Girl Out of Time (Greek travelogue #1)
1. Gooey
“I can’t take this place, no I can’t take this place / I just wanna go where I can get some space”
INT. THE ANDERSON-LADD HOUSEHOLD DURING THE WEEK PRIOR TO MY DEPARTURE—DAY
MY PARENTS (making lunch, smiling cheerfully): It sure is nice to have you back at home, Chloe!
ME (wearing pajamas at 3 p.m., dark circles under my eyes either from lack of sleep or just smudged mascara): Please, I don't feel like chatting right now.
MY PARENTS (doing an arts and crafts project at the kitchen table while birds sing though the open window): What are you up to today, Chloe?
ME (pulling out fistfuls of my own hair): Why do you ask so many QUESTIONS?
MY PARENTS (speaking in unison, their bodies fusing into one terrifying, two-headed demon): Where are you headed, Chloe?
ME (descending directly into Hell): OUT.
2. Que Sera
“Que sera sera / Whatever will be, will be”
It’s our first night in Athens. There are only five of us, classmates-to-be, just met that morning. We’re trying to make our way back to our apartment(s) after stuffing ourselves like dolmas at an enormous, delicious dinner. Ricky is confident he knows how to get back, but the rest of us aren’t sure. We are traipsing around in circles, wandering down dusty, dimly lit roads that creep up hillsides, mounting marble staircase after marble staircase in search of some landmark to help us find our bearings. We are all sleep-deprived and confused, strangers to this country and to one another. Our tempers grow short and when we speak, we snap.
“It will all be okay,” I say, trailing behind by several steps. “Eventually we will end up somewhere.” This doesn’t help, and I am unable to reiterate my point beyond this. The group becomes more irritated.
“Frankie says relax,” Anna whispers to me. There is no one on this trip named Frankie. She means Ricky. I don't realize until the next day that she is quoting a song.
We do eventually find our street after circling it for almost an hour. In a surprising plot twist, Frankie, I mean, Ricky turns out to live in a different building than the rest of us. This was the source of the confusion.
3. Arrianou
“Life is at the roots, embedded in simplicity, asserting itself uniquely.”
My bedroom in Athens opens onto a balcony, which overlooks a beautiful, narrow street called Arrianou. It is gently busy at all hours, lively but not exactly energetic. Neighbors call to one another through open windows, children play happily with their dogs, balconies overflow with flowers and pinned-up laundry that ripples in the breeze like provincial, cotton flags. During the day it’s a blessing and at night, a curse. Here is a list of the sounds I can hear as I try to coax my stubbornly jet-lagged body to sleep:
- Our neighbors yelling at each other in Greek
- Stray cats yowling
- Stray cats yowling and having sex
- A sudden burst of music. Upbeat and celebratory, as if a gang of four or five guitarists has had the idea for an impromptu parade. It lasts for less than a minute.
- Cars
- Mopeds
- Motorcycles
- Church bells clanging discordantly with no apparent regard for harmony or pleasure. There must simply be noise.
- Muffled footsteps as my roommates shuffle around the apartment. None of us can sleep. We are bound to endure this restless, crepuscular purgatory together.
4. Left Hand Free
“Well your left hand’s free / And your right’s in grip / With another left hand / Watch his right hand slip”
Generally speaking, I consider myself to be an affectionate person. At home, I have no trouble cuddling with my friends or holding hands with my love interest (loosely defined). I like long, tight hugs and lying across my hapless friends’ laps during road trips. In Greece, I am reminded that while I enjoy human contact, like any properly functioning mammal, I do not enjoy touching, or being touched by, strangers.
I’m not referring to the creeping, weathered hand placed surreptitiously on the small of Allegra’s back, nor to the crooked, prolonged grin of the waiter who inquired about our virginities. Of course, these moments have been distinctly, horrifyingly intrusive, and both more common and more paralyzing than in the states. We don’t know the culture here, and we find ourselves frozen, unable to respond, wondering, is this normal? Should I be okay with this? Can I pretend these men would never hurt me? Must I laugh it off? Am I allowed to get upset?
Even a friendly touch catches me off-guard here, like the gentle prod of a kindly old woman who means only to point me in the right direction. We don’t speak the same language, and she has found another way to communicate her idea—go over there. I’m surprised that her harmless, well-meaning gesture makes me feel so uncomfortable, but it does. As soon as she wraps her wrinkled arm around my shoulder, I can think only of extracting myself from the situation as quickly and politely as possible. I think longingly of the personal bubble I am afforded at home.
5. How I imagine the miniature zoo that exists in the center of the National Gardens was created
“Dipsy Doodle day in Walla Walla”
CITY PLANNER: I made some cages in the middle of the garden, but I don't know what animals to put in them, so I'm going to ask my 7-year-old son and then do exactly what he says. Timmy, what should we put in here?
TIMMY: Ducks. Then, make a smaller cage within the duck cage and put peacocks in that one. Males only.
C.P.: Should we put water in the duck enclosure?
TIMMY: No. Make them live in the dirt.
C.P.: Okay. What about in here?
TIMMY: Chickens. Also, pigeons.
C.P.: Pigeons? Are you sure? There are pigeons everywhere, everyone can already see pigeons whenever they want.
TIMMY: I’m sure. Make sure they’re with the chickens.
C.P.: Ugh, okay. What about this one? Maybe something besides birds?
TIMMY: Goats.
C.P.: Okay, that sounds pretty normal. Just goats?
TIMMY: And one rabbit.
C.P.: Just one rabbit? In the goat habitat?
TIMMY: Yes.
C.P.: Fine. What about this one?
TIMMY: Nothing. Just leave that one empty. But put a single fruit tree in there so people will think there’s an animal, but when they look they see that there’s nothing.
C.P.: Wh--okay, whatever. Should we put anything in this small rocky pond, which is roughly the size of a bathtub?
TIMMY: One hundred turtles.
C.P.: Oh my god.
6. Beach
“You moved away from here / To another hemisphere”
Whenever I hear someone say “beach” with a Greek accent, I think they’re saying “bitch.” So when an old man sitting on a bench muttered “four bitches” to himself as we walked past, at first I thought he meant “four beaches.” He didn’t, though.
7. Life in Athens Is Like A Video Game
“. . . the world in which this fantastic yarn lay buried was far more fantastic than anything Jules Verne had imagined.”
To select PLAYER 1, press A-B-A-A-X-Ctrl+R
To select PLAYER 2, press A-B-A-A-X-Ctrl+L
You have selected P2. She is pale and doughy, like an unfinished pretzel.
OBSTACLE ONE
You are walking through Athens and you see a stray dog, standing still, staring straight at you, almost as if he is looking through you. He has been waiting there a long time. His eyes are ancient and wise. You walk past him warily. Suddenly, you notice that four more dogs are following you. Where did they come from? Why did they choose you? Do they know something you don't?
OBSTACLE TWO
You are looking for a place to eat dinner in Piraeus. It is 8 p.m. on a Saturday, but nothing is open. The streets are empty, save for a crumpled chip bag drifting gently across the road like a tumbleweed. Just as you are wondering if you have somehow crossed into some post-apocalyptic alternate universe, you round a corner and discover a crowd of hundreds of people, packed tightly together, filling the entire block. They are listening intently to one man, who is speaking rapid Greek into a microphone. You think maybe you've stumbled onto some kind of political rally. Your companion asks a man what's going on, but he doesn't speak English. How do you proceed?
OBSTACLE THREE
You are in Syntagma Square and you pass a street vendor selling memorabilia. Among his wares are dozens of fanny packs bearing the word SPORTS and a butchered version of the Adidas logo. This game design is terrible. A week later, you see the same fanny packs for sale at a different street vendor in a different part of the city. The game is glitching. If you squint hard enough, you can see 1’s and 0’s blinking softly behind the blue of the sky. When you put down your controller, what will become of this world, so unlike your own? What will become of the people who walk these streets? What will become of you?
8. I am become Henry Miller
“. . . that is bliss, and if you have any sense you ought to kill yourself on the spot and be done with it.”
I once made fun of Henry Miller for writing that he wanted to jump overboard because the sight of the island of Corfu was so overwhelmingly beautiful, he didn't believe anything could ever be better than that for the rest of his life. Later that night, I ate a bite of goat cheese and promptly announced to the table that I was going to jump off the hill our restaurant was on because nothing could ever be better than that for the rest of my life.
"It's all downhill from here," I said, my mouth full of cheese.
9. Conquest of Spaces
“Temples and fragments of memories / Drifting away from me”
Something bizarre: taking a metro and visiting the Acropolis on the same day.
One is much older and higher up than the other.
If you just looked at those two artifacts, you would be able to conclude that in almost 3,000 years, human beings have become immeasurably uglier, dirtier, and more subterranean. We have forgotten beauty, you would say.
In context, you could argue that we have become more efficient.
10. Daydream in Blue
“I dream of you amid the flowers / For a couple of hours / Such a beautiful day”
We all looked at each other, eyes lit up and mouths fallen open, when he said his name, “Kostas.” He was visibly perplexed by our response to what is apparently a common Greek name. How could he have known that to us, a group of 20-year-old American girls, “Kostas” represents the romance of faraway places, presented to us at the height of our prepubescent sexual awakenings in the form of Alexis Bledel’s dreamboat love interest from the seminal 2005 classic The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants? Could he have known that his name, delivered to our unsuspecting ears as he and his fellow bartenders gathered around our table at City Zen, spoken quickly and thoughtlessly in between “George” and “Achilleas,” had the power to make us all feel, for just a second, like Ann Brashares was right, that the world really was full of curly-haired, chocolate-eyed “Kostases” waiting patiently for us to find them? That maybe we, like Lena, had only to set foot on foreign soil to fall into the waiting arms of our own swarthy, rugged, rough-handed, soft-hearted fishermen? That maybe pants really could be magic?!
I’m caught up in the fantasy of the flawless foreigner, the possibility of perfection that a “Kostas” holds. He is a faceless, blank slate stranger onto whom I can project my evolving calculation of the optimal future partner. I am comforted by this, the notion of some serendipitous soulmate living autonomously, halfway across the globe; my one true love operating independently from me until that fateful day we finally find one another, star-crossed lovers crossing paths at long last. I have faith in a better, more perfect future. I often fear that I live too much in my head, that the real world can’t compete with the daydreams I get lost in so easily. I know logically, of course, that there is no “Kostas,” quietly biding his time until little old me shows up at his doorstep, ready to win him over with my exotic Western sensibilities and numerous flaws. But I know, too, that it is difficult for me to accept any given circumstances, no matter how close to perfect they may seem, because I would rather hold out hope on the off-chance that things could be better (not to mention the ease of distancing myself from bliss—if I tell myself that love is far off, I won’t have to bother with it now). Besides, what would a fisherman and I even talk about?
Then I think of the curly-haired, soft-hearted “Freddie”* that really does exist. He’s not working with his hands off the coast of Santorini, he doesn’t have a dreamy accent or enchantingly simple way of life; he’s probably smoking weed and re-watching The Office bloopers in his small, dark apartment in Chapel Hill. He’s probably laughing in the way that makes his deep voice suddenly very squeaky, or picking at his cuticles in the way that makes him feel self-conscious. I look at my phone and see a text from him. It says: “Hey, I kinda miss you.” That night, I sleep in his Rosemary Beach Racquet Club tee shirt and don’t dream of “Kostases.”
11. Sweet Sun
“Did you forget the joy you’ve reaped / And all the times that we made it”
When we leave Athens, I am terrified that I haven’t made good enough use of my time there. There are so many sights I haven’t seen, people I haven’t talked to, streets I haven’t walked. I’m not done with the city. I wonder if it would have even been possible to do Athens in just a week. How long would it take to really do Athens? Is it possible to do a city at all, in any amount of time? I realize that there are countless sides of my own small hometown that I have never seen and never will see. Suddenly, I feel trapped in my own experience.
12. Feeling Good
“This old world is a new world / And a bold world / For me”
I feel all my Athens anxiety drip away when I catch my first glimpse of Póros. It’s like I’ve travelled through a wormhole, a tear in the fabric of the space-time continuum, transported into a piercingly perfect postcard. Surely, this can’t be a real, solid place on Earth—the same toxic planet that houses war and genocide and starvation. I must have conjured this paradise from deep within my own imagination, this dreamland island, so heavy with potential. All green, craggy mountains to be explored and syrupy marmalade sunsets to be watched. Winding, cobblestone roads to be followed and sapphire water to dip feet in. It is vast, and when I stand here, on its edge, I feel vast, too.
What use is it to worry? The world is beautiful and I have seen almost none of it.
Chloe Anderson Ladd (June, 2015)
Athens, Greece
*name changed