In Athens: Blog Two

8/17/2008
2 a.m.
Guesthouse

Words often fail me when I speak, but rarely do words fail me when I write. Tonight is an exception. For once, words do not suffice.

Tonight we dined in the glow of the lit Acropolis. A musician with dark, sad eyes serenaded us in Greek for hours, his voice getting rougher with use as the dishes kept coming. An elegant woman with wispy grey hair danced, stepping purposefully with her arms outstretched and fingers clicking. She sang along softly in Greek. Kneeling before her was a young man, who clapped in time with her soft steps.

I received a lesson on Greece and its burgeoning civil society while sipping a cold, sweet frappe through a straw in Syntagma Square.

A swift-footed stray dog followed us from the café in the square to the restaurant. He ran up and down the group, nearly taking off a passerby’s arm. The man had slinked too close to us, and was obviously a threat, in the dog’s eyes, that warranted a bark and a nip. We were the protector pooch’s pack, Stacey said. We were a strange one. A roaming herd of well-dressed American girls and guys in skirts and slacks, rustling to dinner.

The full moon hung between the evanescent pillars of the Temple of Zeus Panhellenios, completed in 131 A.D. The Parthenon glowed from within nearby, golden in the close, moist night air.

These words are absurdly simple reflections of the experience; just a simple scaffolding that can’t possibly hold the whole beautiful truth. I am blessedly overwhelmed.

8/18/2008
8:09 a.m.
Guesthouse

This morning Athens is the rectangle between the bars of the gate and the wall of the guesthouse. I sat with a cup of weak coffee and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and watched a sparse-haired old man bob into view and tourists climb out of a taxi. The city was, at last, cut to a bite-sized chunk, and I chewed on it quietly, in between nibbles of the crust of my PB&J.