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Published: March 28th 2007
I'm writing this entry just a few hours before I get onto an airplane for that last stretch of travel which ends my trip. I'm in Greece and I've had an amazing day with my parents and some long-lost, newly-discovered cousins. I'm painfully missing Chelly and we'll have thousands more miles between us soon. In short, there is a lot going on inside me as I write this last live blog from the road.
The trip to Greece was very different than any of the other country-visits I've had in the last six months. It was a family trip--for one thing--with Mom and Dad as companions, inspirations, and burdens. It was a world-shaking voyage into my ancestry. It was a vivid journey into the thoroughly-studied but never physically experienced world of my history books and favorite myths. It was also an emotional, anxiety-filled experience of unwanted seperation. It was the end of these travels and every day weighed heavier and heavier with the dread and anticipation of home. The delineation between all the different worlds of Greece's past and
my present was almost palpable.
Bulls and axes Crete is the home of the farthest back ancestors
that anyone in my extended family could ever hope to remember in oral tradition or could possibly trace in fact. We spent nearly a week there, exploring old-timey tourist towns, mountain goat-herder villages, and ancient ruins.
Before Crete was a part of modern Greece, it was a short-lived independent Republic barely wrenched from the grasp of the Ottoman Turks. Before that, it was a conquest of the Venetian crusader knights who'd dissolved the Byzantine Empire that Crete was formerly a subject of. Byzantine rule was preceeded by the Eastern Empire in the breakdown of the Roman Empire. Before the Romans, there were classical Greeks (though Alexander the Great never officially ruled there). Before them, Myceneans from the mainland.
Before that first influx of mainland Greeks came with Mycenean conquest, there were the Eteocretans ("true Cretans"). It took a long time for them all to die, but there haven't been any of them for a couple thousand years. Their most famous culture was the one dubbed "Minoan". This was the first major civilization in the European continent. They were Europe's first palace-builders, first city-builders, first major agriculturalists, first fine artists, first sea-traders, etc. And from what I've learned, they
probably came out of North Africa or Asia Minor--not out of Europe.
The ancient Minoan sites are Crete's most famous and there are several of them on the island (as well as on the island of Santorini). They were first discovered in modern times by a Cretan, but his excavations were quickly taken over by a crew from Oxford led by Sir Arthur Evans. His crew had an agenda, to prove that this great Minoan civilization--the oldest discovered in Europe--was descended from the North-Central European, Germanic, Aryan tribe: the same people who were seen to be at the core of civilizations in Persia and Northern India. Where they didn't find evidence, they created it, rebuilding structures and re-assembling frescoes with little regard for real science.
Now most of the Minoan sites have been so muddled and fiddled with that the real job of archeology and anthropology is very difficult to accomplish. The worst part is that Evans' conclusions dominate the mainstream, filling libraries and minds and tour guides' mouths with pseudo-science b.s. We know that they used bull's horns and double-headed axes as sacred symbols. We know they were the originators of the legend of the Minotaur, of
the Labryinth, of Daedelus and Icarus. We know they orginated one of the earliest written scripts: Linear A. Not much else is commonly agreed on.
Walking amongst their ruins in Crete, you get a pretty good sense of how they lived. These places were just as peaceful then, and just as fertile. The Minoan palaces are built in the centers of broad valleys with close access to the sea: perfect places for the gathering, processing, and redistribution of agricultural and trade goods. They clearly weren't military structures--rather, mazes of interconnected storage rooms, workers quarters, plumbing systems, and religious shrines. There were no city walls, and their locations would be very difficult to defend.
They were likely peaceful agrarian traders and most of the literature notes them for their fertility-oriented nature-goddess worship and their topless women in elaborate skirts. The bull is connected to the early, natural aspect of Zeus--worshipped in caves. The double-headed axe is now often seen as a symbol for the breasts of the goddess.
Anyway, their prosperity and whatever else they had didn't last long. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and militant invaders soon supplanted them, leaving their homes, their culture, and their breed to whither and
disappear.
Arms of the Octopii The Myceneans were the death of the Minoans. Possibly bitter over the long cultural domination of the island's prosperous, nature-loving maternalists, these mainland European Greeks took advantage of natural disaster to crush, dominate, and supplant. But even in their eventual extermination of the Eteocretans, this forceful culture took their writing, their artistic style, and their earliest legends from the people of Minos.
For me, the Myceneans could be best summed up in a piece of their pottery on display in an Athens museum. An octopus, adapted from the Minoan sea-creature motif, but rendered in a strict, geometrical style. For me, this symbolizes the world as a space to be ordered and entangled, with some great Mycenean city as a head, controlling everything within it's reach.
A dark age followed the collapse of the Myceneans, but their descendents carried on in the system of City-States. And even in the golden age of the Greek city-states, Cretans saw little benefit. Their island was a colony long before the Roman octopus eventually entangled them.
The Romans made their massive capital at Gortyn and used it as a place from which to rule
over the province of Crete and Libya. While building there, the Romans discovered another monumental Cretan accomplishment: the Gortyn law code. One of the oldest, best-preserved evidences of codified law, this massive length of carved-marble was incorporated into the wall of the Roman Odeon: a musem piece.
The growing-pains of world culture The Romans came and went, of course, using up what they could of these places in the interest of their own wealth. Crete became a province of the Byzantines, ruled from Constantinople. But even in the absence of the Romans, a world culture knitting together Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Indian Subcontinent, and Far East was extant. The Arabs were trading between all these places, and they soon re-established the world exchange of goods and ideas on the isle of Crete. New beliefs, customs, and peoples came to Crete, but so did pirates. There were wars. The Byzantines regained official rule.
People have mixed-feelings about this period of Crete's (and Greece's) history. Orthodox Christianity was the focal point of Greek identity and daily life, but the church also viciously stamped out the embers of classical Greek philosophy and religion. By the time Crusaders from
the west dissolved the Byzantine Empire, the Greek Orthodox identity was all these people had left to hold onto.
The Catholic French and Italians carved up former Byzantium, and the Venetian noble families took Crete as their colony. The Cretans did not take well to this tyranny, but nearby wars against the common Muslim enemy caused bonds to slowly form. The later days of Venetian rule have been called a Cretan Rennaissance, but then the Ottoman Turks took Constantinople and the rest of Greece. The major cities of Crete were next to fall under the Turk, while the Venetians held onto their island strongholds and the indigenous people fought from the mountains. The same story was played out all over Greece, as native people fought for the right to serve the Venetians rather than be enslaved by Turks.
400 years of brutal Ottoman dominance and fierce war ravaged this entire nation. A place that had once been the great crossroads of East and West, now reduced to the warzone between two great cultural masses feeling far too close for comfort.
Catching up The flag of Greek independence was raised in 1821 and over 100 years
of war followed before Greece was finally free. One by one, the islands and penninsulae of Greece won their independence and banded together. Crete's came in the 1890s, and by 1913 they'd joined the nation. The "Great Idea" was the name given the quest to liberate and unite all the Greek peoples of the Eastern Mediterannean under one flag. It failed and was abandoned when the Turks butchered and deported all the remaining Greek Christians from Anatolia.
Independence wasn't easliy held for this impoverished, embattled nation. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany marched in, taking theirs. But somewhere in the late-1940s, Greece was given the chance to thrive again.
They didn't. A Military Junta dominated the mid-20th century. Modern Greece didn't begin to catch up to their friends and neighbors until the last couple decades, long after millennia of foreign domination had put them at the bottom of the spiritual ladder.
Modern Greece is lush with historical and archeaological sites. It's people know the value their heritage and their beautiful landscapes hold to the rest of the world. Museums and resorts abound. I just worry about their ability to regain the strength of a lost great culture, long
since withered and replaced with the legacies of piracy, vendetta, mixed-up lineages, and dying faith.
Observers The Greek world is a beautiful place. A fantastic place. A place of mystery, legend, history.
But the science-types tell me that even the act of observation changes the object you observe, just as it changes the observer. What about the world of my parents and I as we travel here?
Confused and frustrated by winding roads, tiny hotel-rooms, an alien language; awed by and enamoured with mighty mountains, crystal waters, ancient people; alone, exposed, out-of-place; together. This is by far the best time my parents and I have ever had while travelling together. Long, emotional discussions on the plane from Kenya ended in the resolution to love one another and exist harmoniously in a way that we rarely have in the past.
Our experience has been of a place with so many histories layered on top of one-another. We travel to ancient sites, now used as olive orchards or places to graze sheep. In the same day we will see well-preserved and maintained classical sites. Then there are the still-functional Byzantine churches and tiny mountain temples, often
abandoned or bereft of worshippers. Small villages contain people living much the way they have for centuries, but paved-roads and miniature cars betray the presence of an emerging modern lifestyle. Amongst this all is a near-mythical world of chasms, caves, wildflowers, and raging seas. At the end of each day, we retire to some local restaurant with a sign advertising authentic Greek "KΟΥΖΙΝΑ".
We've discovered things: about the past, about our roots, about religion and philosophy and even geology. I think we've discovered things about ourselves. We've certainly discovered great food.
Chelly's journey And then there is Chelly, having a very different experience in Kenya. Llike me, she is missing her love, longing for her fiance. Unlike me, she is continuing her everyday life. Sadly, it's a life that she succesfully escaped before and is now returned to out of temporary neccesity--I'll be going through that soon enough myself.
We talk on the phone every day. Soon after I left, she caught Malaria. There have been four injections since, and a lot of bed-rest. She's also had to deal with all those government assholes standing in the way of her visa and our marriage, charging
extra fees and sending her back and forth for elaborate paperwork requests.
Her brother Moussa had a breakdown on the highway while driving our rented car back from Nairobi. He had to pay for the brake job, but the car's owner still threatened to take him and Stringer to the police for having it out an extra day.
On the day Chelly returned--sick with Malaria--to rest at her parents home in Mshomoroni, she found a robber who'd broken in to steal
clean sheets. Her brother Michael tried to give him a beat-down and ending up being severely bitten. The robber's teeth cut deep and Michael himself needed a trip to the hospital.
None of this sounds good, and I feel guilty that it all came pouring down on her just after I left her alone. It's certainly clouded this trip. But Chelly and I have been pushed onto different paths now. We relinquished and acquiesced to the split. I just hope with all my heart that things go well and our paths will converge again soon.
Others Occupying my mind along with Chelly, the Minoans, Romans, and Byzantines, have been all the other people
I'm connected to in the world.
I'm reminded now of my friends in Seattle and the way they are living. Sad emails, birthday party invitations, stories about Luke getting all his front teeth knocked out by a Skelton... I'll be seeing all these people in the coming days (this week!) and catching up is going to come like a flood.
I've been meeting people from Seattle everywhere I go. The retired couples at Knossos reminded me of Wallingford, Green Lake, and Arlington. The site itself prompted me to draw comparisons with Angkor Wat and to consider the world of Evans and his boys. I've also thought back to all the places on my journey. It's ending now the same way it began, with a set of long international flights and a ride on a Greyhound bus. I can't help but reflect on my time in Kenya, in India, in Thailand, Cambodia and Laos.
I met a group of American Air Force pilots, all based out of Washington but here now flying missions into and out of Iraq. That brought me into a whole different world: the one where Americans are isolated, disconnected, and at war. The world
where my brother is a dead hero. They reminded me just how important it is for Americans to get out there and learn about the world, to travel and meet people and make ourselves known, to create change. It reminded me of all the friends I want to bring to Africa, the relatives I'd like to take to Greece, and how I'd like to show my friend Surrey around Laos and my friend Ruhi around India.
It's a very busy place inside this head.
You make the world you want to see And then there's the world that me and Chelly want to make for our future. That'll involve a family, a big happy family. It'll also involve some homes and businesses and books and a lot of travel. It's an interconnected, interdependent world. A healthy world. Mostly, we're anticipating our own improvement as we help to improve the lives of those around us. This is all best summed up in my
Little Bits of Philosophy for Human Being:
- I believe in integrating the best of the old with the best of the new, bringing together respect for the past with vision for the
future, while taking action firmly grounded in the present. Heeding equally the four kinds of knowledge (the intuitive, sensory, reasoned, and analogous) and all their systems of discovery and transmission, ie: sciences, philosophy, religion, art, experience.
- I believe in Time, Knowledge, and Action as the essential components of Human Being. Time IS Existence. Knowledge IS Man's Gift. Action IS Life.
- I belive in striving for a better condition of HUMAN BEING. This means being physiologically, psychologically, spiritually, socially, politically, environmentally aware and well. Awareness of the self in interaction with its history, position, and surroundings creates the conditions foundational to the pursuit of wellness. Wellness itself is achieved through action and refinement.
One fully well human being will lead to the improved wellness of others and their world.
Standing at the gate I've been thinking about that last blog, the one about anarchists. Maybe that characteristic of open-mindedness I mentioned at the end is drawn from a quintissentially American perspective? From the idea of freedom. Maybe my frustrations come out of the realization that I've been living freely in a bubble of thought which is about to be burst as I return to
the mundane, argumentative reality of home--where better communication is possible (without the language barrier), but is rarely achieved.
Now I'm standing at the gate of another world, the world of my childhood. And I don't really want to go through.
Will I be the man I want to be there? Will I be able to keep my soul
and keep my sanity? Can Chelly and I find our happiness? How long until I once again crave escape?
Those are all questions for the future.
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travellingmum
Bobbie
Don't end the story here
Please keep us updated with what happens to you and Chelly. I have been reading your blogs with much interest!