Into Rubble

A series of pointless airplane meals interleaved with bouts of catatonia causes Mandarin Chicken by-product to mingle truculently in our stomachs with expensive but caustic drinks. Vast duty free malls beckon at each exchange point. Strangely, or explicably enough, the espresso in the Rome airport is better than anything available anywhere outside of Italy.

With each of the changes we are subjected to a baggage security check:

"Did you pack your own bags?"

"Did anyone give you any gifts to take?"

"Has your carry on luggage been out of your sight?"

"Have you ever been suicidal?"

"Do you believe there is an afterlife?"

The ticket clerk in San Francisco apologized for taking our time. The security officiers in New York examined us for suspicious behavior but let us pass without comment. The guards lounging in the doorways of the Rome airport exchange-point-mall had sub-machine guns or 9mm semi-automatics and bored expressions. The soldier on the runway in Athens has two guns, a beret and military fatigues. He fingers the trigger guard on his Uzi absentmindedly and squints at us.

The next morning it is sunny and pleasant outside. A few birds can be heard, making ready for day, and we have recovered sufficiently to be hungry and curious. As we eat slices of white bread and drink the Nescafe the hotel claims is breakfast, a distant whirling-grinding-clanking sound echos in from the streets beyond. Suddenly it is overlaid with frantic 7 AM bells from a nearby church. The whirligig gets more insistant until a garbage truck pulls up outside the lobby window where we sit. The collectors begin collecting, shouting back and forth to each other. A small shopping bag full of trash falls to the street, special delivery from someone who forgot it was the day, barely missing a well-dressed middle-aged woman walking her white poodle on a leash. The woman yells apparent profanities in the general direction of the special delivery package's advent. Cars and motorbikes swerve honking up side streets to avoid the truck, which entirely blocks the intersection of four narrow arteries. The motivating force behind the multi-cacophony is the truck's two-meter diameter rotating screw-compactor. The screw spins inside a metal cylinder, into which offerings are placed. The motion of the screw takes all the objects on a clanking voyage through the interior like a giant meat grinder. Every suitcase, bottle or can, table leg or eggshell delivers its glorious dying cry as a brief but important component in the general chaos, with voices and horns in accompanyment. The church bells have stopped or been drowned out. I can't tell.

There are piles of rubble everywhere. Sometimes they are old. Say a building or a walkway has collapsed under its own weight, or with external help, and someone perhaps began work on repairs but later abandoned the project.

Sometimes they are new, generated by remodeling or construction that has not yet been abandoned. The excess materiel accumulates, attracted to the vacuum of empty space, and inexorably becomes old rubble.

Sometimes they are ancient. These you are strictly forbidden to disturb, but in certain locations you are allowed to sit on the larger blocks. The curbs are marble and many of the indecipherable streets, paved with limestone tiles, turn into stairways at the drop of a hill.

Nico, visiting home for the first time in 4 years, meets us at our hotel. He leads us through an indecipherable maze of Plaka streets to his friends' home, pointing out many sites and shops along the way. In the general exhiliration, we immediately forget everything. Later we find that the maze is one street that changes surface and angle, at any apparent inclination. Spiros and Irini make and sell copies of Byzantine icons in a small shop off the main street. They both smoke heavily and laugh at our travel horrors, translated by Nico.

The sewer line in their third-floor-walkup flat doesn't work. It seems to be blocked somewhere, but they show very little concern. The plumbing in all of Greece, sewers and showers especially, is a mystery to Americans in general. The small flat is beautiful inside and out. Their cactus-bedecked balcony has dramatic views of the Acropolis and Likavitos hills with the blue Mediteranian sky arching over church towers and ancient buildings in between. Today it is devastatingly clear in Athens. Two weeks prior to our visit, the lack-of-air-quality forced the mayor to ban all cars coming into the city.

"Where we are from, the oldest building is only 200 years old, and it's already been rebuilt," I explain to Spiros through Nico. "What is it like to live surrounded by so much history?"

"We have friends who dug under their house, up the hill there," he points towards the Acropolis as Nico translates, "to fix the plumbing. They found an old marble statue." They both laugh. "They called the archeaological authorities, who took note of it and told them to rebury it because they had too many of them already. I would rather see the ocean than that." He waves the Acropolis away. "It always looms over us."

"I have had dreams about it sneaking up behind me and pouncing," Nico adds, with a little jump for emphasis.

"What about the government now?" Jean asks. "Aren't they right wing? Is it any different from the Papandreau times?"

"Ah, Democracy," Spiros replies directly, "That is something you have in United States, yes?"

"America is famous for her bridges and her plumbing," I quote Duchamp's summation to them.

"There are no rules here." Nico waves expansively, then points to the street below where a small car is speeding the wrong direction up a narrow one way alley, in reverse, "Look they even drive backwards."

The next day we go to the Sunday flea market with all the Greeks we know and most of those we don't. The Agora comprises four ages of marketplaces: ancient Greek artifact, old Roman ruin, traditional Middle Eastern Bazaar, and Modern Greek shopping mall. Rounding a corner, pushing through the crowded pedestrian throughfare, we pop out onto a busy multi-lane highway. Sagging Playboy Club billboards are obscured by carpet vendors' stalls. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and shoppers all vie for space in the street. A lone traffic cop stands on the corner, staring into the distance. I can almost hear the exotic eastern music playing in the background of the movie, but it turns out to be coming from the displays of portable stereo equipment playing bad Greek tapes at top distortion level further down the next block.

It's the first first-world country but it's wrapped around a third-world city. Cats are everywhere. Peering over every ledge and wall. Underfoot and table in every outdoor cafe. And they don't want cheese or bread, only meat. Remember. Never make eye contact. If you do, you have a friend for life.

On Monday we take a small plane to the island of Paros. We watch the pilots smoke through an open curtain as we land, and then get a taxi into town. The sky is slightly cloudy and the terrain is dry and barren, like California. The sea is calmer than the Pacific, clear and reflective green-blue. The port of Paros is a dusty place surrounded by travel agencies and a single Taverna, in which we situate ourselves to ruminate over the next step. We decide, with little hesitation, to continue to Naxos on the next available transport.

The Catamaran I resembles a very wide airliner, with sectioned rows of seats, all facing forward. While we glide past the coast of Paros a made-for-TV movie staring Jonny Depp as a strong willed teenager whose parents are KGB agents, is playing on a video screen dubbed in Greek. In a short time we come to Naxos. The Venecian castle on the hill surrounded by a hive cluster of white-washed buildings spreading down to the sea looks more like my imagination wants the Cyclades to look. The lone entrance to the Temple of Apollo stands on an outcrop to the left, opening onto distant Delos, a dramatic single rectangle, surrounded by ancient rubble, framing a section of hazy blue sky. Here perhaps Ariadne stood wishing Theseus's return, until she and was distracted by that playboy Dionysus.

In the morning we find that our narrow second-floor balcony surveys 100 meters of undeveloped but fenced property on Agio Georgio bay. Grass, rock, stands of bamboo, a few trees and bushes, and the ever present rubble separate us from the beach. Across a stretch of bluegreen Aegean water is a peninsula of redbrown rock where two hills are sunning themselves. The furthest is cut to the top with spiral strip mining roads, the other is taller but unmounted. Mirroring in the distance are the mountains of Paros. The bay arches from this peninsula to the south, around past us to a narrow spit in the north. On an outcrop of this spit, overlooking the entire sweep of bay and mountains, is the framework of a dramatic multi-level structure, a private residence or perhaps a restaurant. A wide semicircular staircase leads from level to level, ascending the hilltop in style. Work on the structure seems to have been abandoned years ago. The square concrete frames will perhaps become another ancient-rubble gift to Apollo. In the middle distance a beach club is visible, its dark opening labeled "Infinity."

A few quiet sailboats navigate the mouth of the bay. A large black, penis-profiled raft is moored offshore. Periodic ferries and hydrofoils rumble into the port a kilometer to the north. Their wakes eventually reach our beach, mimicing Hollywood surf; otherwise the water is shallow and calm. The ferries signal their approach with a long low note. There are sounds of habitation, people talking and laughing in the building below us, and the old man next door rustling the plans for his grande villa. When the breeze comes onshore we hear motors from the small boats and their operators' voices. Birds chirp discreetly and the music from someone's radio washes quietly over the obligato goat bleat and chicken cluck. As the sun rises higher and the sky clears, the water becomes more insistantly blue.

The old citadel in the center of Naxos proper is an actively occupied archeaological relic. A small hill with 30 generations of concrete and stone, bricollaged layer over layer. Modern facilities have been added piecemeal. Rusty iron utility cover-plates are inlaid on pathways. Plumbing, telephone, and electrical wires are tacked to stone walls. On the narrow twisting paths you can't tell an entry way from the street unless you looking ahead to see if there is a door. Some of the paths have chains and signs that say "Private", in English. The current occupants of the fortress do their best to ignore the latest invaders.

During the day there is much frantic activity in town. They are building, hammering and pouring concrete, constructing new dwellings for future tourists. Scheduling is haphazard. Many cement frames stand gaunt, waiting to be bricked in and plastered over, while foundations and forms for others are still being assembled. The new rubble is moving from site to site. As one lot is filled with concrete and rebar, brick and plaster, the excess is deposited in the next open space.

At night in the small square the activity is a staccato criss-crossing of vehicles and pedestrians from all directions. Four main roads meet in a traffic circle centered on a single forlorn evergreen. Two alleys provide for unexpected entrances and exits. Four outdoor tavernas occupy most of the pavement. A tiny, whitewashed, blue-domed church fronted with a cigarette kiosk holds down one corner, and a market separates two more of the streets. Throughout the evening people, bicycles, motorbikes, scooters, cars, jeeps, and an occasional truck pop out of one entrance, circle the tree and disappear through one of the exits. Once in a while a vehicle makes a dash down an alley for variety. Cyclists swerve dramatically to avoid traffic that has made sudden changes of speed or direction. Most of the noisy advents can be traced to young tourists racing about on rented dirt bikes, but the inhabitants can hold their own. One local young scooter jockey looks menacingly cool with his old jeans and blondish hair curling into his eyes, except he is wearing a 70s-style denim shirt with western kerchief applique on the shoulders. The air is filled with conversations in Greek, German, English, Australian, and American.

After an idylic number of days the weather begins to change and we move on, by ferry, to Santorini. When it becomes too breezy to watch the islands of Naxos and Paros glide by on either side of the ship, we go below for a drink. Sitting in the aft bar, a can of beer, in combination with the prophylactic dramamine, stupefies me.

"Do you think it is possible to do anything now?" Jean asks.

"Huh?" I nearly respond.

"I mean anything new...that hasn't been done before," she clarifies. "The Modernists were the ones who used it all up. They did the last of the new things. All these Classical guys couldn't help but be innovative. But us..."

"Ah, the PoMo condition," I try to get a grip on the conversation. "We have no substance, only image."

"And the images are pre-packaged for us Post-Moderns. Like the Little Plaster Parthenons of the Plaka."

"All we have left is to work out the permutations. We're just running the numbers, over and over." I say as I spin the empty beer can around on the throbbing table, which is bolted to the deck directly over the ship's screws. "But, just because it HAS been done before, should that prevent us from doing it for ourselves? Nothing is ever new. Whatever it is, someone already thought of it. Can't we just do things because they're there?"

"What's the point?"

"Well, we're doing both the manufacturing and the consuming," I am grasping at any straw. "Maybe that's why I like mass-production Kitsch so much?"

"I wonder if you can get little plastic islands. Maybe you can't comodify an island like you can the Parthenon."

"You may be disappointed," I have a premonition. It's all simulated real life, now. All Kodak Picture Spots. Pre-programmed for our convenience."

"Maybe the Picture Spots are the Structuralist's final joke? The remaining innate part of human nature."

"Us Homo Sapien types naturally respond to those sweeping panoramas. We can't help but look, even if someone else already saw it."

"Have there been enough humans to use up the permutations?"

We stop at Ios to discharge the excitable youngsters among us. I silently congratulate myself for being mature enough to not be tempted to checkout the continuous frat-party island. I will probably always regret it.

In silence we glide into the Caldera of the island of Santorini. Cliffside dwellings float higher and higher above us until we reach the commercial dock in the middle of nowhere. We take a taxi to Fira, and after a bit of wandering settle into the Hotel Panorama in the center of town. We have a dramatic view of the cinder cone from another tiny balcony. The cone is all that is left of the larger portion of the island after a massive volcanic eruption in 1500 BC destroyed what may have been Plato's Atlantis. The inhabitants had enough warning to escape, the sea reclaimed what was probably the highest mountain in the Aegean, and the archeologists removed the left-overs to London and Athens.

After more wandering for dinner, and an after dinner drink, we find Jean's Little-Plastic-Island hypothesis to be another failed theory. A huge, middle-aged American man, exiting from the souvenir shop swaddled in bright colors, roars, "And ya'all take American Express. Well aww-right, we'll be back!" He barely fits through the door.

With Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" playing softly from an outdoor restaurant, accompanied by Greek conversations below and motorcycle noises above, I quietly type these notes. At 2000 hours it is dark and beginning to get cool.

Before lunch we took a hike along the Caldera, north towards Ia. After leaving Fira and passing some undeveloped cliffside property, we stopped by a large church to admire the rural scene tumbling away from us. On the left side of the ravine was a small shelter with a donkey and some chickens. On the other side a new home was being constructed. There were voices and hammering in the distance with plaintive counterpoint from a small gas-powered cement mixer. A few cats and German tourists interacted on the path behind us. An old woman carrying a cloth covered bucket entered from stage right, at the same time an old man entered stage left.

The next morning a white cruise ship will be moored in the deep blue water offshore while intermittent sunlight illuminates the patchwork of buildings on the cliff. Donkeys will jingle past, going to work on the footpath, bringing tourists up the steps to shop. Dogs will be barking when the church bells toll ten o'clock. A stereo will abruptly blast "The Blue Danube" as, once again, the cable cars from the cruise port begin to traverse the cliff.

"This is really surreal," Jean says to me. "There is this immense darkness below in the Caldera. A church all brightly lit on the edge of the cliff. And you with your collar turned up, typing in the glow of a computer screen."

More cats appeared out of the framework of the land. The donkey emitted a bray, that could only come from a very emphesemic human. The cats cavorted down the walkway in front of the woman, dodging around and over each other. The donkey wound its way down the path towards a small clearing.

Time will begin to tick away, leaving us with not enough to do anything, but too much to not do something. We will end up in yet another cafe overlooking the volcano, sipping beer at an alarmingly slow rate. Then, before flying back to Athens, we will make our way to dinner at Restaurant Nikolas.

A church bell rings the half hour in the background. Jean continues to stare into the blackness.

The old man nodded to the woman and stopped to watch the animal circus. The woman stepped over the fence railing and walked a few meters to the flat area, while the cats swarmed over her feet. There, she dumped the contents of the slops bucket.

The menu will be in Greek, on a chalk board at the back. A very suave waiter, with prematurely grey hair and a cynical grin, will translate everything for us and take our order.

The cable cars make a cameo pas-de-deu appearance gliding up and down the cliff in tandem. A small boat takes off for the cinder cone at a high clip in the dark.

The cats leapt onto the bucket's contents in a feeding frenzy. The donkey made its way to the woman, who slapped its dusty flank. The old man shouted a greeting to her and continued on his way.

As we will eat our luscious chicken and lamb, a pudgy young tourist will push his way into the restaurant through the small crowd of people waiting for tables.

Customers dwindle on this chilly night overlooking the sea. European classical music is replaced by Greek pop music. Bells ring 2100 hours and lights begin to go out.

The cats slowly melted back into the land, taking the German tourists with them.

The waiter will intercept the interloper, who will explain, "I just want to read the menu." The waiter will reply, "You cannot read the menu," then before he turns back to the kitchen he will add, "It is in Greek."

Back in Athens for our last day, we finally make our way to the Acropolis. Lucky for us, Sunday is free day, so we are accompanied by most of the other tourists left in the country. If we were all dressed in sheets it would seem an authentic situation, the populace struggling up the hill to worship. But at this toga party the participants are dressed in sadistically bright clothing and using cameras indiscriminately.

What's left of the ancient stone is dissolving under the onslaught of modern air. Portions are being rebuilt, surrounded by spidery metal scaffolding that is entirely out of proportion with the rocky massiveness of the columns and lintels. People crawl over every available square meter of open space, photographing each other and the bits of ancient rubble in between. Periodically a sports team of some sort poses for a group photo -- Japanese, Italian, American, other more obscure nationalities -- in matching red and blue jumpsuits.

Facing the entrance to the museum on the grounds is the stone torso of a goddess, arms, legs, and neck gone, with much of her surface chipped away. Her head floats above her body, connected by a spindly iron bar, peering down in judgment of everyone who enters. The left half of her face is missing. It seems a better introduction for a museum in Hiroshima than in Athens.

The millenia compressed into these damaged sculptures illuminates our Post-Modern-culture's tropistic retracing of history. What the Classicists couldn't invent for us, geologic forces have accomplished. Pieces are missing from most of the forms. A legless, muzzleless horse is mounted by the lower half of a man with no feet. Noses are truncated and cheekbones chipped away in a parody of plastic surgery. One gargantuan man-god leans into his wrestling opponent. Genitals hang down intact, but huge chunks of his body have been replaced with clay by some reconstructive artisan. In the window of a trendy clothing store, a few blocks away the mannequins have the shape of the ancient sculptures. Black life-size plastic men's torsos with chipped and broken half-heads, wearing silk suits.

Twenty-four hours later I am alone in my friend Martha's room napping in a vain attempt to recover from another long plane ride. I wake up suddenly. For a few seconds or hours I stare mutely at random objects, trying to decide what culture they are from, and thus where and when I am. This is complicated by Martha's collection of Tibetan artifacts. Soon, some neurons fire in unison and I begin to understand that I am in Massachusetts near the end of the Twentieth Century, C.E.