An Athens inside
My socks had been cotton bayous in my tired shoes since leaving the hotel and I wanted nothing more than to lay down and read a book. But if it might be your only day in Athens, you have to walk up to the Acropolis. So I did.
Up stone streets where musicians played and babies sang, crowds of Greeks and visitors sweating in the same language, and onto the slopes of that historic place. Not yet to the big names, I came across a small church. Small. Too small to show up on any google map I can find.
Inside was cool and calm. Pillars and arches, some older than others, history’s refurbishment, and a few paintings whose holy figures have mattered much to many over the centuries.
I’m not much for dogma, and organized religion sometimes strikes me as distractions from any core message they purport to contain, but this place felt good, cool on a hot day, calm in a roiled month. I took a photo, then just relaxed to breathe the stillness within stone walls. It was just what I needed.
And two tourists showed up, overly loud American conversation, clicking cell phone photos as they scanned for anything worth instagramming. Smacks of chewing gum and “OMG Sarah” clashed off the corners that had been quiet and they barged through behind the altar wall without any pause for deference or thought.
Bustled around, blabbered and dithered, then went on their youthful way. The lithic peace came back immediately. It hadn’t left. The calm of a longer perspective was there the whole time, no matter what jangling discordance of the moment intruded.
That’s how I’m trying to hold my soul today, as an Attorney General perjures himself and his party doesn’t seem to mind, as a sinister foreign plot contaminates my government, who receives it with open arms, and as common sense and human decency seem inadmissible to the court of public opinion.
They’ll probably bustle right back out again. In the meantime, I care, but I have within me a geologic permanence, as far as such things as stone can go. Quiet corridors of time that have echoed with centuries of errors and misfortune but come out sacred anyway.
Plus it’s Friday and life is good. Enjoy your weekends, my friends!
Enjoying visitors from overseas and trying not to watch the news.
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You’re in Athens now? Wonderful! I hope you really enjoy…I’m glad you are taking your moments. That’s the best part. 🙂
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I wish! This was actually a memory from last summer, but I’ll take the mental vacation any day! So nice to carry special places around inside ourselves. Do any of your come to mind?
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Ireland! Where I am now. 🙂 Hence my super late reply (sorry!!). I’m in the middle of an overly ambitious solo travel adventure. Never a dull moment!! I hope you get back to Athens soon…
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I know Shakespeare’s words in Macbeth have been dreadfully overused, but somehow in these Trump times, I keep thinking of them: “To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” It seems apt, no?
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Apt indeed. And rather puts to shame the pop culture movie quote that came to my mind a minute ago! Shakespeare…and Russel Crowe. Peers? Perhaps not. 😉
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Sometimes when I enter those old churches I’m tempted to convert. Feels so spiritual and soulful to me. But then i remember the dogma…
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Indeed. It can be hard to separate the relics of a time from the actions that were anchored there. But with as full an understanding as we can get, we can hopefully sift out the Beautiful and meaningful and carry that forward, while working to leave the ugliness behind.
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