Breakfast on Patmos
Six months in on our 20-month wandering Odyssey a few years back, Louisa (Boo) and I found ourselves on the Greek island of Patmos, best known as where the Book of Revelations was written.
We're in a noisy Sunday-morning cafe on the Greek island of Patmos in the Dodacanese, between Naxos and the coast of Turkey. It's all men in here, mostly my own age. They don't talk, rather they argue, voicing their opinions loudly, passionately. This ain't the atmosphere of my favorite Palo Alto caff, the Bakery. The TV is on, of course, as it's been on in Mexico for the three months we were there, as it was on the ferry coming here from Athens, as it's always on, not too loud this time, just a low rumble in the background, talking heads, quick images.
Our table is littered with breakfast, the filter of my coffee with its dark grounds spent, my scratched glasses, an almond cake patiently waiting for me, empty ashtray, boo's frappé glass with its lime-green straw, our three-pound laptop in front of me, screen bright and alert for my input.
Outside waits our pink (yep, pink) motor scooter we rented yesterday. We wanted bikes, but they only had one, so we spent the day whizzing all over the island feeling slightly wicked that we weren't using our leg muscles. We visited the black thousand-year-old fortified monastery on top of Chora hill, still with about 20 black-robed Orthodox monks in residence, and books going back to the 8th century in the treasury. A little below, we checked out the cave--now a chapel--where crazy John the apostle imagined that the last days were revealed to him in all their Speilbergian Sturm und Drang. Maybe things were different here in 95 AD, but all we could see yesterday were gentle fields reaching out to the sea beyond. Each to his own.
Just before I pulled the laptop out, Boo said, "I feel like I've been carrying around this aura of dissatisfaction for years now." And I thought of Thoreau's line, about how most of us live lives of quiet desperation. What this year is all about...(how often have I started a sentence with that phrase since we left home last November?)...is about embracing all that obvious, don't- keep-reminding-me stuff about suffering being caused by desire.
Desire for things to be different, to be some other way: for our room here to have a view of the sea; for our property manager in California to be less flaky; for the muse of writing to descend on my shoulders and for me to produce reams of deathless prose without effort; for our shares to do fabulously well, so we never have any worries about money (When we're worth this much, we'll never worry again!); for strangers to embrace us to their hearts, invite us to their homes, take us under their wing, see us as much, much more than the tourists that we are; for Boo and I to never have another fight, to be wells of compassion and understanding for ourselves and each other. For things, in other words, to be other than what they are.
Rattle of cups, smell of cigarettes, buzz of a moped going past the open door. Life--it's all here, in front of my nose. Everything else I'm dragging around in my head, where I carry all my expectations, hopes, comparisons, dissatisfactions around in a box labeled, The way I wish things had been. Fettered to my past. Stuck in the future: this is how I want things to be. This is what I want to achieve this year. This is how I want people to think of me.
"But what about plans?" we ask ourselves. Make plans but hold them lightly, is the Buddhist response. Humans are, I'm convinced, born with plan-making systems enmeshed in our brains. Without plans, our ancestors would never have made it through a season's drought on the savanna, nor could they have hunted in groups, nor taken care of their children. For better or for worse, we're plan-makers, just as we're tool makers and language users. In California, it was getting to be for worse. Living my life in the future.
Now we have this idea for a book, about how and why a middle-aged couple get bored in Silicon Valley, rent out their home and head off, not quite knowing why or where to. In the book they have this catharsis: it all becomes clear, they have great waves of understanding that will astonish and enlighten their readers. The depth of the writing is only exceeded by the incisive insights offered, about life, marriage, travel, transcendence, relationships, self-fulfillment, consciousness and other cultures. In this inspirational and poignant book--both an adventure around the globe and inside their heads--our intrepid wanderers of earth, sea and sky display infinite compassion, humor and awareness. Each a latter-day Odysseus, they surmount every challenge with wit and courage, yet in the end it is their own modest sense of the wonder of themselves that enfolds the reader and brings the book to its vivid and totally unexpected conclusion. It is (of course) a best-seller in 20 languages, and the authors are feted around the world.
Of course.
We're in a noisy Sunday-morning cafe on the Greek island of Patmos in the Dodacanese, between Naxos and the coast of Turkey. It's all men in here, mostly my own age. They don't talk, rather they argue, voicing their opinions loudly, passionately. This ain't the atmosphere of my favorite Palo Alto caff, the Bakery. The TV is on, of course, as it's been on in Mexico for the three months we were there, as it was on the ferry coming here from Athens, as it's always on, not too loud this time, just a low rumble in the background, talking heads, quick images.
Our table is littered with breakfast, the filter of my coffee with its dark grounds spent, my scratched glasses, an almond cake patiently waiting for me, empty ashtray, boo's frappé glass with its lime-green straw, our three-pound laptop in front of me, screen bright and alert for my input.
Outside waits our pink (yep, pink) motor scooter we rented yesterday. We wanted bikes, but they only had one, so we spent the day whizzing all over the island feeling slightly wicked that we weren't using our leg muscles. We visited the black thousand-year-old fortified monastery on top of Chora hill, still with about 20 black-robed Orthodox monks in residence, and books going back to the 8th century in the treasury. A little below, we checked out the cave--now a chapel--where crazy John the apostle imagined that the last days were revealed to him in all their Speilbergian Sturm und Drang. Maybe things were different here in 95 AD, but all we could see yesterday were gentle fields reaching out to the sea beyond. Each to his own.
Just before I pulled the laptop out, Boo said, "I feel like I've been carrying around this aura of dissatisfaction for years now." And I thought of Thoreau's line, about how most of us live lives of quiet desperation. What this year is all about...(how often have I started a sentence with that phrase since we left home last November?)...is about embracing all that obvious, don't- keep-reminding-me stuff about suffering being caused by desire.
Desire for things to be different, to be some other way: for our room here to have a view of the sea; for our property manager in California to be less flaky; for the muse of writing to descend on my shoulders and for me to produce reams of deathless prose without effort; for our shares to do fabulously well, so we never have any worries about money (When we're worth this much, we'll never worry again!); for strangers to embrace us to their hearts, invite us to their homes, take us under their wing, see us as much, much more than the tourists that we are; for Boo and I to never have another fight, to be wells of compassion and understanding for ourselves and each other. For things, in other words, to be other than what they are.
Rattle of cups, smell of cigarettes, buzz of a moped going past the open door. Life--it's all here, in front of my nose. Everything else I'm dragging around in my head, where I carry all my expectations, hopes, comparisons, dissatisfactions around in a box labeled, The way I wish things had been. Fettered to my past. Stuck in the future: this is how I want things to be. This is what I want to achieve this year. This is how I want people to think of me.
"But what about plans?" we ask ourselves. Make plans but hold them lightly, is the Buddhist response. Humans are, I'm convinced, born with plan-making systems enmeshed in our brains. Without plans, our ancestors would never have made it through a season's drought on the savanna, nor could they have hunted in groups, nor taken care of their children. For better or for worse, we're plan-makers, just as we're tool makers and language users. In California, it was getting to be for worse. Living my life in the future.
Now we have this idea for a book, about how and why a middle-aged couple get bored in Silicon Valley, rent out their home and head off, not quite knowing why or where to. In the book they have this catharsis: it all becomes clear, they have great waves of understanding that will astonish and enlighten their readers. The depth of the writing is only exceeded by the incisive insights offered, about life, marriage, travel, transcendence, relationships, self-fulfillment, consciousness and other cultures. In this inspirational and poignant book--both an adventure around the globe and inside their heads--our intrepid wanderers of earth, sea and sky display infinite compassion, humor and awareness. Each a latter-day Odysseus, they surmount every challenge with wit and courage, yet in the end it is their own modest sense of the wonder of themselves that enfolds the reader and brings the book to its vivid and totally unexpected conclusion. It is (of course) a best-seller in 20 languages, and the authors are feted around the world.
Of course.
posted by barryevans at
6:36 AM
1 Comments:
Your website has a useful information for beginners like me.
»
By
Anonymous, at August 18, 2006
Post a Comment
<< Home