as next Monday and I’m already on, Clea, the final novel of the set. I do have another book with me—a history book about Crete during World War II—but going to that might be a jarring transition. Man, my life is tough: I mean, I’m about to run out of great literature by the beach in Crete. What would I do if I ever actually faced a real problem or two? …

I just realized that I haven’t really described Lendas. First, though, the trip here. The Iraklio province, I’ve been told on a number of occasions, is not the prettiest part of Crete. After driving thru it (on the bus) I can say I agree with this assessment. Basically, once you get out of the city you find yourself in a giant farming district: olive grove, hayfields, and various vegetable plots are everywhere. The geography predicts this. Once one climbs over the northern mountains, instead of more mountains, as is to be found on the more western parts of the island, there is a giant basin of flatlands and rolling hills—an agricultural paradise, in other words. Who knows how many olives are pulled out of this region, how much of Crete’s food in general? Massive amounts, for sure (after seeing this part of the island I understand why Iraklio is the island’s power center, its richest region). It’s not the most visually exciting, though: it’s too big and uniform, too dominated by straw yellows and waxy olive greens to have much drama. Still it was interesting. And it smelled good! It’s the only part of the island where the scent of olives made it thru the environmental controls of the fancy Anek and Minoan Lines busses in a big way.

Once you’re thru this valley and begin scaling the southern mountains things change radically—it starts looking a bit like the high deserts of California or Nevada. There seems to be little water here and on the south side of these mountains are definitely in the rain shadow—tough, scrubby yellow hills replace the agricultural utopia of just a handful of kilometers past. This has a harsh beauty of its own, but the beaches, which are the only respite from the heat of the area (which is formidable this time of year), are its only real selling point. And even these are few and far between, and as I mentioned of less than stellar quality.

In certain ways, though, this is a good thing, in that it keeps the tourists away. Not to many kilometers away, on a west facing bite out of the coast is a town called Matalla (I may be spelling this wrong), which once was considered to be one of the most beautiful and magical parts of the island (it was also supposedly one of the coolest places to be in the late sixties/early seventies—Joni Mitchell wrote a neat little song about the place … “Come to Matalla and I’ll buy you a bottle of wine …”). Now it’s completely overrun, just another tourist trap. Lendas, one of the few other settlements in the region simply isn’t pretty or big enough to invite that sort of exploitation. The fact that it’s Matalla’s “fat friend,” so to speak keeps it nice and tranquil for those of us who strive to get away from the big structured world of the tourist trade. Again, the beaches may not be that great, but they’re relatively tranquil. And the prices in the little town are reasonable too. All in all, there’s nothing epic going on here, just a handful of people smart enough and with taste enough to want something smaller and more real getting together and hanging out a bit.

The town itself is interesting mainly in that it’s such a little jumble. Other than the road that leads into town and dead ends into a little car park there are no roads here, which of course means there are no cars driving around. There also appears to have been no plan to this place: everything just seems to have been built where and this manner which its owner wanted. To get across the little town involves ducking into little defacto alleys, crossing vacant lots, going across private property, or heading down to the beach and walking its crescent to your next destination (which is the easiest way not to get lost). One really cool thing about this place is that the whole town is sitting atop an ancient settlement, (probably Dorian, from what I can tell). So here and there, throughout the town, there are partially excavated section of the old settlement, including one section in a lot just in front of where I’m staying! So everyone who is here is literally living on top of the site. Cool stuff, no matter how you look at it. It makes me wonder what’s under Iraklio and Hania and especially Athens. Talk about building on your past …

One other thing. Greeks don’t seem to differentiate much between the d and t sounds in English. So sometimes Lendas is spelled Lentas, occasionally in the same document! Interesting …

Wednesday, August 3, 2011—Lendas, Crete, Greece

Another wonderfully lazy day in Lendas. Like I’d planned I hiked to the beaches to the east. There was one nice little one just around the point that marks off the east edge of town, but it was a bit crowded (ten people would make the place packed). I then headed along the trail to a beach that was basically the same as the ones in town, except that there were only a couple of tavernas/guesthouses there and far fewer people. The beach was way too stony for my tastes, though. So I kept walking down to a sandier beach that had only one other peson on it. Not a great beach either, plus it was a bit lonely feeling there; I don’t like crowds, but neither do I dig such isolation—I like a little human company when I beach it. So I ended up hiking all the back thru town and over the hill that leads to Dytikos Beach, where I’d hung out the day before.

And that was the rest of my day—swimming and sunning there for nearly five hours. It was great, mainly because the winds shifted today and started coming off shore. This meant that though it was hotter than hell, it was a really dry heat, which was quite nice; it was kind of like being in a sauna—a sauna with a cooling ocean attached to it. I remember I said in one of my recent Gavdos entries that I was as tan as I’d could ever remember being. Scratch that—now I’m as tan as I can ever remember being. What’s cool is that I got at least one more day to add on to that record, maybe as many as four.

This brings me to a decision I have to make. My flight out of Hania is at five-something in the morning and my goal is to be back in that town by late afternoon/early evening the day before; I plan on doing some shopping and getting dinner and then taking that final bus to the airport, which is around midnight (I’ll then find some bench there and try to get a few hours’ sleep before I have to check in for my flight). Because of the limited bus service to and from Lendas I have two options as to when I bail out of here. I can leave Friday, which means that I’ll have to spend two nights elsewhere, probably in Iraklio and/or Hania. Or I can wait till Monday the seventh to leave, which is actually perfect, in that I’d much rather be here than in either of the Cities I just mentioned. The problem is that that’s cutting it close: if there’s any bus issue or some fuck up on my part I could miss my flight (unlikely, but possible). As of right now I think a Monday departure from here is what I’m aiming for. I’m just not in the mood to be anywhere else until I leave this island.

I forgot to mention that I checked out an archaeological site today on my way back from the eastern beaches. As I’ve mentioned, this whole town is built on an ancient settlement. On the hill just to the east of town this becomes really evident: the surface of the hill is strewn with pot sherds and chips of marble. There’s also part of a marble column just sitting on the ground as well. Here and there too can be seen the outlines of stone walls. Based on its location it was probably some sort of defensive structure or perhaps a temple complex (these things are what one tends to find on hills overlooking ancient towns on these islands). I of course don’t have the permits to do any digging here (I would have loved to have sunk a couple of test pits to see what I’d find), but I did take a bunch of photos I can use in my archaeology class in the fall. Cool stuff.

Notes:

Something’s biting the hell out of me here: I’ve got what looks like mosquito bites all over my back and on parts of my arms and shoulders. I haven’t heard much in the way of buzzing in my ears at night, though, which I usually do when I get chewed up like this. I’m hoping I’m not dealing with some sort of bedbug or sand flea issue. I don’t think I am, because the parts of me that are getting bitten are the parts that usually aren’t covered by the sheet at night—which spells mosquitos. But why am I not hearing them? Am I sleeping harder than usual? That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case. A strange, unpleasant mystery …

This town is loaded with cute, young German girls. (Way too young for me, alas—Ah the sorrows of getting older!). There’s one particularly scrumptious group camping together on Dytikos Beach who are staggeringly hot—they are a combination of blondes and brunettes that remind me of the Castle Anthrax girls in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (Oh yeah, I never say “scrumptious,” by the way.) I have no particular reason for mentioning other than I think beauty should always be noted (especially when it’s in the form of stunning girls traveling in packs).

Stopover in Hora Safakilon

2011-07-30T23:46:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 29, 2011—Hora Safakilon, Crete, Greece

A quick stop here in Hora Safakilon, a little port on the southern coast of Crete’s Hania region. It’s kind of a neat looking town, basically a crescent of little hotels and restaurants encasing a harbor and a couple of beaches, with private residences climbing up the hill behind everything. Too touristy for me, though—especially after Gavdos. I get the feeling that Frangokastello will just be a more laid-back version of this, so I’ve decided to skip it and head straight for Lendas.

Sitting down to a quiet (though overpriced) dinner in a restaurant on a cliff overlooking the town’s western most beach. Tomorrow’s 7:00 AM bus can’t come soon enough for me. Gavdos kinds of ruins everywhere else, I’ve noticed—after being there everything on the mainland seems crowded, touristy, expensive, and laden with rules. Hopefully Lendas will offer a refuge …

Odds and Ends: Gavdos and Hora Safakilon Photos

2011-07-30T23:43:00.000-07:00

The first two photos are from Gavdos. The last three are from Hora Safakilon.

Two Gavdos Entries

2011-07-30T06:07:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 26, 2011—Gavdos, Crete, Greece

Back in Gavdos. This time I’m camping under a juniper tree at the base of the hill that marks off the eastern boundary of the little settlement of Sarafiniko. It’s a lot hotter here than when I first came thru in early June. It’s also more crowded—there is at least twice the number of people here as there was during my last go round. Still it’s a pretty sleepy place by high-season Greek island standards. Unfortunately Agios Ioannis, my favorite beach here, and maybe my favorite beach in all of Crete, is verging on being a zoo: there are so many campers there it’s practically a tent city. Plus, now it’s truly a post-hippy hipster kind of scene. This doesn’t bother me—they’re about as close to being “my people” as any group I’m likely to run into. But too much of anything even something you like is not a good thing. This place is now verging on that situation.

Still, I’m feeling good, glad I came back here. Like I said before, this trip is essentially over for me—I’m just drifting, hanging out at the beach until I head home. This is a great place for that. Plus it’s cheap: I’m camping for free, which means that food is my only expense here. I need this, as my funds are definitely getting a little low …

Notes:

Greek women are really growing on me. As I’ve said before, there are definitely prettier women in the world, in Europe, but Greek girls definitely have something going for them. Though defining what this is is hard, I admit.

However I will give it a shot.

First off, they don’t seem to have caught the disease American women have that drives them to be as skinny as possible. Greek girls have curves—lots of them—and they’re not afraid to show them. The three Bs—boobs, booty, and belly—are on display in great abundance here, often to truly wonderful effect. I also like the fact that the Greek women tend to wear relatively little in the way of makeup. (In contrast, one of the things I can’t stand about American women is the amount of makeup they wear—about the same as the average circus clown, only arranged differently.) Added to all this is the fact that so many of them have these amazing manes of thick dark curly hair. When you put all this together I’m pretty much is heaven. Now if I could only speak Greek …

I’m beginning to think that this on-line diary might have been a mistake. If nothing else it’s limited my writing: knowing that it’s going to be read “in the raw,” so to speak, I censor myself as I’m going (both consciously and unconsciously), mostly in regards to my feeling, but in some cases events too. These entries will make nice memory triggers if I decide to write more seriously about this experience, but I’m beginning to think that on their own they might be a bit dull (I know this trip has been far more interesting than this diary shows).

The best thing about this trip is the perspective it’s given me on other aspects of my life, on who I am. At times “Too much fucking perspective,” as David St. Hubbins once said.

Thursday, July 28, Gavdos, Crete, Greece

A really hot day today. I don’t know what the temperature was, but it was ninety-plus for sure. What was the killer was that until late this afternoon there was almost no breeze. Oven hot. Still. Crete in true summer form. Most of the day I hid and read under a juniper tree a ways up a hill over-looking Agios Ioannis Beach. About three-thirty I headed down to the waterline where I cooked myself and swam until about five-thirty. I’m now about as tan as I ever remember being.

Not too much else to report. Gavdos is for beaching and for hiking—and it’s way too hot to do any hiking. So there we are.

I’m feeling refreshed by Gavdos; my burn out doesn’t seem as bad as before I got here. This has led me to revise my plans for my last days in Crete a bit. Tomorrow I will be taking the two-thirty boat to Hora Safakilon, where I’ll crash, just for tomorrow night (it’s a good place to catch boats and busses, but from what I’ve read there’s not really much to do there). The next morning I will either be heading over to Frangokastello for a day or two or will catch a bus north, on the road to Lendas, a little out of the way beach area on the southern coast of the Iraklio province (going north to go south—so Cretan!). Like Gavdos, Lendas is supposed to be one of the last little fragments that have managed to stay pretty much the way they were in the 1960s—I’m crossing my fingers that the guidebooks are right on this one too.

Later in the evening …

It’s 9:00 PM as I write this. It’s a lot cooler now, but there is still very little breeze. The junipers are the beach are clam, barely moving, as is the sea, a wine-dark lake turning to silver near shore and farther out as well, as Sarafiniko curves west and is hemmed in by a stone point. Crete is a charcoal gray silhouette on the near horizon (it looks so close I can almost fantasize about being able to swim to it—but it’s really 32 KM away), a giant Catalina closing off the north …

I want to go home—but to a different home.

The diary, I’m now sure, is a failure: it has captured only fragments of what this trip’s been about—and not the important fragments, for the most part. I guess a book calls me …

2011-07-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

Thursday-Saturday, July 21-23, 2011, Plakias, Crete, Greece

I made the decision to head over and then down to Plakias, a beach area on the southern coast of the Rethymno section of the island. My trip here was easily me best bus experience on Crete. By this I mean the connection I had to make fitted together almost perfectly. I caught the 8:30 AM bus out of Sitia, heading to Iraklio. This took three-and-a-half hours and went thru some of the ugliest most built-up parts of the island. More importantly, for my concerns, it made the route on schedule. This meant that I only had to wait fifteen minutes in the Iraklio bus station before heading out to Rethymno. This bus ended up getting in to Rethymno a few minutes late, which meant I should have missed the Plakias bus, but that one was late too, so I quickly bought a ticket and hopped aboard it, just as it was about to pull out of the station. In other words, I bussed my way across nearly two-thirds of Crete with almost no down time! Seriously unheard of shit …

The trip down to Plakias was my first real experience with the Rethymno region. It’s a bit different from other parts of the island, mainly in that it’s better watered and therefore greener, especially in the lower-lying areas; there are probably more olive tree per square mile that anywhere else here I’ve been. There are also a lot of certain types of plants I’ve only more patchily on other parts of the islands, such as oleander and palm species. Platias itself? Well I’m not yet sure how I feel about it. It’s a bit more resortish than I thought it would be; in addition to the normal guesthouses just down the road from the main part of town are some big hotel complexes. Still it’s pretty low-key as far as resort areas go; it’s far from the overbuilt, tacky messes up north. Still, the place doesn’t quite sit right with me. It’s very much a town that you can tell doesn’t really exist in the winter—it’s just here to cater to tourists. This means that there’s very little Greek about this place. I mean, I could be in France, Italy, Spain, or Hawaii for that matter, and still be having substantially the same experience. I’m not sure why exactly, but somehow this setup seems to degrade everyone a bit, travelers and locals alike.

[The above section was written in Plakias. I got sidetracked and never wrote anymore. I’m picking things up today in Paleohora.]

Monday, July 25, 2011—Paleohora, Crete, Greece

OK, I left Plakias yesterday. I was kind of glad to be out of the place. As I mentioned before, it was really just a tourist stop. Plus, I somehow got whisked off to a nightclub by these English and New Zealand girls (who were working in the restaurant I ate in that night) and ended up getting more trashed than I’ve been in years, for which I was rewarded with a two-day hangover that kept me in that town one day longer than I wanted. I had fun, but at a high price; I simply can’t drink like that anymore. (Actually the drinking was just part of a whole bunch of surreal shit that went down with me while I was in that down, which I’m going to skip writing about, both because it’s a bit private but also because I haven’t quite sorted it all out yet. Let's just say I'll never quite forget that town, for better or worse.)

I’m back in Paleohora, mainly to catch a boat to Gavdos (I could have done this in Plakias, but I had to get out of there). The problem is that today’s boat was canceled due to high seas. I’m going to give it one more try tomorrow and then I’m going to plan B, which is to check out a few mainland settlements in this area I’d like to see but missed the first time I came thru here.

On a similar topic, I’ve decided that this trip is pretty much over, that I’m burned out: I simply can’t take in any new regions of Crete. So I’m going to finish out this trip in the general area I am, filling in some holes, as it were. Basically all I’m looking for now is beach time and a few good hikes. I‘ve had enough Greece for the time being: I’m tired and ready to go home. Still, I’m enjoying myself: being burned out in Crete is better than being totally with it in most other places. So onward! To Gavdos? To Loutro? … Only the Cretan wind gods know for sure …

Gavdos Part 2

2011-07-24T09:45:00.000-07:00

It looks like I'll be heading back over to Gavdos Island tomorrow (I'm back in Paleohora at the moment)--I have some unfinished business there. Unfortunately I'll probably be out of internet range while I'm there, which will be at least a few days, maybe several. So no posts for a while. See you soon!

Photo Essay: Spikey Things on the Trail

2011-07-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

Just a little photo essay on the various spikey things one can encounter while hiking here. There are of course many more types, but these as just a few I noticed on a short hike I did here in Plakias the other day. Greece is not place to go off trail.

I haven't been much in the mood to write lately, but I should have a new post up sometime in the next couple days,

Shots from Around Plakias, South-Central Crete

2011-07-21T10:19:00.000-07:00

Just some shots from around Plakias. They will be explained in a soon-happening post.

Sitia Stopover

2011-07-19T08:50:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 19, 2011—Sitia, Crete, Greece

Finally made it off Karpathos, out of Diafani. This is a good thing. Even though I really enjoyed myself there I was beginning to get too comfortable in the place, too entrenched. It was past time for me to be on the move again.

I only made it as far as Sitia today, on Crete’s east coast, which is where the plane landed. Though it was a very short flight—just forty-five minutes, including a brief stop on the island of Kasos—including the travel time from the Diafani down to the airport a ways past the airport in Pigadia, I’d already been on the move for about four hours. If I would have kept going all the way to Platias, which was my original plan, I would have been on the road for at least another four-and-a-half hours. I decided that I wasn’t in the mood to spend that much time traveling today—I’m not in a big of a hurry to get anywhere at this point in the trip. So breaking things up by crashing here seemed like a good idea. The question is do I stay here more than one day. I might just get up early and catch the eight-thirty bus to Iraklio, from which I can catch a bus to Rethymno and from there another one to Plakias. My other option is to stay here one more day and see V’ai, a beach area about 26 KM down the road, which I missed last time thru and would like to check out. I’m leaning towards just bailing out for Iraklio, mainly because, though it’s pleasant here in Sitia, it’s a bit too urban for my current frame of mind and putting up with that for an extra day doesn’t really thrill me, not when the only payoff is V’ai, which is of moderate interest to me at best.

Feeling tired today—I took an almost three-hour nap this afternoon, one of those naps where you wake up all sweaty and out of it and don’t even know who you are let alone where you might be. My tiredness is not just an outcome of getting up early today—it’s that kind of fatigue one gets at the end of a trip, when one is wearying of the machinations of the road. While there are still things I wish to see and do here, the truth is I’m starting to look forward to getting back to my day-to-day life at home—with some improvements. During my time here in Greece I’ve done a lot of thinking about my life back home and have figured out a few things as to what it’s missing, what I need to change about it to make myself happier—and I can’t wait to start putting those changes into place. I’m also itching to get back to work, believe it or not. I’ve been teaching far too much this last year, but this time off has really helped me to recharge my batteries. And like my life in general, I’m now seeing ways to improve my classes that are really making interested in teaching again.

To backtrack a bit, the trip down thru Karpathos was quite beautiful. We took the twisty, sometimes dangerous road, which runs from Diafani down thru the mountains all the way to Pigadia. This route really makes one see how rugged and wild and beautiful Karpathos really is. The place also reveals itself to be greener than generally apparent; most of the run is thru patchy pine forests that extent to some amazingly low altitudes. This drive also reveals how few people there are in most places; the villages that seem to be clinging for dear life to the mountains or resting in the valleys are few and far between and really look quite insubstantial compared to the harshly attractive landscape in which they exist.

Oh well, enough for today. I’m going to read for a bit and then head off to an early dinner. It’ll be interesting to see what place name the next diary entry carries.

Last Day in Diafani

2011-07-18T09:43:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 17, 2011—Diafani, Karpathos, Greece

My last day in Diafani. Had a pretty mellow day, mainly because I’m still recovering from my big hike a couple days ago. I did manage to hike over to a beach past Papa Minas Bay, which I tried to hit earlier in my stay here, but was stymied by high ridgelines and wind. The beach wasn’t that interesting or anything, but I hate unfinished business, so I mostly went there just to do it. Later I hit a better beach closer to home and went for a swim—and that was pretty much my day (I slept in a bit, so I got a late start).

I fly out of Pigadia back to Crete tomorrow morning at nine-thirty. I’ve managed to score a ride down there with the owner of my hotel, who’s going down to pick up some arriving guests. It’s about an hour-and-a-half trip, though, which means we’ll need to be on the road by a little after seven, which is a bummer. It’s weird how much time I’ve spent based out of here. I’d hardly paid any attention to this place when I read about it in my Lonely Planet guide and only ended up here because of a quirk in the ferry services, but Diafani, and northern Karpathos in general, has turned out to be a highlight of my trip. It makes me wonder how many other places the guidebooks wash over that are really quite cool in reality.

I’m still not a hundred percent sure where I’m heading once I’m back in Crete. I’m landing in Sitia, but I don’t think I want to stay there; I’ll probably go right to the bus station from the airport. I may just let the bus schedule decide for me. There are three main areas I want to hit before going home, but there are a number of ways I can get to each of them—so I don’t really have to do them in any particular order. I’ll probably shoot for Plakias, a beachie area on the southern coast of the central part of Crete. The annoying part of this place, though, is that there’s no busses heading west from there, which is the direction I need to go—so more fucking Cretan backtracking, up to Iraklio or Hania on the north coast and then back south, which means traveling about five times the distance than if I could just scoot west. The God damn Crete bus routes are really pissing me off, even when I’m not actually on the stupid island … Up and down, side to side, but nothing even remotely diagonal: Rob the rook returns …

Road to Tristomos and Then Some

2011-07-17T03:42:00.000-07:00

These are some photos from my hike yesterday. Pictures really can't capture the amazing coastal part of the hike. But I did get a nice one of the coast looking back to Diafani and a few trails shots I hope communicate something about the route. If you look closely at the hillside shots you can see the stone field terraces. They are also something that's hard to capture with a photo. I didn't take many photos on the hike to Avlona or back to Diafani: I was hot, tried, and too over it by that point.

Tristomos Hike and Beyond

2011-07-17T03:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 17, 2011—Diafani, Karpathos, Greece

Lazy morning. I got up late, ate a leisurely breakfast, and now am washing out some things and of course writing this. My plans for the rest of the day include reading and staring out across the harbor—if I can work up the energy to walk the five minutes it takes me to reach the harbor.

The reason I’m so out of it is I went on a crazy, long-ass, three-part hike yesterday. First I headed up the coast to a nearly abandoned village called Tristomos (only two families now live there year round). The main reason I wanted to head there wasn’t to see the village itself, but because the hike seemed like it would be really cool, which it was. The trail hugged the cliffs and high ridgelines along the northeast coast of the island and was spectacular: for a couple hours I zigzagged in and out of pine forests, scrublands, and bare rocky outcrops, all while the shining Mediterranean lapped against the shore a hundred or hundreds of feet below. I was so high up at one point, and in an area so few people travel, that I actually got to see a couple of the island’s rare wild goats (not feral ones, but the real wild ancestors of their domesticated brethren). The first one I saw was far in the distance; it was standing on a rock watching me. Then I got lucky and snuck up on one. Because the fact that he (or she—I didn’t get close enough to tell) wasn’t expecting anyone that high up and because I was down wind of him and he couldn’t smell me coming, I really surprise him and got within maybe thirty feet before he saw me and took off up the dry rocks to an even higher elevation. He was a beautiful animal, with long black hair offset by an equally long gold patch that started just below his neck and extended across his shoulders and down his sides. Comparing this regal individual to the domestic ones you see here is a telling experience, really makes you see how much we’ve degraded these animals, what becoming slaves of humanity does to them. The goats the people keep here are really dirty, nasty, stupid things—and we’ve made them that way! This alone might be a good reason to go vegetarian …

The trail to Tristomos eventually turns inland and heads thru massive dry valleys. Strewn throughout these valleys are the rock walls and linings of the old, no longer-used farming terraces and field enclosures. This area used to be a thriving agricultural center, but Greece’s many wars and economic issues over the last century or so has caused this place to be abandoned. Walking thru the lost world was fascinating, if more than a bit sad. So much life had been lived there, so many story were created that are now long-since lost. It reminded me a lot of western Ireland, of all the old farms there that were abandoned because of the potato famine and subsequent mass emigration to America and Australia. Like I said, this part of the day was fascinating, but not exactly pleasant, if you know what I mean …

Tristomos itself is really nothing exciting. It’s just a little crescent of buildings, most no longer in use, which line the shore of an amazingly protected little harbor that once was the main exit point for people and goods from this part of the island. Noteworthy, though, was the massive amounts of trash strewn about the waterline. Tourists who come to Greece, I’ve noticed, are really ignorant about the state of the sea that surrounds them. So many times I hear people raving about how “clean” it is. This simply isn’t true. Most of the year the beaches are heaped with trash, with human effluent that makes landfall from God knows where. As the tourist season gets going these beaches are cleaned up. Tristomos is a good example of what many places here would look like if this wasn’t done. While I’m on this subject of “clean” water, I can’t believe how uninformed so many of the travelers are who come here. The Mediterranean is extremely polluted in a chemical sense as well. It’s also become increasingly devoid of life; fish, crustation, sponge, seal and other stocks have plummeted in recent decades. Just because the water has a pretty blue-green tint and you can see thru near shore fools these people into thinking they’ve landed in some eco-paradise. This couldn’t be further from the truth. How can they not know this? (Or maybe they just don’t want to know.)

According to the signs, whose accuracy is questionable, it was just under 11 kilometers to from Diafani, where I’m staying, to Tristomos. So I was pretty burned out by the time I got there. I originally was just going to go back the way I came, but in Tristomos I saw I could pick up the trail to Avlona, which supposedly was only around 8.5 kilometers away. I decide to head for there, because it was still on my way home, more or less, I would get to see some new country (I could avoid the dreaded Grecian backtracking, which is such a fact of life in these islands), and I knew there was a place there where I replenish my water supplies (as usual I underestimated how much I’d need). This was arguably not one of my better decisions, for a number of reasons.

After a short jaunt along the edge of Tristomos’ harbor, the trail turned inland and because a stone-laden march thru the floor of a hot valley that was getting little in the way of breeze (the coastal trail I took in was nice and breezy, which kept things relatively cool). The heat, the pain-in-the-ass terrain and the fact that I’d already been on the trail for over ten kilometers made this part of the hike an unpleasant slog. It got even worse a bit later as the trail shot steeply up into the mountains, which like the valley was also largely blocked from the wind and therefore hot as hell. One funny thing did happen on this part of the trail, though. Throughout this area there are all sorts of abandoned stone shepard's houses. One of these was being used by a bunch of domesticated goats to escape the heat. I guess because I was downwind of them they didn’t notice me coming. The trail passed right in front of the doorway of the house they were using and when the goats saw me they panicked and began bounding out of the little house and into the surrounding fields. What made this funny is that there were so many of them. At least a dozen poured out of this little dwelling. It was like at the circus when a ridiculous number of clowns exit their tiny car.

Well eventually, after a seemingly endless hike, I made it to Avlona, where I headed to the town’s only café, where I guzzled water (I’d run out a few kilometers back), downed a much deserved beer, and ate a salad, all of which I was overcharged for (nine euros)—they’re the only game in town and they know it. Still the people there were nice, old women mostly it seems (most of the men and the younger people were probably working in the fields somewhere, or have left town looking for something better in life), wearing traditional clothing and giving off the feel that it was still 1858 or something. From there I began the hike back home, which, after nearly 20 hot challenging kilometers behind me was not much fun.

The best thing about this part of the hike was the fact that the sun was going down and things were cooling off considerably. The bad part was that it was getting dark and the one thing I don’t want to have happen to me here is to still be out on the high trails in the dark, which, depending on exactly where I am, could be dangerous. So I powered over the mountain pass that leads to the sea and then down the long drainage and made it to the main road with about twenty minutes of daylight to spare. Not much of note happened on this part of the trail, except, for the first time in my life, I saw a legless lizard in the wild. It was a little thing, probably less than three inches from head to the tip of its tail. It’s interesting that I knew exactly what it was the second I saw it. I’d read that, despite their superficial resemblance to snakes these things are easy to identify because of the way they move. This turned out to be the case. They simply don’t travel like snakes—they kind of wiggle side to side, like a lizard, except they don’t have legs. I wish I could have observed it more closely, but it was getting dark, and, like I said, I needed to get off that trail. So I let him go on his way and I went on mine.

I finally made it back to town at about nine-thirty that night, after heading out about a quarter to eleven that morning. So at at least 23 kilometers it was a more than healthy jaunt. Cool, but ultimately a bit much. And I’m paying for it today. I’m glad I did it, though—I saw a lot of things most people who comes to Greece never run across. Besides you can’t spend all your days on the beach—you gotta have a little variety even if it almost kills you …

I can’t believe how long I’ve been based out of Diafani—by the time I leave tomorrow it will have been over a week. I must have found something here I like, though, or I would still be around. Heading down to Pigadia for sure tomorrow afternoon. On Tuesday I’ll either take the ferry of fly back to Crete. The trips winding down—I can really feel it now. Just a few more things to accomplish and I’m done …

Notes:

Obviously this island is not as goat free as I'd thought. Still there are far fewer of these beasties per square mile here than on Crete. Still wondering why that is ...

2011-07-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

Saria photos. A Cool gorge hike. The sorrow and beauty of an Italian villiage. The beach, etc.

Saria Etc.

2011-07-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 15, 2011—Diafani, Karpathos, Greece

I haven’t been in the mood to write for some reason the last few days, so I’m going to be playing some catch-up with this entry. A couple days back I took a fairly long hike Avlona, a little agricultural village, which is a couple hours’ worth of hiking to the northwest. It was an interesting trail with a nice long ascent thru a fairly dense (by southern Greek island standards) pine forest. The town itself is quite traditional; most of the few women I saw there were dressed in old-fashion garb, I’m not sure how much is going on in regards to electricity, and running water, and wheat, olives, and goats are what keeps the little place going—not the tourist trade. That said, there is one taverna there that does attract tourists. Unfortunately just before we got there a tour bus arrived and we found our Greek backwater experience people too by Germans, Italians, and whatnot. A pleasant experience still, but not quite what I was hoping for.

As for yesterday, I did very little. I had one of those days one has sometimes on a long trip where a wall is hit and laziness is the order of the day. So I just read, sat around a waterfront taverna nursing an orange juice, and then took an afternoon nap, before heading out for dinner and then drinks, with Carla, the Italian woman I met here.

Today I did something I usually don’t do and went with a tourist boat up to the islet of Saria, which is just north (literally just north—I probably could have swam from one island to the other) of Karpathos. Like I just said, I usually try to avoid these tourist excursions, but there really isn’t anyway else to get up to this island and I really wanted to check it out. Until about forty years ago there was a village there. Now, except for one ninety-eight-year-old woman (whom I did not see) nobody lives there, except seasonally—there are still goats, olive trees, and other things raised there. My tourist compatriots, who were from Slavic country, based on the sound of the language they were speaking, which I couldn’t quite place, and were a bit silly, the men especially, who, though fairly young, were really out of shape. Their kids seemed to be getting into the spirit of things, but the adults in these groups seemed to be mostly about drinking the beer booze they brought and eating chips and other crappy food, while hiding in the shade (why didn’t they just stay home if they wanted to do that?).

I got away from these folk as soon as the boat landed and hiked up this beautiful little gorge to check out the remains of the old village, which were really interesting. I also found a cool old church that really intrigued me as an archaeologist in that it seemed to be built on top of an ancient temple of some sort, and even incorporated some of the old marble columns into the walls surrounding the place. There were also some fragments of a floor mosaic visible, which Manolis, the captain of the boat that took us there, said dated to between 500 and 600 AD. (He also said that there was evidence of human habitation on the island going back to Minoan times, but I didn’t see any evidence of that, or if I did, I didn’t understand that that was what I was looking at.)

After my hike, I went for a swim in the pretty little lagoon where the boat was anchored (this is where everyone else on the boat stayed—though they were surrounded by some really cool ruins, not one of these people ventured off the beach). The lagoon had some really neat sea caves and was definitely a nice place. My hike took so long, though, that I didn’t have much time to explore because the boat was heading out. We went to another beach after this that looked good a well, but after their hard day of drinking, eating crap, and lounging, none of my boat buddies wanted to get off, so we just headed back to Diafani (I wanted to explore the place at least a little bit, but I guess majority rules on these sorts of things and so no one inquired as to my opinion on the situation).

And that’s that—I’m pretty much caught up on what I’ve been doing. Tomorrow I head down to Pigadia, mainly because I’m out of money and there are no ATMs in this village. I’ll be there until Tuesday night, when I catch the boat back to Crete. I’d like to head out earlier and at a better time—the boat dumps me off in Sitia between one and two in the morning, which means sleeping on a bench somewhere, as there’s no way to get a room that time of night and the buses to my next destination won’t start running until six of seven. When I get to Pigadia I’m going to check out what it costs to fly back to Crete. It’s a really short run and might be cheap to jump over to Iraklio, even if I buy at the last minute. If I can get a decent fare I’m really considering splurging, so I can avoid being here longer than I want and to avoid the hassle of an early morning arrival time.

Though I still have slightly more than three weeks to go on this trip I can feel it drawing to a close: for the first time since leaving I’m starting to look past Greece to heading back home. I think nine weeks might have been a bit much here; six weeks might have been better, might have made for a more taught trip. I could easily get a second wind (or perhaps third wind) when I get back to Crete, though. I have no complaints, though—for my first time in Greece I think I did a good job, saw a lot (though arguably within a geographically small amount of space, given how much time I had). In other words, I’m feeling good, happy with how things have gone.

OK, I’m outta here. It’s now about seven-thirty in the evening. I had breakfast at nine in the morning and my lunch consisted of a piece of watermelon and a shot of ouzo. Off to La Gorgona for a big dinner …

A Few More Diafini Photos

2011-07-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

The view from my favorite restaurant. The strangest and coolest bench placement I've eve seen. Scenery.

Another Diafini Day

2011-07-12T10:19:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 12, 2011—Diafani, Crete, Greece

Another good day, pretty much like yesterday. The main difference is that I attempted to hike to a beach not on the map that exists just south of Papa Mina Bay. The only way to get to this beach, by land, is to take a narrow trail that runs along a very high ridgeline and then drops quite steeply for a long run down to the water. I made it up to and then across the ridgeline. The trail itself wasn’t too tough. The problem was the wind up there, which came in huge gusting blasts, which literally almost blew me off the trail a couple times (twice I had to lift a leg higher than usual to get over an obstacle just as a big gust hit that was so strong it spun me in a half circle). I made it to the point where I could look down onto the beach, though. But I decided not to head down. I could tell that the beach wasn’t any better than a couple much more accessible ones that I could go to and that it was less sheltered and getting a lot more wind than I wanted to deal with. It also would have been a pretty dangerous descent, in that I could see trail sections that were runs across narrow spines with really long drops on either side. Given the wind situation it wasn’t hard imagining me getting blown down one of these drops. So, since the beach wasn’t that cool looking and I was in no mood to die, I headed back to the beach I was at yesterday, where I had a similar day as the day before, except that for the last part of my day there I was joined by Carla, this Italian woman I met at La Gorgona last night.

On to other topics. I’ve finally decided that I will be heading back to Crete next to wrap up this trip. The question is when. There’s no ATM in this town and so I either have to leave by tomorrow (I’ll have enough money to pay for my room until then and pay for an afternoon boat ticket south) or I can wait until Thursday and catch the morning boat down to Pigadia, get some money, and head back up here to pay my bills. The problem is that the ferries back to Crete run only on Tuesdays and Thursday s and most don’t stop up here in Diafani. This means if I don’t head down to Pigadia on Wednesday and catch the Thursday ferry I can’t get off the island until the following Tuesday. The main question is do I want to be on this island that long. There are some places I want to explore still, but another five days might be pushing it. I also have to figure out how much time I need on Crete. I think I’ve pared back that part of the trip to three for sure stops: the Plakias region on the Crete’s south-central coast, Frangokastello, the area of Hania’s southern coast I missed, and another round on Gavdos Island. If these are the only places I go I should still have plenty of time. There are a few other spots I wouldn’t mind checking out, though. At the moment leaning towards taking the Thursday—even though I have really begun to enjoy this place, I just don’t think I want to devote five additional days here, even I don't need the time for Crete.

Diafani from the Trail and Beyond

2011-07-11T10:24:00.000-07:00

All pretty self explanatory as usual. The last picture is of the little beach I had mostly to myself today. (See previous post for details)

Good Tmes in Diafani

2011-07-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 11, 2011—Diafani, Karpathos, Greece

Back in Karpathos (actually I got here yesterday morning—it’s just before five in the evening now). This time I’m in the northern part of the island, in a little port town called Diafani. I like this place much better than Pigadia. Here there are just enough travelers to keep things interesting but nothing approaching the tourist hoards I found down south. In fact there’s very much an old world feel here; there are even quite a few of the older women who still wear traditional dress, (which to my American eyes makes them look a bit like a cross between nuns, people in mourning, and medieval peasants). There’s not much too do here except go hiking and hang out at a handful of little pebble beaches, which is fine by me. The only negative is that this time of the year this side of the island is quite windy (the roar was great to go to sleep to last night). However, this wind has gotten me to appreciate the pebble beach: with no sand to fly in your face windy days on these things can be quite enjoyable.

Today I had a great day. I hiked down south about an hour to a beach area called Papa Mina Bay. The hike was great, a beautiful little jaunt thru pine and scrub communities. Papa Mina Bay, though, turned out to be a pretty mediocre, exposed stretch of pebbles (though it did have some shady areas). On the way there, though, I noticed a great little cove with a bit of beach to it that looked very accessible (there are lots of little stretches of beach around here you simply can’t get to by land). So, after hanging around Papa Mina a bit I headed back to the other beach, which was around the halfway point back to town. It turned out that I’d been right, the beach was quite accessible, via a little drainage which dumped me out right on the shore. When I got there there was a couple who’d beat me to the place. No matter, a little rock outcrop effectively cut the place into two sections, so they had there section and I had mine. After about an hour they left and I had the idyllic little place all to myself.

I then proceeded to play Robinson Crusoe for the rest of the afternoon. (I mean, that’s what it seemed like: though I was only a half hour or so from town I felt like I was at the edge of the world, that there wasn’t another human being for miles and miles). So yeah, it was a tough day, with nothing to do but swim in a little perfect green-blue indentation in the coastline and then sprawl naked on the warm stones, as the cooling water lapped up my body varying degrees, depending on how much the wind happened to be gusting at any given moment. Being so close to town I found it hard to believe that only two other people had found the place—it’s clearly visible from the trail. (But then I also only saw four people all together at Papa Mina, two at the beach and two coming there off the trail as I was leaving, so maybe there simply weren’t very many people around to discover it.) I believe it’s places like this, experiences like this that separate travelers from the tourists. To get to a place like my little cove you have to leave the resorts and strike out on your own, go backwoods and hit the trail—stop doing what you’re told, in other words. The sad truth is that most of the people lounging on crowded beaches in places like Rhodes or even Pigadia don’t deserve to have their own little slice of paradise—they simply haven’t earned it. The saddest thing is that most of them wouldn’t understand such a place even if they found it. “Where’s the snack bar?” they’d be saying. “Where my chaise lounge?” “You mean we have to walk all the way back too!”

[Reading over what I just wrote and I’m thinking it sounds like I’m being a bit superior, but, damn it, it’s the truth!—Most of the visitors I meet here have almost no sense of adventure or even much curiosity as to what might out there beyond the tourist walls.]

My day had only one negative: I got sunburned. This surprised me a bit because I’m so dark now that I thought I was past that stage and because I really wasn’t out there all that long. What I think happened was a combination of not having got much sun for several days, which means I’ve lightened up a touch, and the fact that I spend most of my time today lounging half in the water and half out it; the burn is almost entirely on my chest, the front of my shoulders and the tops of my arms, which leads me to believe that they were catching the sun reflecting of the water, which amped up its power. This is a bummer, as I wanted to go back there tomorrow morning. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to spend tomorrow mostly in the water or lying on my stomach—because I am going back!

I had a good time here last night too. I ate at a little restaurant called La Gorgona, which is run by an Italian woman. It’s a really neat place, in that I felt more like I was sitting out on someone’s private deck than in a restaurant. There were kids and dogs and cats running around (even more so than in most restaurants I’ve found here) and a general feeling that you were some weird family party instead of a paying establishment. I also stumbled into the Greek musical equivalent of and Irish session. It was just too guys, one who I think was the Italian woman’s husband on bouzouki, and another man on a bowed instrument that sounded a lot like a violin but which he played while it rested in his lap (they were actually playing at the restaurant next door to the one I was at, but it was so close that I could almost have reached out and touched the musicians--I think both restaurants are owned by the same people). I’ve yet to learn much about Greek traditional music, but I liked what I heard (it sounded to my very untrained ears kind of like Irish jigs and reels meet Middle Eastern music). I wish I could find more of this kind of stuff, but the truth is I really have no clue where to look, except to hang out in more remote areas and hope I get lucky.

Notes:

Trying to figure out my next move. I realize now that I left Rhodes Town in a panic: I really hated the place and it triggered a huge round of anxiety attacks and a spiraling depression unlike any I’ve experienced here. I’m back to considering visiting one more Dodecanese Island before heading back to Crete—one of the more out-of-the-way and less touristy ones, of course. I’ll be heading down to Pigadia again tomorrow afternoon and I’ll see what the ferry schedule looks like (some ferries stop here and some don’t, so it’s better to be down in Pigadia for that sort of thing). I still may just go down to Crete, though. I’m beginning to think that my book might require a second trip here, that I may be right back in these islands next summer. If I’m feeling that way a week from now that could change things for me this trip quite a bit.

Maybe it’s just luck of the draw in regards to the places I’ve chosen to visit on Karpathos, but this island seems to be strangely goat free: I’ve hardly seen any since I’ve been here. If that is truly the case I wonder why that is. Strange.

Many Shots of Rhodes Town

2011-07-09T03:08:00.000-07:00

The windie old streets of Rhodes. Most of the stuff I think people can figure out for themselves. My favorites shots are of the old Islamic graveyard (it's fenced off like the whole mosque, so I took these while pointing my camera thru the fence). The last picture sort of captures what this place is rfeally like this time of year--a cultural Disneyland. I gotta get out of here! A vey unRob place, this Rhodes

The Rhodes to Ruin? / Going "Home" to Crete

2011-07-09T02:39:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 08, 2011—Rhodes Town, Rhodes, Greece

I got into Rhodes around a quarter of eight last night. One of the rules I have while traveling is never to arrive in a new town at night, if it can at all be helped. It’s too disorienting and stressful, which are states that can easily lead to bad decision making. In this case that didn’t really happen to too great of an extent. However, I did allow something to happen I usually don’t let go down. For the first time on this trip I let myself be “captured” by one of those pension owners who wait at the dock when the boats come trying to pick up customers. Now these people aren’t necessarily bad or anything—just a touch aggressive for my tastes. Plus, I don’t like agreeing to stay at a place until I’ve seen it (I also don’t like that “hooked fish” feeling I get when they start talking to me). But in this case it was getting dark, I was tired, and I didn’t feeling like traipsing thru dark windy medieval alleys in search of a room.

So I let myself be corralled by the old lady whose place turned out to be a pretty good deal. It’s only thirty Euros a night, which is cheap for this town (especially since the room has its own bathroom and a refrigerator), and it’s in the Jewish Quarter, which is where I had hoped to be staying (it’s just off the main drag, but is relatively quiet, especially at night). The only problem, which I amazingly failed to notice when checking out the room, is that it and everything in it is permeated by the smell of cigarettes, which is pretty damn disgusting.

I did make one bad decision, though. By the time I got settled in here it was almost nine o’clock and I hadn’t eaten anything of any substance for about ten hours. So tied, hungry, and feeling pretty lost, I ended up eating at one of the tourist joints just down the road from my room. The food wasn’t bad or anything, but it wasn’t great and it was overpriced. Plus I had to listen to some really bad guitar-playing/singing duo who were doing songs by groups like REM, even though you could tell they had no clue of the meaning of the lyrics coming out of their mouths. Needless to say, this part of my evening was pretty painful. (It became even more painful when I realized this restaurant was only fifty feet from a very non-touristy place called Mandala, which was highly recommended by Lonely Planet and turned out to be even better they said it was—I had lunch there today.)

Rhodes Town itself is turning out to be everything I feared it would be: a touristy nightmare of staggering proportions. The medieval streets and crumbling fortress walls that this place is renowned for are fascinating. But that almost doesn’t matter because the place is so plowed under by tourists and endless tourist shops selling the same stuff and mediocre, interchangeable restaurants with annoying touts out front trying to get you to go in—it’s like Hania times ten. Still, I tried to make the best of it and do the tourist thing, well, because there’s really nothing else to do here (except go to what has to be one of the most crowded beaches in the world), and because there were some things I definitely wanted to see. So I went to the art museum, saw the Knights of St. John’s Castle, went to a famous mosque, etc. It was an OK day I guess—but a hot, crowded, and somewhat stressful one as well.

I did have one truly disappointing destination today and that was the mosque Lawrence Durrell lived in back in the 1940s. The tour books all mention it, but none say that it’s totally fenced off and you can’t go inside, that it’s a dilapidated wreck that’s only just now beginning to be refurbished. This really sucked because what I could see looked quite interesting (there was an old Muslim graveyard on the grounds that looked especially cool). Dear butt monkeys from Lonely Planet—what the fuck?

Speaking of Durrell, I was told there’d be decent bookstores in this town—but there aren’t any! I looked and asked around and everybody looked at me like I was crazy. So I’m still stuck with the bad SciFi I brought! A well-stocked Kindle is really looking like the way to go right now …

I did make a big decision today, which owes a bit, I suppose, to my experience on Rhodes. I’m scuttling the whole Dodecanese part of this trip and heading back to Crete. I simply don’t have the heart or the interest to expand my trip into these islands. There are several reasons for this decision. First off I don’t want to be a tourist flitting from place to place seeing things but not really experiencing them, which is what would happen if I kept heading north. I’m realizing that the Dodecanese are simply too big and far flung to travel thru the way I want to in the time I have left. Crete’s also too big to see in just a month. Since I’ve already devoted so much time to Crete, given the realities I’ve just discussed, there really isn’t any option but to head to that island. And again, there’s a book to be written, which I’ve said many times has to be a Crete book—and I don’t yet quite have what I need from there to write such a book. Plus, I just want to go back there. I already miss Crete, feel like I’m wasting my time searching up here for what I’ve already found there. Everyone has their special places in this world, places that speak to them. Crete’s such a place for me. It’s where I should be right now.

I’m not going straight back, though. I want to pick up my Crete travels right where they left off -- in Sitia. There’s no ferry heading there until Tuesday. There is one heading just to Karpathos, though, on Sunday morning. Now I didn’t have that great of an experience there, but as I was heading up to Rhodes the ferry I was on stopped at Diafani, a little port on the northern part of the island. The Lonely Planet guide didn’t make the place sound all that interesting, but it looked really cool from the boat, like a place that would be fun to explore, to relax in and hike out of. So I’m going to head over there on Sunday morning and then pick up the ferry to Sitia there on Tuesday.

Notes:

When I was coming into Rhodes I noticed something very recognizable to a Southern Californian: smog; it was hanging over the city like a yellow-brown halo. A bad vide moment. An L.A. moment in Greece. I frown.

A Few Pigadia Photos

2011-07-09T02:22:00.000-07:00

Just a few Pigadia photos, scenery stuff. Didn't take many when I was there for some reason. They're all pretty self explantory except the white steps, which are acutally a trail head (they vanish quickly and it's back to gnarly steep switchbacks and broken stones underfoot).

Hitting a Wall in Karpathos

2011-07-09T02:12:00.000-07:00

Thursday, July 07, 2011—Pigadia, Karpathos, Greece

I don’t want no ruins

I want a beer and the Boston Bruins

—Martin Mull: Rome and Bored

Heading out of Karpathos in about an hour or so; right now I’m sitting in a little café next to the docks waiting for the boat to come. It’s eleven-thirty in the and already really hot out. It looks like a good day for traveling: there’s only a moderate breeze and the water in the harbor is just slightly textured (when I arrived here the wind was really blowing and waves were slapping up against the cement dock). Feeling good—calm. This is interesting, as yesterday I was in a supremely foul mood. Over what? Nothing and everything …

Ok—here begins a long explanation.

I’ve discovered over the years that, for me at least (and most other people, I’d say), there are two underlying phases to any long trip: the phase where I in some sense fight my surroundings and the phase where those battles get put aside.

It’s a fiction, I believe, a conceit, to believe that anyone ever truly understands the cultural groups met when traveling: any real understanding needs to be based in a deep knowledge of the language first off, and second years of experience with the cultural group speaking it. What happens when a person travels is that cultural matrices rub up against each other; it’s a bit like the social equivalent of tectonic plates meeting. And of course when this happens there is friction, which varies in intensity depending on the time and the place.

I’ve noticed that people tend to deal with this friction in a couple of ways. Some people immediately retreat, complain and in some sense try make the people their visiting behave in the ways they believe that should be behaving—this I think is a mode of behavior quite typical for Americans. The other way is to suppress feelings. I suppose I go against the grain of most of my fellow Americans, as my nature is to follow this second course (there’s a third way to handle all this, which I will discuss later). The trouble with suppression is that this of course eventually catches up with you and you hit a crisis point—and that’s what finally happened to me yesterday.

What triggered this was an event that in itself was quite small and meaningless. (It’s usually this way—as my sister says “One doesn’t trip over a boulder.”) As I mentioned in my previous entry, it’s turned out that Karpathos has little going on that interests me; in retrospect I probably should have skipped this island and headed straight for Rhodes. Still, I did have a free day yesterday to get out of Pigadia and see a little of the island. So, having so little time here, I decided to pick a single destination that sounded interesting, a little beach area called Lefkos, and made a plan to catch the eleven-thirty bus there that morning. The details are boring, so I’ll skip them. But thru a mix up that was at best only partially my fault, I ended up missing the bus, which was the last bus heading to Lefkos that day. Again, minor stuff, not worth getting too bothered about. But it was kind of a last straw for me, I guess, and inwardly mostly I completely went off the rails.

Everything that's been bugging me about this place, about Europeans (as a broad group, as opposed to Greeks specifically), moved front and center in me in one huge wave. I don’t want to go into the details really, as they seem sort of silly when recounted outside the context of my then state of mind—endless cigarette smoking, icy German stares invading my personal space, arrogant idiot drivers, lame-ass electronic/house music everywhere (it’s like they can’t find of way out of the worst aspects of mid-nineties here), and just about all European men between the ages of sixteen and forty something: feminized nightmare fashions victims that aren’t really even men to my American soul, and the beautiful European women who actually find these guys attractive, etc. etc. (see—silly)—but suffice to say I found myself wallowing in petulant hatred.

But like any other wave, once it broke it was gone—the only evidence it ever existed is now found in my memory and these "pages." I now feel clean, much freer than I have during this entire trip—because I have passed into the third way of dealing with this journey’s cultural tectonics: I’m accepting.

Now a lot of people claim they’re in this state when they’re traveling. But if you look just a bit beneath the surface you’ll find that they’re usually full of shit, in denial of big chunks of their feelings. To really hit this place you have to go thru personal dramas that take some time—part of which is, on some level, to be honest enough to admit that you’re going thru this process. Now if there’s one thing I’ve learned about human beings is that dishonesty is practically all of our middle names (there are a few people who seem to be born Buddha souls or to be a reincarnation of Lau Tzu, but they’re so rare that they are almost not worth mentioning).

All of this is a long way of saying that I’ve finally hit the place where I can just let this trip be what it is, instead of fighting it because it’s not what I thought/wished it would be (it is in this battle that dreams become fascist states of being). I’m now in a quite cool frame of mind (of soul?) of course. It’s also an unusual state, in that I don’t think all that many people really reach it (I’ve never made it to this state on any other trip I have taken). Now the fun part begins: I get to find out where this new visions takes me.

OK, enough of the heavy stuff (it’s wearing me out too)—moving on, moving on …

Next stop—Rhodes Town. A huge city by Dodecanese standards (over 50,000 people). I’m finding myself looking more and more forward to the place. After dealing with all the Minoan stuff on Crete I’m itching to see all the Nights of St. John Castle and the general medievalness of the place. I’m also stoked about making a pilgrimage to Lawrence Durrell’s, where he lived in Rhodes just after WW II. It’s an old mosque (or was) and it’s where he wrote Reflections on a Marine Venus, which is still probably the most famous book ever written about Rhodes.

Realizing that I really do need to finish this trip off with a decent block of time on Crete. For this journey it’s the center of my Greek universe, and, as I’ve mentioned multiple times in this diary, the center of any book on Greece I might write. Plus, I just want to go back there. I’m beginning to realize that I’ve fallen pretty hard for the place—and there’s a lot of it still for me to experience. Also Gavdos is really calling me back. I really love that dilapidated backwater of an island …

Notes:

Realizing that I now have the wrong books with me, which is a serious problem. What I mean is that I’ve already read and discarded the “for sure” books I brought with me, books that I knew would mesh well with the (this) road, with Greece, and am now left with the “maybes”—and they’re failing quite miserably. English language books, beyond the Stephen King-type crap, are not all that easy to find here. However, I’ve heard that in Rhodes Town there are plenty of places that stock them. I’m also sure that in Rhodes I can get a hold of Lawrence Durrell’s books. Constance, the one book of his I’ve read here went beautifully with the surroundings—and it isn’t even one of his better books! Durrell is the English-language writer of the Mediterranean. I’ll probably have to lay out quite a few euros for new copies of his stuff, but it will be worth it, I’m sure …

What I’m currently dealing with book-wise:

Juniper Time: A supposedly “classic” bit of SciFi from the late seventies. It sucks: Space opera meets really bad, stereotype Billy Jack-vibe Native American mysticism, as the earth falls into environmental ruin. Three threads that never quite mesh and individually are not particularly well done. Dreaming of Durrell … Prospero’s Cell, a reread of Mountolive and/or Clea, more of the Avignon Quintet, the Revolt of Aphrodite … warm bath literature … exquisite … yummy …

Greece: another late piece of transport. The boat was supposed to leave here by 12:20. It’s not 1:25. No ferry in sight …

Karpathos Stop Over

2011-07-06T23:55:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, July 05, 2011—Pigadia, Karpathos, Greece

Landed in the unfortunately named Pigadia today (it sounds like the name one would give a hog breeding festival in the Midwest or something, or maybe where Piglet from Winnie the Poo might go if he decided to head for the big city), which is the main town and main port of the island of Karpathos. It’s a pretty nice place, a typical Greek town built around its harbor and rising up the hills behind it. I can already tell, though, that island is going to be a short stop for me. Today I went for a hike and then spent an hour of so on the town’s very touristy main beach. While doing all this I had a serious been-there-done-that kind of feeling, by which I mean I’ve already figured out, both thru being here and reading more deeply about the island, that this place has nothing to offer me that I haven’t already done better, or at least a well, on Crete.

There’s supposedly some town in the north that’s been cut off from the rest of the world where people still live an “authentic” way of life (whatever the hell that means), but I’ve also read that they live off tourism there now, that busses dump people off so they can see this old way of living. All this sounds fishy to me, like the people there are kind of playing themselves for the tourists. Either way, it doesn’t sound all that interesting. So I plan on taking the next boat to Rhodes, which leaves Thursday and around twelve-thirty in the afternoon. That means I have one more day here. I think I’m going to spend it trying to hunt down some more secluded beaches, places where there aren’t millions of people playing paddle ball (Europeans love that shit), paying to sit on lounges and under umbrellas, and generally being tourist sheep.

I’m realizing now that I’ve finally left Crete that I don’t really know what I want from the Dodecanese, to the point where I almost blew off my ferry this morning and stayed in Sitia. One thing I’m beginning to see is that if I do write a book about this place it needs to be primarily a Crete book: that’s the place that most interests me and I will know by far best when all is said and done. So maybe this Dodecanese trip will be a short run that serves mostly to give me parts of Greece to compare to Crete, to give me some perspective, in other words. What I find frustrating about these Islands (all Greek Islands, actually, except for Crete) is that each one has one or two aspects to it that really intrigues me, but others that turn me off. So I think I might just hop thru these islands sampling the good stuff and heading off to the next point (for example, I’m really interested in the historical aspects of Rhodes Town, but the rest of the island, beautiful as it may be, sounds like an over-priced tourist hell I wouldn’t mind skipping). If that’s how things go down it means I’ll have ten to fifteen days back on Crete to hit some spots there I missed and really dig deeply into the place. It’s all guesswork for the moment, though—I may very well find islands up here that grab me. If that happens everything of course changes.

I’ve also got to admit to some burnout at this point. I’ve got slightly more than a month to go and that been-there-done-that feeling I mentioned before is becoming quite prevalent in general; as I studied up on the Dodecanese these last few days I kept getting the feeling that I know exactly what I'll find when I get to each island. So far with Karpathos this feeling has proved to be accurate. Not sure what all this means. Maybe nine weeks in one go is too long and I’m just done. Or maybe I realize spreading myself too thin for my purposes and just concentrating on the surface, which means I’m not seeing the true character of the where I’m at. Or maybe I’m just right: maybe there’s a similarity to experience here, a limitation I have to deal with. Still playing with all these ideas …

The ferry over here did surprise me a bit. The only boats I’ve taken since coming here are the relatively little ones that ply the southwest coast of Crete. So I guess I was expecting a bigger version of one of those. What I got was a massive ferry, with sleeping rooms, lounges of various types, and a huge cargo hold that was carrying big trucks as well as cars, plus a whole bunch of other crap. It was pretty grungy, though—the ship seemed old--1960s old--and everything about it was worn, faded, unkempt. But it got me here and only cost nineteen Euros for the four-plus hour trip. I wonder how small the islands have to be, how close together, and how small the passenger number is before these beasts drop out in favor of smaller, more interesting craft …

Palekastro - Photos

2011-07-04T09:37:00.000-07:00

Several shots of the site and then some beach shots. The sign cracks me up. This country is really stingy when it comes to posting things. I guess someone got tired of waiting and made a sign of their own.

Palekastro - Minoan Town

2011-07-04T09:26:00.000-07:00

Monday, July 4, 2011—Sitia, Crete, Greece

Had a good mellow day today. Revised my plans and skipped going to the palm tree beach at Vai and instead headed over to a town called Palekastro. The main reason I went there was to see Ancient Palekastro, which is a large Minoan town that’s only been partially excavated. The other reason I went is because just down the road from this site is Hiona Beach, was I heard was pretty good.

The archaeological site turned out to be really interesting. The excavated parts are of a Minoan town; the outlines of things like alleyways and what were probably homes and shops are clearly visible. The site’s also loaded with tons of pottery remains. Using remote sensing technics researchers have figured out that there’s also a massive structure of some kind under the adjacent olive groves. It could be a palace. If so this find could be Knossos-like in importance (but who knows when or if this structure will be excavated—olive groves are very lucrative and I can’t imagine the farmers letting their trees being ripped out just so archaeologists can do their work). I got a ton of good shots of the site, which I will infuse into my archaeology class in the fall. All in all, I got far more out of seeing this site than I did Knossos, which is so marred by Evans’ “reconstructions” and the Disneyland atmosphere that surrounds the place.

After checking out the site (which took about an hour and a half), I headed down to the beach. Instead of staying at Hiona, which was a little unshaded and hot for my tastes, I hiked a ways along the coast, where I found a secluded little sandy cove that was much more sheltered. I had to share it with some other people (a French and a German couple), but they were cool, and I ended up spending a couple much needed hours there sunning and swimming. Not a bad way to spend the Fourth of July, though not very American, I admit. But then again the date simply doesn’t mean anything over here. In fact, until I happened to look at my watch late this morning I’d forgotten what day it was.

This is my last day in Crete for a while. At the crack of dawn tomorrow I head over to Karpathos. I’m going to miss this place, especially now that I’ve found the eastern part of the island to be a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. I’ll be coming back, though—I fly home from Hania. If things go the way I’m planning I’ll have the first week of August here to tie up loose ends. Feeling good that I ended this part of my trip on such a good note. So on to new adventures!

For the first time since I got here I’m starting to feel a little pressed for time. I still have over a month, but there is a lot a want to cram in in that time. Those six days I lost being sick and stuck in places I didn’t want to be because of the wind are coming back to haunt me a bit.

Thinking of heading from Karpathos to Rhodes and then up to Kos, much further north. These are the tree largest of the Dodecanese Islands and I know I want to go to all of them. Using Kos as a base, I plan on hitting smaller islands in the north that interest me. Then I’ll head back down thru the Dodecanese stopping at Islands I missed by heading straight up to Kos. The plan looks good on paper—I’ll see how it holds up in real life.

A Few Sitia Photos

2011-07-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

The waterfront and where I'm staying (complete with my daypack for authenticity). I've got a few more pictures on my camera I'll post in a bit.

Sitia and Raki and Raki and Raki ...

2011-07-03T09:37:00.000-07:00

Sunday, July 3, 2011—Sitia, Crete, Greece

Had a day today where I just sort of collapsed, which isn’t surprising, as I’d been feeling a little rundown lately and last night I piled a bunch of raki on top of that. Yesterday evening, as I was about to head out to dinner, I found Alexandra, the German woman who runs this place, and the old Greek guy who owns it (I either can’t remember or never got his name) sitting at a table on the patio in front of the hotel with most of the guests here drinking raki and ouzo and eating some appetizers—it was a kind of welcome to Sitia party. I was invite to join in and over the next hour or so drank raki, while getting to know my hosts (who are extremely cool) and some fellow guests—an Albanian man and his Italian wife, a youngish German couple, two forty-something French women (lesbians?), and a small group of Italians.

I had a good time at this little shindig, at which the Greek owner of the place held court and told us of his life as an importer and locals kids (two from here and two from Albania) who came up the stairs to sing and dance for us (the Greek guy afterwards gave them all apricots—their eyes lit up). But I was drinking raki on a nearly empty stomach. Later, when I finally did make it to dinner, the owner of Gato Negro, the restaurant I’d chosen, took a liking to me, sat down at my table with a raki bottle and insisted we have some shots together, while he told me of his world travels, of how had been a professional singer and had lived in Zurich and Hamburg for lengthy stretches. He was great. His food was great too—I had grilled chicken and tomato frits that were killer. Unfortunately I’d ordered some red wine before I realized I was going to be drinking more raki and that combo, combined with the fact that after dinner I ended up drinking more shots with the owner really put me under.

So I woke up today with a nice hangover. Still I managed to head over to the archaeological museum, which turned out to be pretty cool. It’s collection in mostly of stuff excavated in this area and features a lot of early Minoan material, along with a smaller amount of artifacts from periods up to Roman times. The coolest part of the exhibit for me, though, was the fragments of Linear A tablets they have. It still blows my mind that nobody has ever deciphered this script. This probably shows that whatever language the Minoans spoke it has no surviving relatives or even past relatives that were written down (if there was a similar language recorded someone would have by now figured that out and used it as a template to decode the Linear A stuff). Unlike the museum in Iraklio, this one doesn’t feature spectacular frescos or jewelry made of gold and exotic stones, which makes it a lot less flashy. But in overall content it’s nearly as good. The only problem is that things are not explained that well and one needs a bit of knowledge going in to really understand what’s there.

After the museum I took a stroll to thru the town, which was a little tough because of my still-aching Samaria Gorge legs and the fact that this town is built going up a hill. My hangover was of course with me as well. It was hot as hell today too. So all these things combined made for a rather short journey. In fact, by about one in the afternoon I had had it. I ditched my plans to go to the beach and instead headed back to my room, where I crashed hard for almost three-and-a-half hours. This turned out to be the best decision I could have made, as even without a hangover, in retrospect, I really needed a down day. Now I’m feeling pretty good, a bit groggy, but a lot healthier than I did this morning.

Skipping my beach day was a good decision in another way too. I’ve decided to take a day trip tomorrow to Vai, a famous beach on the island’s east coast, 24 kilometers from here, and I really don’t need two beach days in a row. The reason Vai is so famous, beyond the fact that the beach there is supposedly great, is that it’s home to a forest of a species of palms found nowhere else in the world. It’s supposed to be really touristy, in a manner similar to Elafonisi on the west coast. But Lonely Planet says that if you hike a bit to either the north or the south there are good beaches as well that draw much lighter crowds. Heading for these spots is my plan, once I’ve checked out the palm forest and generally gotten the lay of the land of Vai.

Notes:

I’ve given up coffee again; I haven’t had any in forty-eight hours, which is the main withdrawal period. Surprisingly I’ve had no headaches of note. Been thinking a lot about the lactose intolerant thing. I’ve realized that it’s virtually impossible to cut dairy completely out of my diet while traveling thru a place like Greece. Still, I’ve cut way back the last forty-eight hours and my digestion is markedly better. What giving up dairy truly means is just beginning to hit me, though. No pizza. No ice cream. No cheese in general. Many many other wonderful things gone too. Now I don’t eat a lot of that kind of stuff, but when I do I really enjoy it. This might be what I have to give up, though—I just can’t function the way I’ve been going.

As I mentioned, drinking here is another issue. At this point in my life my body just can’t handle much alcohol. I’ve also figured out, though, that drinking and Greece are pretty inseparable—it’s too big of a social thing here. My new goal is to cut back as much as possible without offending my hosts, while just accepting that I’m going to have the occasion raki-heavy night now and then. I mean, I’m only here about a month more and once I get home things will return to normal in this regard, to where I need to be in this area.

Been noticing that Katie’s brief appearance during my trip has had an interesting lasting affect. Her background is in art history. This along with her job as a tour guide in Rome has makes her really aware of things like architecture. When she was here we were continually stopping so she could check out various buidlings. Now I’m doing it too! I often don’t undertsand what I’m seeing, but I am noticing things I’ve never paid much attention to before. She’s definitely corrupted me. Damn.

Sitia: Pretty Cool

2011-07-03T09:31:00.000-07:00

Saturday, July 2, 2011, Sitia, Crete, Greece

I made it to Sitia today, on Crete’s far northeast coast. I got in at about a quarter of two this afternoon. It took me about an hour to figure out where I was going, get a room, and get situated. I’m staying at a place called the Hotel Arhontiko, which is in a refurbished “neoclassical” building, according to Lonely Planet (someday Katie will explain to me exactly what this term means, in regards to architecture). It’s run by a very sweet German woman, who I later found out runs another place just down the street from here. When I got to Hotel Arhontiko there was nobody here, just a sign saying that Alexandra, the German woman would be right back. I waited around about twenty minutes I decided to try somewhere else, specifically a place called Apostolis, which was my second choice after Arhontiko as far as my Lonely Planet recommendations go. The woman there told me that they were full up, but that she had a room at her other place. I was then a little surprised to be led right back to where I’d before been waiting. It all worked out fine, though. I like the room and at only twenty-four euros a night it’s a pretty good deal—the back and forth was just a little strange, that’s all.

I’m in this town mainly because it’s a good place to catch a ferry to Karpathos, my next destination. There are a few things here I want to see, though, which is a good thing because I found out that the next ferry doesn’t leave until five in the morning on Tuesday, which means I have to stay here a day longer than I’d planned. I’m a little bummed out about this (I mean, I could have done a day side trip on the way here and seen someplace new), but what’s done is done; I might as well just try and enjoy this place as much as I can.

Actually my getting stuck here might not be all that bad of a thing. After booking my ferry this afternoon I went for a walk around the town, and though this place has little reputation amongst travelers (I haven’t met anyone until I’d got here who’d ever made it to Sitia), it seems pretty cool to me. It’s fairly small: according to Lonely Planet there are about 8,000 people here, more this time of year obviously with all the summer travelers. This is a nice size, in that it seems to foster a good combination of laid-backness (I think I just made up a word) and action. It’s also a pretty town. In typical Mediterranean fashion it forms a crescent around its old Venetian harbor, while scaling the surrounding hills. The waterfront is really neat. It’s dominated by little fishing boats, and on land by smaller tavernas that aren’t overly touristy. The place is also very Greek. Even most of the visitors seem to mostly be local people coming in from other parts of Crete. (On my walk today I hiked nearly the length of the town’s quite long, very crowded beach and I’d say that probably 90% of the people I was seeing were Greek.) I’ve never been in a tourist destination that was fille primarily with Greek tourists, so this will be a new experience, if nothing else.

Tomorrow I think I’ll hit the town’s archaeological museum, which is supposed to have a pretty good collection of Minoan and other ancient stuff excavated in this region. After that I’ll probably go to the beach. It doesn’t look like a particularly good beach, but at least at its far end, which is technically out of town, the crowds thin considerably, which means I should be able to go for a relaxing swim if nothing else. After that I don’t know. Again, I really wasn’t planning on being here extra day. There isn’t much in this region that interests me, but I still might try and take a day trip somewhere, just to do something different. I might also just be lazy and sit around and read. Despite the fact that Sitia’s on the water it’s really hot here—it’s the hottest place I’ve been in Crete, by a few degrees at least. If this keeps up a lazy day of heat avoidance might be the best call.

Can’t believe how much hiking the Samaria Gorge has trashed my legs. My calves and especially the front muscles of my thighs are still ridiculously sore; I could barely make it the several blocks from the bus station to my hotel, and going up and down stairs is a major bitch. I made a good call coming here instead of sitting on the south shore waiting to heal so I could do my Frangokastello hike: I would have been waiting there a long time.

Iraklio Again -- Damn It!

2011-07-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 1, 2011—Iralkio, Crete, Greece

Made the decision today to bail out of Crete, skip Frangokastello and a few other places I’d like to see and head out to other islands. So I’m heading east, to Sitia and a boat for Karpathos. I could have made it there tonight. But after five-plus hours on busses and hanging out in bus stations I was too worn out to hop on another bus. Besides, if I would have gone on I wouldn’t have gotten in there till at least nine-thirty at night and it’s not fun trying to find a room and generally get situated in a new town after dark. So I stopped here and am crashing at Hotel Lena, where I stayed last time I was in town. Tomorrow I’ll catch the 10:45 bus and be in Sitia around 2:15 (there’s a 6:30 AM bus, but fuck that). I was pretty burned out when I got here and still sore from my hike. So, since there’s nothing in this town I want to see that I haven’t been to already, I just took an afternoon nap and then headed out for a nice dinner. And that’s going to be all there is for this stop …

Realizing that I’ve been getting in some bad habits here in Crete, that I've been treating this trip more like a little vacation than the extended sojourn it is. First off, I’ve been drinking coffee again for the first time in seven years. Starting tomorrow that’s done (I’m not looking forward to a caffeine headache on my bus trip, but I WILL NOT be owned by any substance. Digestive problems that were plaguing me back home have also come back. Katie thinks I’m lactose intolerant. I think she may be right. So yesterday I did an experiment and dairyed out, just to see what would happen—gastro-hell occurred. So starting tomorrow dairy will be gone as well (hard to do in the land of feta and goat’s milk but it’s gotta happen). I’ve also been drinking too much—alcohol with every meal is not my style. Starting tomorrow that also gets cut way back. So I guess the Dodecanese=health for Rob. Yeah, I win again …

I'm thinking of coming back to Crete for the last week of my trip, to hit the places I missed and maybe to do another Gavdos run (I miss that place). That will give my journey a nice circular quality too.

Samaria Gorge 2 - Photos

2011-07-01T01:17:00.000-07:00

Some pictures of the Samaria Gorge and from Agio Roumeli (spelling?), the little town you end up in after the hike and the boat we took from there back to Paleohora. We set such a fast pace I didn't take that many pictures. The gorge was way cooler than I captured here.

Samaria, Moving On ... But Where?

2011-07-01T01:04:00.000-07:00

Friday, July 1, 2011—Paleohora, Crete, Greece

FINALLY hiked the Samaria Gorge yesterday. I have to say it was worth it. It truly is a beautiful area. Sheer rock wall towering well above you. A piney, almost alpine feel at the top. Steep descents and narrow passages. Rock-hopping across the stream. Natural springs, from which it is actually safe to drink. Surprisingly cool breeze. And all sorts of other good stuff …

The hike was nowhere as hard as reputed either. The main problems are that you're continually hiking over broken stones (like every other hike on this island), which really takes its toll on your ankles and feet, and the fact that it’s mostly downhill, which puts a lot of pressure on muscles you don’t use that heavily all that often. So even though it wasn’t overly taxing I’m really sore this morning, to the point where I’m feeling the need to alter my travel plans somewhat. More about that later.

Overall, partially because of the hike, I had a strange day yesterday. As I was getting ready to leave for the bus that would take me to the gorge, I met this German girl in the place where I was staying who was doing the same hike. She was quite cute (ridiculously blonde with sparking blue-green eyes) and like me traveling alone, so I made sure we fell in together for the day. This meant that I went on my first German hike. By this I mean that she was very German, in that she wasn’t going to let anything like beautiful scenery or contemplative moments get in the way the efficiency of her hiking. So we set a blistering pace down the gorge, ultimately conquering the place in a little over four hours, when the average time is said to be slightly more than five. It was a fun experience on one hand, but in the end I think I would have preferred a slower pace. I mean, every once in a while I’d snap out of the marching mentally she put in place, take a look around, and be amazed. Then I’d think, “Shit, how much cool stuff have I missed on this trek!” Oh well, it was still fun, different, if nothing else …

Unfortunately this girl and I turned out to have almost nothing in common; all she seemed to be into was playing sports and watching American TV—she was nowhere near cute enough to compensate for that--nobody is. But for better or worse we ended up locked together for the rest of the day, drinking beers after the hike and then I somehow got roped into having dinner with her and some German people (and one Austrian) she’d met earlier in Paleohora. They were very nice people but didn’t speak much English (the girl’s English was pretty good). They were also a little boring. I of course don’t speak German. I was also by this point pretty over my hiking buddy; she was nice but just not very interesting (she probably felt the same way about me). Finally, at about midnight, exhausted from hiking and too much beer (the Germans were really putting it away and I got caught up in their wake) I extricated myself from her and the situation and went to bed. I left her a note on her door this morning thanking her for hiking with me and quietly slipped out of there ...

Partially because I was so exhausted I decided to skip my early morning boat to Hora Safakilon. This is probably just was well. I was going to use that little town as a hiking base to get to Frangokastello, an old Venetian castle I want to see. I’m now so sore and that’s such a challenging E-4 hike that I really couldn’t do it and enjoy the experience without giving myself forty-eight hours of down time. I can’t spare that. It’s time for me to get off of Crete and on to other places. So I’ve decided to let fate decide my next move. I’m going to take the bus to Hania. There’s a bus that leave Hania sporadically for Frangokastello. If I can catch it without too much wait I’ll head there that way. If not I’ll head on to Rethymno and try to catch the bus to this little inland town (the name escapes me) I want to see. If I can’t catch that easily I’ll just keep traveling east towards Sitia, where I’ve decided I’m going to catch the ferry to Karpathos, before heading over to Rhodes. So my next entry could come from just about any of the places I mentioned. It’s all up in the air …

I’ve been doing a lot of interesting thinking lately, about where I’m at in life and what my next moves will be when I get home. I’m realizing that even though I’m enjoying this trip this part of my life is over: I simply don’t need to be a globetrotter anymore. My next phase of life is to build something better than I’ve got back home, something deeper and more meaningful. First off, I now know that my writing is and always will be the center of my life (at least my inner life). I also really want to turn Burning Shore Press into something; right now it’s kind of a failed vanity project. What else do I want to build? A family? I can’t seem to shake that idea from my head … Hmm ...

Shout Out to Eric Wikiman

2011-06-29T00:52:00.000-07:00

Hey Eric,

I can't remember if you said you went to Rhodes or not, but if you did I could use some advice. I'm really looking forward to hanging out in Rhodes Town; I can't wait to check out the Knights of St. John stuff and the old quarter in general, but I'm still trying to figure where to go on the island after that. Any recomendations? I was hoping to get away from the east coast tourist scene and find something a bit quieter, but still cool.

Thanks in Advance!

Iraklio Shots

2011-06-27T11:41:00.000-07:00

Some photos frpom around the main center of Iraklio, where I'm staying. If you read my post on this place all of these will make perfect sense.

Knossos Shots

2011-06-27T11:29:00.000-07:00

Some shots from Knossos. All of the painted stuff, columns, frescos, etc. are "reconstructions" done by "archaeologist" Sir Arthur Evan (cheesy shit, if you ask me). The rest seems to be relatively authentic. The last shot is an ancient cistern (or something similar) in which some asshole decided to toss his empty Redbull can. I'm going to use this shot in my class: don't let this happen to you. \

Lissos

2011-06-27T09:22:00.000-07:00

Some shots of the archaeological site Lissos, fronted by pictures Katie and I took on the trail getting there. Notice the cool fragments of a Roman-era fresco. The last shot is of this clean, very drinkable spring on the site (probably why people settled there). The last time I was at the site I had to chase away a bunch of goats to get to the water.

Summing Up The Katie and Rob Show: More Hania and Paleohora, Sougio, Iraklio, and Knossos

2011-06-27T08:45:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 27, 2011—Iraklio, Crete, Greece

Sudden change of pace for me. I’m now in Iraklio (also known as Heraklion), the largest City in Crete and the fifth largest city in Greece (I mistakenly called it the third largest in an earlier blog post, I think). Katie and I came here yesterday to use it as a base for seeing Knossos, the remains of the largest and likely most important of the Minoan palaces. She flew back to Rome last night and I stayed here today to see the City’s archaeological and natural history museums, which I’ve already accomplished.

Iraklio has a bad reputation amongst travelers—it’s usually referred to by outsiders as being some combination of ugly, trashy, dirty, noisy, hectic, “unscenic,” [is this even a word?--I found it in a Lonely Planet Guide],and nondescript. I’d say all of these slights have some truth to them. Still, I’m finding the place more interesting than I thought I would, for a number of reasons. It’s a very lively place. It’s also surprisingly Greek, in that, unlike say Hania, the areas frequented by travelers are still dominated by locals. It also seems like a place where people are engaged. Everywhere there is political graffiti—from what I can tell anarchist stuff seems to dominate, with an undercurrent of Marxism. There are also posters everywhere for anti-government demonstrations planned for tomorrow and the next day, which is really adding a visual edge to the city (I almost want to hang out another day to see how these demonstrations go down—they’re likely to get violent, given the “austerity measures” the Greek government and the EU is trying to cram down the peoples' throats, while the bankers and politicians that largely caused the financial mess here, as elsewhere, take none of the hit whatsoever).

That said, it’s kind of a gray, drab city, especially considering it’s in the Mediterranean. The graffiti, though interesting in places, is also starting to bring me down. Also when you are on the outside culturally, being surrounded by such a whirl of activity tends to confuse and wear you out more than anything else. I’m glad I came here, though. It’s given me a perspective on Greece I probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, since I’m not going to Athens or any of Greece’s other bigger cities. And again, it does make a great home base from which to explore the island’s Minoan history.

Since I’m on that subject, as I mentioned earlier, Katie and I checked out Knossos yesterday. It was definitely interesting. However, the site is dominated by Sir Arthur Evans’ “reconstructions” of the palace, and his work is often dubious and sometimes just plain fanciful. In the end all his concrete and painting probably damaged the site more than anything else, and in the process cost us precious historical knowledge. By the time we left I was feeling a bit cheated, like the long-dead Evans had pulled a fast one on me, a fast one on all future examiners of the site. But it was still worth seeing; there was still a lot to be learned there. I also feel that my trip would be missing something if I’d chosen to pass the site by.

I like the city’s archaeological museum much better (though it was much smaller than the guide books implied—I couldn’t believe it when the exhibit simply ended and I found myself back on the street). It’s dominated by Minoan artifacts, frescos, etc., and really shines in this area (it also has stuff from other periods, but these parts of the collection are pretty paltry compared to the Minoan items). In fact I wish I would have gone to the museum before heading over to Knossos: seeing the artifacts first would have really enhanced my ability to picture how Knossos was used all those centuries ago …

However, digesting the Minoans, no matter how you go about it, is pretty tough; they just don’t seem much like other ancient civilizations. Traditionally the Minoans have been viewed as these peaceful, female-goddess oriented people. Lately this view had been challenged on a number of grounds. Evidence has arisen that they might have practiced human sacrifice, with children no less. It’s also hard to imagine any society that stratified and that powerful not having a darker, tougher side. Still, the feeling I get from the artifacts and the paintings doesn’t jibe with the uglier aspects of human behavior—it really does give off a peaceful vibe. It also gives off a strange, very foreign vibe. Who were these people? How did they develop the way they did? I mean, they weren’t European in regards to what came after them culturally. But neither were they quite Asian, even though that’s where their roots seem to lie. To me they’re the people of soft dolphin frescos, weirdly placid snake-charming goddesses, and enigmatic shades of red, black, and blue … They are palaces without war, stratification without oppression. I realize that as I write this that it can’t be true, that it isn’t true—but that’s what I feel about their society. A soft-headed, completely unprofessional view, I know that I can’t possibly back up. But that's where I am, for now …

OK, I think I want to backtrack here a bit and account for the days previous to hitting Knossos. Katie met me in Hania on the twenty-third. We didn’t do too much there, just had a great dinner, which featured a killer—and expensive—Cretan cabernet, at a restaurant called Portos, which I discovered on my first swing thru that town. We hung around town the first half of the next day, wandering thru the shops of the city’s twisty old Venetian back alleys. Then we caught the bus down to Paleohora, where we spent a windy day at the beach. The next morning we awoke to a blissfully wind-free day and caught the 8:30 AM boat to Sougia, the little beach town on Crete’s southern coast that I’d been planning to visit for over a week but couldn’t because of the windy conditions.

Sougia was nice, very slow. The kind of place where you can spend an extremely pleasant day or two but would probably start getting bored with if you tried to stretch it much beyond that. Katie wanted to see Lissos, the archaeological site I’d hiked to from Paleohora a while back. It only took us about an hour-and-fifty minutes to make the hot, sometimes challenging hike there from Sougia. The site’s pretty cool. The best thing about it is that some of a floor fresco built in Roman times still exists in situ (usually frescos are carted off to museums pretty quickly). After hiking back out, we had a nice lunch at a beachside café and then headed to the beach, which was a bit of a tough go. It was so hot that the rocks (yes, it was another of those so-called “pebble” beaches). Basically cooked you thru your towel while the sun cooked you from above. Still it was a nice, mellow day; I really had a good time. That evening we caught the boat back to Paleohora and the next morning took two long bus rides to Iraklio, and, well, you know the rest of the story ...

It was really great having Katie here. I’m definitely going to miss her now that she’s gone, because I just really like having her around, but also because I enjoyed having a travel buddy those few days. I’m definitely getting to the point where my loner tendencies are dropping away a bit. Maybe I’m not as complete unto myself as I’ve thought (or have liked to pretend) …

Heading back west and south tomorrow, to Hania and then Paleohora. As anyone who’s traveled with me before knows [Eric W. will definitely understand this, as we developed this attitude together on the road many years ago], I hate backtracking. Most good backpackers do, actually. The Crete part of this trip, though, has featured more of this than probably all my other journey’s put together. The combination of the way this island's road/bus services are set up, the wind, Katie’s visit, and some other issues have meant that I’ve been continually going back and forth. In regards to the first issue, there are simply certain places here you can’t get to from other places; the people here apparently abhor diagonals. The whole thing makes me feel like I’m a castle in some real life game of chess: I can go up and down and sideways, but cutting across the board is simply not possible.

This, however, will be my last trip south. I am not leaving Crete without hiking the fabled Samaria Gorge, the Grand Canyon of Europe (I’d planned on doing this before meeting Katie, but the combination of getting stuck on Gavdos those extra days and the fact that my feet were all blistered and sore from other hard hikes messed me up on that). I also want to check out Frangokastello, an old Venetian castle and cool-sounding beach area on Hania provinces' southeast shore. Once I’ve made these journeys I’ll begin heading out of Crete, via a couple of short stops to places in more inland areas I want to check out. I estimate I’ll be out of here by about the fourth or fifth of July, which means I will have spent slightly more than a month on Crete—and I will only have seen a relatively small portion of the island! (It’s a lot bigger than you might think, just by looking at a map.)

As far as my next destination goes, I’ve all but decided that it will be Rhodes. Though Santorini intrigues me, it looks like it will have to wait for another time. As I’ve mentioned, this trip was planned as a Crete/Dodecanese journey and I just don’t want to go that far off my initial course. I know I’ll come to Greece again at some point and then I’ll hit all the places in other parts of the country I’d like to go. As I also mentioned before, I do reserve the right to change my mind. So nothing as of yet is written in stone.

Katikins and Me

2011-06-26T12:53:00.000-07:00

My old friend Katie flew in from Rome to hang out for me for a few days, so I haven't been writing much (I was far to busy, happily so, hanging out with her). Until the next diary post here are some photos to keep things rolling. The first four are taken in Hania. The following two are us on the boat to Sougia. The next two are us at an old WWII gune in Sougia. The finally pictures were taken today when we visited the Minoan site of Knossos.

Hania-Katie Express

2011-06-23T00:41:00.000-07:00

Thursday, June 23, 2011—Paleohora, Crete, Greece

It’s about nine-thirty in the morning and the wind’s still blasting thru Paleohora. I’m sitting in the courtyard/garden of the place I’m sating at relatively sheltered from it all—the occasional swirling mass of detached leaves and flower petals coming at me is all I have to worry about.

Right now I’m mostly killing time, waiting until I catch the noon bus to Hania, where I’ll meet Katie around eight-thirty tonight. I’ve had a pretty quiet twenty-four hours, actually. Like I mentioned in my last entry, the wind pretty much killed my options yesterday and last night I was feeling a bit worn out, like I needed a night to myself where I did very little. So around seven I went down to the market and got some stuff for dinner, came back here and ate, and then just lay around my room reading The Sheep Look Up, a classic Sci-Fi novel from the early seventies written by John Brunner—good stuff. So that’s where I’m at …

Feeling a little lethargic at the moment. I’m also feeling like much of the momentum of this trip has been lost. The wind of course has been scuttling my plans left and right and has forced me to hang out in places I’m kind of thru with. Also my left ankle has started giving me trouble. I injured it years ago and sometimes it just locks up. I guess all the hiking I’ve done over the last couple of weeks plus has taken its toll. For the moment my ankle is telling me that it’s done …

Katie should infuse some life into things, though. Also, by the time she heads out I’ll be ready to power thru the last of my Crete itinerary and move on to other islands—and new adventures always get the juices flowing …

Speaking of other islands, I’m already rethinking my plans for Santorini. The basic idea behind this trip is that it would be an exploration of Crete and to Dodecanese. By going off this plan I think I might find myself becoming a bit scattered in purpose. Plus as I read about Cyclades islands besides Santorini I’m having trouble finding much that really calls to me; I find mostly crowds and high costs, which is not what I’m looking for at all. So I think I’ll go back to my old plan and head over to Rhodes once I’m done here. I think Santorini might have to wait for a future trip. I think it will survive without me …

We'll see, though. I'm going back and forth on a lot of things right now and it wouldn't surprise me if Santorini ends up on the table once again ...

Stuck Inside of Paleohora with the Sougia Blues Again

2011-06-22T02:32:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, June 22, 2011—Paleohora, Crete, Greece

Learning a little something about Crete’s south shore: the wind really has a lot of say in things down here. Yet again it has kept me from heading to where I want to go. I woke up early this morning to get ready to head out to Sougia and the wind was blasting. So no boats to Sougia from here today, or to anywhere else. I could have taken a bus there, but I couldn’t see much point in that. It’s so windy that going to the beach and the like is not really much of an option—and beaching it is pretty much all there is to do in Sougia. So all I’d be doing would be trading sitting inside here for sitting inside there, while adding the hassle of moving—bah!

Heading up to Hania tomorrow to meet up with Katie. Hoping the wind doesn’t fuck up her short time here in Crete.

I have decided to alter my plans a bit. Everybody I run into—EVERYBODY—keeps telling me that I must go to Santorini. Even though it’s touristy and expensive it’s supposed to be so spectacular that those drawbacks are canceled out. Santorini is part of the Cyclades group of islands, which in general are more expensive and visited than other Greek islands. Because of this, I feel it’s better to go there before going to the Dodecanese, which were to be my next stop, so I can hit these costly and crowded islands earlier in the season when things are more reasonable on both accounts.

So, once I’m done with Crete, instead of heading to its eastern port of Sitia to catch a boat to Rhodes, I’ll be heading north to Iraklio (Crete’s biggest City and I think the third largest City in Greece) to catch one to Santorini. From there I’ll head north thru the Cyclades (which islands in this group other than Santorini I'm going to visit I'm still figuring out) and then over to the northern Dodecanese. I’ll then filter down thru these islands to Rhodes and then from there back to Crete, thru Sitia.

I’ll probably spend the rest of the day researching these changes, as it’s too windy to do much else.

Paleohora--Round 2

2011-06-22T02:28:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, June 20, 2011—Paleohora, Crete, Greece

Finally got in from Gavdos. After two days of strong, non-stop wind I woke up this morning and things were calm as could be. Now I’m back in Paleohora, just for the day—tomorrow I head down the coast just a little ways to Sougia, a tiny beach hamlet. I was planning on spending a couple days in Sougia but getting stuck in Gavdos has altered my plans a bit, because I know need to be in Hania in just a couple of days to meet Katie. No biggie. If I like Sougia and feel I need to spend more time there maybe Katie and I will head there. Or maybe I’ll come back on my own after she leaves. Time and space are very elastic for me at the moment …

Not much else to report. I’m relaxing at Anyndri Beach, after hitting the internet café when I first got into town. Now I’m eating at Third Eye, a hippy-vegetarian place, which has become my favorite restaurant here in Paleohora. Later I’m going out with my Dutch friends from Paleohora. Then sleep and onward to Sougia …

Oh Windy Gavdos, Windy, Windy

2011-06-22T02:26:00.000-07:00

Monday, June 20, 2011—Gavdos Island, Crete, Greece

Wind continues. No boat this morning. Therefore I’m still here in Gavdos. Though it seems to be blowing as hard as the previous couple days, I’ve been told that there will definitely be a boat heading out at 9:00 AM. I really hope this is true. I am officially ready to move on.

Because of a combination of laziness, fatigue, and the fact that the wind is making everything outside a bit difficult and unpleasant, I just hung around the room the first half of the day, putting journal entries onto my netbook and then reading a bit. Around one-thirty I began to get restless, so I decided to head over to a beach just past Korfos, just to check it out. It turned out to be a pretty sad place, filled with trash, plastic bottles and other plastic items mostly, along with things such a car parts(!). Though it involved a bit of tricky coastal rock-hopping to get there, the trip out didn’t really take me all that long. Since it was still fairly early I decided to head over to beautiful Agios Ioannis Beach to get the trashy beach out of my mind, so to speak, and also to cool off with a swim. After getting back from there I showered and crashed for a couple of hours.

And that was my day. Like I said, I’m more than ready to leave here; I’m out of things I want to do, other than thang out at the beach, and the wind is taking a lot of the fun out of that.

Not much else to report. My anxiety attacks have turned into short, swooning depressions. A lot of tough, weird stuff is going thru my mind at times. The natural outcome of finally getting off the crazy treadmill of endless work and finally having time to think about things. I don’t want to emphasize these moments, though—they’re a minor component of something that is overall quite positive, quite wonderful.

Gavdos Photos

2011-06-21T02:22:00.001-07:00

Gavdos Photos. All pretty self explanitory. Beaches, where I stayed, ate, hiked, etc.

Gavdos Entries

2011-06-21T02:13:00.000-07:00

Publication Note: Up until now i've been putting each diary entry into its own post. Since I haven't published anything since leaving for Gavdos, I thought it might be best and easier to put my Gavdos entries into one post. I think I have one more Gavdos piece sitting in a notebook. That'll be my next post.

--R.W. Paleohora, Crete, Greece

Thursday, June 17, Gavdos Island, Crete, Greece

Arrived at Gavdos Island about two this afternoon (it’s a little before eight now). I’ve been told that this place was out there, that it was Greece’s last stop, both figuratively and literally (the next landfall is North Africa). This has turned out to be the case: I really do have the feeling of being at the edge of the Greek world.

First off, there are very few people here. Just a few settlements that the term “ramshackle” largely covers. I’m staying at a place on the northwestern shore called Sarafinika Beach (most of the settlement is somewhere around here—the south shore is mostly high cliffs), which is just a collection of humble guesthouses and tavernas (Greek for little restaurants). There are people camping in tents on the beach and the in surrounding hills, so it’s hard to figure out how many travelers are here, but I’d be surprised if we altogether turned out to be more than twenty-five. I’m staying in a guesthouse, which is only 15 euros a night—cheap!). I can’t yet tell if anyone is staying there with me.

Today I hiked around the beach area and then went for a swim, which was really nice. The warm water (noticeably warmer than mainland Crete) never got more than about chest high, even as far as about forty yards out. Underneath me was a blanket of rippling white sand. From one end of its crescent to the other the beach is half a mile long. At most there were eight or nine people sharing this strip of sand with me. I get the feeling that this is what all of southern Crete was like when it was first discovered by young travelers (hippies—problematic term: it says far too much and far too little at the same time) back in the 1960s.

I’m not sure how long I’ll be here. Another day for sure. Perhaps as many as another three. Other than retrenching I’m not sure what I want from this place. Nothing except to just be for a while?

Tomorrow I think I’m going to rent a bike and explore the island a bit, track down a few of the far flung beaches that the travel books rave about (biking sounds really nice since my feet are too blistered to do any even halfway serious hiking). If I like what I find I’ll stay a bit. If I don’t I won’t. Tonight? Dinner while watching the sunset. After that I’ll probably read some, turn in early. I’m running out of places I want to see in Crete. I’ll probably be ready to leave before the month’s out. I might start thinking about what that might mean as well …

Friday, June 17, 2011—Gavdos Island, Crete, Greece

Day two in Gavdos. This morning I hiked to Korfas beach on the north/sort of northeast side of the island. It’s nice enough there but very quiet. The beach is pretty good, a lot like a considerably smaller version of Sarafiniko, where I’m staying. When I was coming over on the boat the owner of one of the guesthouses over there tried to talk me into staying at his place. I’m glad I didn’t. Korfas is a touch too isolated for me—it has two little guesthouses/tavernas (there are a couple more places in Metochia (spelling?), the settment a bit above it) and nothing else at all. I think I would have felt a bit trapped there.

Later I hiked the other direction to Agios Ioannis Beach. It turned out to be a really nice, a lot like Sarafiniko but with better, less rocky sand. Other than one little café there’s no “civilization” there (though there appears to be some guesthouses being build just up the road). What it does have is a bunch of people camping out in tents, on the higher portions of the sand and in the shady spots between the trees that dot the hill behind the beach. The campers seem to be a fairly mixed group, but the general vibe is kind of post hippy—the dreadlock crowd. I ended up spending almost four hours there sunning (I’m really burned, especially on my ass—ouch!), reading, and doing quite a bit of swimming; it’s as good as swimming beach as Sarafiniko, maybe a touch better. I have my tent with me and I thought of joining the tent town there for a day or two. But I’m not quite yet feeling the camping thing here yet. That may change, though—that kind of freedom is quite appealing, I must admit.

This does beg this question, though—if I don’t camp here where will I camp? t would be hard to find a better place. If the camping thing isn’t happening I really should ditch my tent. If I do that the weight of my pack will fall thru the floor, which means that once back on the mainland I can do some E-4 hiking without having to backtrack because I had to leave my main pack behind. Now I don’t mind losing the tent—it’s getting a bit on the old side and I’ve been thinking of upgrading for a while. What’s making me hesitate is that I might want it down the road. I mean, I still have over a month and a half here and my attitude or circumstances could change. Tough decision.

Not sure what my next move is. I’m enjoying this place, but I’m getting the feeling that I’ve had the Gavdos experience. Plus other places are calling me (I have a lot of Greece to see). The boat back to Paleohora leaves both tomorrow and the next day at 2:00 PM. I’ll be on one of them—the question is which one.

Saturday, June 18, 2011—Gavdos Island, Crete, Greece

Exhausted. Almost to the point where I can’t write. Attempted to hike to a couple of deserted beaches on the southwest tip of the island. The beaches looked spectacular. I say “looked” because I never actually made it down to them. Let me explain.

I was sitting around this morning after breakfast talking to the Austrian woman who runs the place I’m staying at. I was planning on leaving today, but the boat turns out to have left at nine in the morning, not two in the afternoon. I was asking her advice as to something different to do to fill up my day. She suggested the hike to the northwest shore—she told me that the beaches were beautiful there and almost always empty. I now understand why they’re almost always empty.

She made it sound like a very doable hike, just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from where I'm satying. As it turned out, it took me nearly three-and-a-half hours of pretty-tough, hot, often uphill walking just to get to the trail head. From the top of the trail I could see both beaches. I guessed that the closest was at least an hour away. I was pretty bummed: this meant that once down there I’d only have time for a quick swim if I wanted to be sure of having enough daylight to get home (this place is dark as hell at night, and even with my Petzl light, which I had with me, traipsing home at night would be a bitch). It didn’t take me long to figure out that my calculation was way off, that the relative nearness of the first beach was an optical illusion. After maybe twenty minutes on the steep, twisty, rocky trail I realized that I was still at least a couple of hours of hard hiking from my goal—for all I could tell it might take considerably longer.

So I abandoned the hike. I really didn’t have much of a choice. There was no way I could make it to the beach and still get back to Sarafiniko before it got dark. There were other problems as well. Not expecting anything like the hike I found myself facing, I didn’t have enough water with me (the perennial Greece problem, I’m finding). I was also wearing the wrong shoes. I thought that I’d be on roads pretty much the whole way, so I just wore my Tevas, which meant I was slipping all over the trail and really punishing my ankles and Achilles tendons.

As I was taking the trail down I ran into a group of young Italians who had no clue what they were doing. They had driven to the trail head, thinking, like I had, that it would be an easy walk down. The best equipped of them had tennis shoes. Two of the girls in the group were just wearing cheap plastic flip-flops, the kind you buy in the tourist shops on mainland Crete. Before running into me they had attempted to go straight down the gorge, which looked like a freakin’ mini Grand Canyon. I got them straightened out and on the proper trail, sent them on their way, and hoped for the best for them. By the time I’d made it back up to the trail head and saw their car I’d pretty much decided to alert the police to their situation on my back to Sarafiniko (going to the police station would have meant only a minor detour for me). However, about an hour later they passed me in their car, having wisely given up their beach day.

So my day ended up being eight-plus hours of hiking with my goal unattained. Still I did pass thru some interesting and beautiful scenery. I’m also proud of myself for withstanding yet another hot, long-ass Mediterranean hike. If nothing else this place is certainly toughening me up physically …

After my hike I went for a swim here at Sarafiniko to cool off, took a shower, and then collapsed for an hour or so. Now I’m at dinner, nursing a bottle of Retsina and hoping I can stay awake long enough to finish my meal.

A Note on Language:

Really wishing I could speak more Greek. The people here seem quite open. I get the feeling I could really be accepted, that I could make some good friends if it weren’t for the language barrier. In recent years, as I gone deeply into my writing, I’m realizing how important communication is to me—deep communication: it opens up world, it is worlds. I’m beginning to understand that I’ve given myself do over to my own language that I’ve neglected others. I wonder if I’m too old to change this. Can a man in his forties really learn Greek? Is that something I really want to do?

Sunday, June 19, 2011—Gavdos, Island, Crete, Greece

Yep, I’m still in Gavdos. I’m really beginning to love many things about this place, but that’s not why I’m still here. I was supposed to leave on the 9:00 AM boat this morning, but last night the wind really started kicking up and when I got to the dock today I found out that the captain had called the trip off, deeming the crossing back over to mainland Crete to be too dangerous in such weather. I will make another attempt to leave tomorrow.

I was still zonked out from my hike (still am a bit actually), so I spent most of the day lounging around at Agios Ioannis Beach, half the time on the hill backing the beach in the shade of a juniper tree. I did make a little hike later in the afternoon, around the point that marks off the northwest end of the beach. just to see what I’d find. This involved taking a tricky little trail that ran along the side of the steep hill that made up the point. This trail later gave way to some sand dune/juniper forested areas. What I found around the point was pretty much what I’d left behind, except that the beaches on this side of things were smaller and much rockier. Not surprisingly, there were a lot fewer people there as well, fewer of the tent-campers, post-hippies I’ve discussed in a previous diary entry. I did run into some squatter’s residences, though, that were a lot more elaborate than what I’ve seen on other parts of the island, driftwood, stone, and cloth houses, essentially, taking on in a couple cases Swiss Family Robinson proportions. One even had makeshift docking facilities!

Like I’ve said, I have my tent with me, and today a part of me really wanted to pull up stakes here in Sarafiniko and join these campers. There are a couple of things that are holding me back (other than, as I’ve discussed, I’m just not fully feeling the camping thing as of yet). First off, it seems to be a very local crowd: young Greeks seem to make up the vast majority of these squatter’s camps. It’s also a couple’s scene, to a significant degree; so many of the tents seem to be housing a Noah’s Ark thang. The Greek stuff is what’s really holding me back, though: I really feel that I would be intruding on something that isn’t quite mine. If they were English speaking people I’d probably be there. The language issue strikes again …

Suddenly I’m feeling REALLY tired—my hikes of the last two days, way too much sun, and the red wine I’m sipping with dinner are no doubt combining to take me down. This sucks because there’s so much more I‘d like to write about—the funky taverna I’ve been eating in the last three nights, the nice older Dutch couple I’ve been hanging out with a bit. But all that’s going to have to wait until I’m more with it.

Random Notes:

Most of the locals seem to smoke here, even to a greater exent than on mainland Crete. I’m feeling conspicuously healthy.

The wind has died down some, but it’s still blowing quite hard. Things are looking very iffy for leaving tomorrow.

Elafonisi Blues Partially Cured

2011-06-21T01:55:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, June 16, 2011—Paleohora, Crete, Greece

Took a day-trip today to Elafonisi, on the southwest part of the island. Somewhat strange experience. My first reaction was to be a bit pissed off. The place is not only beautiful but unique, at least in regards to anything I’ve seen here on Crete. It’s a wide crescent of white sand laced with these fascinating spots and bands of pink sand (what’s causing this I do not know). Beyond this, what makes the place unusual is the way it shelves up. So far everywhere else I’ve been on the Cretan coast there’s a huge drop off not too many feet from the shore; the island’s basically a mountain range sticking out of the sea, so this underwater geography makes sense. Elafonisi, though is essentially an inlet where the water ranges from ankle to about chest high.

The reason I got pissed off upon first arriving there is because of what has been done to this rare and beautiful place. Virtually the entire main beach (and it’s a biggie) is covered with chaises and umbrellas for rent—seven euros a set! Using these were hordes of tourists—the unadventurous go-where-they’re-told-to kind of tourists that really bug me. I heard, though, that if you waded across the shallow lagoon to the narrow peninsula across the way you could largely escape the maddening crowds and have yourself a choice of semi-secluded inlets that you’d have to share with only a relative handful of people. This turned out to be the case. To cut to the chase, I discovered a nice little curve of sand with only a handful of people on it (far more interesting people it seemed than the one’s I’d left behind with their seven-euro beach furniture) and had a lovely day sunning, swimming in a beautiful little crystal-clear inlet, reading, and generally relaxing.

So the trip turned out to be worth the hassle of getting there (a fifty-odd minute boat ride). I think I’d been disappointed if I’d decided beforehand to make it an overnighter, though. The place, despite its beauty, is simply too overwhelmed with tourists. There comes a point where when numbers get too high people stop being people and become a swarm. Elafonisi was pushing a little too hard in the latter direction for my tastes.

I’ve decided to change my plans slightly. I’ve decided to head down to Gavdos, this island about 32 km south of Paleohora (I think I made a mistake and said it was 50 km in a previous post). As I may have mentioned in previous entries, Gavdos is supposed to be Crete’s ultimate chill-out zone: there’s nothing to do there but hang out on the nearly empty beaches, hike, read, think, and dream. I think I need a place like that right now—I need to pull back a little bit and reevaluate what I’m doing here.

I’m on day twelve here in Greece and thus far this trip is at odds with itself. What I mean by this is that heading into Greece I had several things I wanted to have happen. Some of these things are going down in force. Other important pieces of the puzzle, though, are absent all together.

First thing on the agenda was to simply unwind, really come down from years of stress and overwork. Though it’s early in the game, I think I can feel myself slowing down; my mind is being less crazy and my body’s (stress induced?) ailments are falling away. Another thing I wanted to do was to just see Greece, which has been a dream of mine for over two decades. That’s obviously happening. Another part of what I wanted from this trip is an uptick in my relations with my fellow humans. Between my teaching schedule and the time it’s taken me to write the first two Backwater books, in regards to my contact with other people, my life has become very narrow—dangerously so: my ability to relate to and deal with others has dropped thru the floor. All of this is a long way of saying that I hoped to begin reconnecting thru this trip. This has not yet come close to happening—and this is a big problem.

Why is this case? Well, largely I think because I have inadvertently picked a terrible place to begin rejoining the human race.

Frankly I’m amazed at what I’ve found here, in regards to the mix of people, or lack therefore of. One of my biggest fears concerning this trip, given that I’ve been off the road in any serious way for such a long time, was that I would now be out of place, that as I backpacked my way thru the Greek Islands I might be somewhat ridiculous, an older guy surrounded by younger people and not fitting in at all. As it turns out I’m having different problems altogether. Far from being the old guy out I’m practically the only guy in! What I mean is that this place, so far, seems to feature very few of the backpacker persuasion.

It’s to the point that I feel as if I’m the last of my subspecies, Homo sapiens backpackerensis. Where are the adventurous and interesting people I came to know and love on my previous trips? I’ve been finding their absence confusing and extremely disappointing. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking on the subject, though, and I do think I’ve figured at least a few things out. I think economics could have something to do with it. Maybe with the world-wide recession most of the jam-econo types such as me have been forced off the road. More likely, as I’ve mentioned, the situation has more to do with where I am.

I’m now realizing something that I probably should have figured out going in. For Americans like me, especially those of us coming all the way from California, Greece is a faraway exotic land; for me it’s still the home of Zeus, Homer, Hesiod, etc. For most Europeans, though, it’s just flight away and a relatively inexpensive holiday in the sun—for them Greece is not an exotic adventure but just a place to unwind; it’s the equivalent of a Californian making the hop over to Hawaii or down to Mexico for a week.

As I’ve been figuring this out I’ve also began to realize that most of the interesting Europeans I’ve known in the past, the more friendly, adventurous ones, I’ve met outside of Europe. In other words, people who are not on “vacation,” but are on the road. My reality so far here, as I’ve discussed here and there in earlier diary entries, is that I’m surrounded by people who simply don’t interest me all that much and who probably find me a bit unfathomable. There are very few people here for me to play with, in other words …

Because of this I’ve had some very down moments come over me. Still, I’m hopeful. I mean, it’s a big country and I can’t be the only one in my situation—at some point I’m sure I will find my fellow weirdoes. Until then I guess I just have to be content with the amazing and wonderfully harsh physical beauty of this place and remember that whatever problems and misgivings I’m having that I’m lucky to be here—lucky indeed.

Posting Note

2011-06-16T00:37:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm heading down to Gavdos, an island about 50 KM south of Crete. It's supposedly pretty backwoods. So I might be out of internet range for three or four days. So there will probably be a post drought here, but then a whole bunch of stuff going up at once.

Take care everybody. Oh yeah, get well, Kevin.

Elafonisi

2011-06-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from the beach at Elafonisi on Crete's southwest shore. I'll explain more about this place in the next diary post.

2011-06-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

The top picture is Homestead Anonymous,where I'm staying here Paleohora. The rest are picture I took on the E-4 trail to Limmos.

Greatings from Paleohora--Hiking the E-4 to Limmos

2011-06-15T08:36:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, June 14, 2011—Paleohora, Crete, Greece

Arrived here in Paleohora almost forty-eight hours ago, taking the bus down from Hania. The town is pleasant, a little beachside hub, a kind of gateway to Crete’s southern coast. It’s also pretty much like most of the beachside areas I’ve been in: plenty of restaurants and hotels/guesthouses to cater to the travelers and not all that much else. The coast surrounding the town is spectacular, though, which is the real reason why I’m here.

Yesterday I explored the coast in a huge way by going on one of the gnarliest hikes of my life. I took the E-4 trail (which starts in Portugal and picks up again here in Crete) along the coast to see an archaeological site called Limmos, which has materials dating back to Minoan times. The hike out to the site took about four hours—and they were some of the best and hardest four hours of my life. The trail (I feel like putting that word into quotes) a challenging series of ascents, descents switchbacks meandering thru the scrubby hills, ridgelines, and cliffs that make up this part of the coast. Below me the whole way was the blue-green Libyan Sea lapping and occasionally slapping into all many of little rocky inlets, coves, and whatnot. Very dreamlike, at times magical.

Though beautiful, this trail is also extremely difficult going by the time it hits the coast east of Paleohora. Hot, rocky, steep, and unrelenting might be the best series of words to describe it. Four hours on this devil’s staircase completely kicked my ass—and I still had four hours more time on it heading home! On the way back I got so hot (dangerously so—I felt the medical need to lower my body temperature.) that I hiked down to a tiny patch of beach and took a much needed dip into the surprisingly cool waters of this part of the Mediterranean. When I was ready to leave I found that my feet had become so swollen and blistered that I could barely get them back in my hiking boots. I was still a couple hours at this point and the rest of my hike home turned out to be a truly painful slog. Despite the fact that I wanted to get home, heat and fatigue forced me to make another stop, at Andry Beach, which is about forty-five minutes out of Paleohora. There I slammed a 500 ml Mythos beer at the snack stand (one of the most deserved beers of my life) and then went for a swim. Later I had the same problems before only worse when I tried to put back on my boots, but I finally hobbled home to Paleohora at 7:00 PM—after leaving at 9:15 AM! (That’s a lot of ridgeline hiking and sun, people.)

This morning I could barely walk. My ankles hurt. My knees hurt. My little toes on each foot are now little more than blisters and there’s a huge blister on my left big toe as well. From the knees down, I’m a mess, in other words.

Still I wouldn’t change a thing. The hike was so staggeringly beautiful that it was worth it. I’m also glad I did it just for the physical challenge of it (I didn’t like all the wimpy pronouncements I’ve been making about the heat, distance, and terrain in my recent diary entries). I feel that I am now over the hump, as far as hiking Crete goes, that I can handle pretty much whatever this place throws at me. It feels good to know that I can still kick as on the trail if I have to …

As for Limmos, the archaeological site I went to see … Meh … Another poorly kept up up under-interpreted site. Worth the hike mainly because the hike to it was worth the hike.

Today, not surprisingly, is a recovery and relaxation day. This morning I went to the market and then spent an hour and a half in an internet café down the street from where I’m staying uploading dairy entries and photos (I still couldn’t get the videos to go up, though). Now I’m back at Andry Beach lying in the sun and writing. Add reading and swimming to what I’m doing now and that will be my day. I really couldn’t do much else even if I wanted to, which I do not—I’m way too blown out in every way from yesterday’s hike (just making it here from town was a rough go).

Tomorrow I’m off on a daytrip to Elafonisi, this reputedly amazing beach area on the southwest coast of the island I’ve been trying to get to for a while now. After that I don’t know. I’d like to head out to Gavdos, an Island about 50KM to the south of here, but the next boat out isn’t till Saturday. I’ll probably start further explorations of the coast east of here—but by ferry, not on foot! I’m not sure if I want to relocate to any of these places or just do day trips from Paleohora. I’ve got a nice inexpensive room here I don’t want to give up and daytrips from this location are, for the most part, totally doable.

The internet café I went to today was run by a nice English woman and we got into an interesting conversation. She’s confirmed my suspicions that tourism is way down this summer. She etsimates that there are only a third of the people that would typically be here this time of year. That’s a huge hit. Thank you Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George Bush, Barrack Obama and all the other un-democratic crony capitalist Wall Street ass-licking faith-based bought-and-sold power scum bags for ruining the world, for turning everything into one giant shell game that has collaped upon us all. Fuck you, you fucking fuckers …

Falasarna Pictures

2011-06-14T01:05:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from Falasarna. The first is where I stayed and the second my room (pre spiders). Then there are some coastline shots mixed with some of the scanty ruins of ancient Falasarna.

More Kissamos

2011-06-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

Some more Kissomos stuff. The first pitcure was in the lobby of the Argo hotel. Werird and a little scary. It's easy to forget how bloody Greece's history has been over the last couple hundred years--wars of independence with Turkey, civil wars, Nazi invasion, etc. I think this picture captures that side of this place. The next is the view from the lobby of the Argo. The thrid is just the center of Kissamos. Yes, Greece has traffic too.

Some Pictures: Kissamos Region Mostly

2011-06-14T00:47:00.000-07:00

Just some random images from Kissmos mostly. The first is the bus stop in Kolymbari. The building is Argo, the hotel i stayed in in Kissmos. The handsome blonde guy on the trail is me.