Bit by bit

Sad, I am; soft, I am pensive, quiet I am.  Never imagined the adjustment period and process would be as protracted or as dramatic as they have been.  Guess I must be clinging a little, changing, some. 

Here is a magnificent island, one of the largest in Greece, in the northeastern Aegean; you can see the trees on Turkey's west coast on a clear day, and pretend to try to swim to it on an ambitious one, until the cool deep waters get a little too dark, too unknown, and you retreat to the safety of the hot-pebbled shore, vowing to go a little further, a little deeper next time.  But then you don’t come back for many years and the unfathomable depths seem a little deeper, a little darker and the shore a little brighter, a little safer each time.  So maybe you don’t venture out to the deep, or can’t swim as far or as fast as you once did, by the time you do. 

Staying with my father’s sister, Aunt Maro, about five minutes from the house my dad shares with my stepmother and her mother, next door to another aunt who dotes on me and cries at me almost every time she sees me- which is about three times a day.  They are all feeding me like I have not eaten in years.  Actually, many of the things I am being fed, I have not eaten in years.  Sometimes it feels like I have not eaten in years.  Yesterday, I shouted a gleeful “Hiyee!” to a sightseeing red and yellow choochoo train-full of kids and parents.  No-one responded or waved back.

Mysore as I knew it:
Wake up at 3:30 a.m., 3:50 if Angrydrunkman across the way kept the neighborhood up last night with his ranting [“chlaamaa pariyallla pushtramalva- PHTOOO!!”, most frequently with trousers floating somewhere around his ankles].  Have coffee while water in bucket heats; take bath, dress, enjoy ride to shala for 4:45 practice (shalaclock is fifteen minutes late).  After practice, if Sharath and Guruji are still teaching, hang out outside and watch and absorb and learn.  Then coconut, or not, and shower/change/do housework, or not.  Breakfast around 8, 9, for half an hour or two hours.  Nap or housework Sutras class at 11 with Jai Shree in town.  Big lunch, typically a thali meal with a little bit of everything- flatbreads and rice and two or three kinds of veggie stews or curries and a couple of veggie/lentil broths.  Nap or homework or reading or driving around, until 4:45 when I have class at the shala three days a week for chanting and Sanskrit.  Otherwise I will “do” email or hang out at home or drive around or visit with friends or watch the sky.  Dinner is usually a light meal, rava idli with a lot of lemon juice and a mango lassi if I am hungry and it is early, or some fruit and milk or biscuits or nuts and dates.  Tina’s is not serving dinners anymore until further notice, so it is usually Green Leaf or Gokul Chats or home. Neighborhood noise levels allowing, bedtime is sometime between 8 and 10. 

Chios as I once knew it:
Wake-up is around 11- give or take, usually give, a couple of hours.  Coffee either at home or at one of the dozens of cafes dotting the port, a few minutes down the hill.  Usually home, since it is one of the few occasions to actually spend time with the family.  Breakfast is usually not much, maybe a cheesepie or some cookies.  Beach time is shortly thereafter, or whenever I’ve sufficiently recovered to face the daylight.  At the beach, sit at one of several cafes dotting the shore or get to know my beach towel really well as I sink my face in it.  Slowly, friends join in, and by 3 or 4 we have enough for a game of beach volleyball.  By 4 or 5, we also have enough to head up to the café and start on the beers.  Until twilight, which nowadays is after 8.  Dinner follows, either with the crew at a taverna- usually a little bit of everything— bread, fish, meat, cheese, spreads, salads, more bread.  And booze; ouzo or beer are the players now.  Home for a nap and maybe some time with the family, and then I will meet up with the gang after midnight.  We will drink and shout over music and go from café to bar to outdoor club until 3 or 4 in the morning.  Often, after all that drinking, a heavy meal is called for before bedtime, so we go to “Bel Air” on the port for soups and pasta.  Once in a while, we will take off in a few cars and go swimming instead, coming home still damp at 5 or 6 or later. 

I cannot partake, at the moment.  Want to, but am biding my time a little, shifting my hours a lot.  Getting used to doing stuff after 6pm- yesterday I went to a beach at 5, and wondered that so many people were just getting started.  Here, women spill out of  unimaginably tight and short and sheer clothes and straddle motorbikes in minis and swear and drape their limbs over their men and smoke ostentatiously and drink feverishly.  Here, I can have salads and cheese and fruit and wine [and cheese!] and wear tanktops and short skirts as I wean myself of covering up shoulders and legs, bit by bit.  Here, I can go to beach and talk to daddyZym and kiss my aunt and watch the light dancing on the water. 

Here, too, the fattened moon and dazzling Venus play their elaborate flirting games in skies of shades without names and stars without number.  Here, too, the household’s eldest women do the morning prayers and tend to the household deity.    Here, too, the popular boys have big bikes and many get things done on their colorful Scooties.  Here, too, people are big of heart and warm of spirit, short in word and long in gesture and hospitable and endlessly concerned with whether you ate and further fascinated to hear what you ate and greet you with “had your lunch/breakfast/dinner?”- every day.  Here, too, most traditional households boast at least one Afro’d basil (“vassilikos”, in India: “tulsi”).  Like the jasmine that also grows here in abundance, it smells very much the same although it looks quite different.  So many things are fundamentally the same, here, even though they appear a little different.  I am just looking for those similarities and trying to find where the bridges are hidden.