Favourite Last Words

"Never on Sunday" - 'It's too late!'
"Casablanca" - 'Here's to the start of a beautiful friendship'.
"Some Like It Hot" - 'Nobody's perfect.'
"The Maltese Falcon" - ' The stuff that dreams are made of'.

To Tsirigotiko

6th August, the Festival of the Sotirio at Avlemonas

Clouds over the Kastro - Photo by Eleni Harou

Cat lovers in Kythera may appreciate this.

I met Irene at the Potamos Sunday Market – a treat in itself. My own grandmother had a stall there many years before I was born. Anyway, Irene was selling jars of jams and spreads that she had made and a small, home-made cookbook of Kytherian recipes. I flipped through its pages wondering why I, a woman of Kytherian descent, would need to buy such a book written by a Dutchwoman. My Kytherian mother after all, had been a wonderful cook, as are all my aunts – not a single dud in the lot.

We started to chat, and you know how you can meet some people time and time and time again over the years, and your conversation never goes beyond the state of the weather, and with others, after five minutes you’re talking about the state of your soul – well Irene falls into the latter category.

We spoke for, oh I don’t know how long, and the first thing she told me was how she came to live in Kythera, because Irene is an exotic bird for a such a tiny little island, and yet she has made it her home and Kythera has happily made space for her. And it was very simple. As soon as she set foot on the tarmac, she had a feeling that she had come home. And that was it. All this she told me at that market in Potamos.

It’s easy to identify her house in Mitata. It’s the one where all the cats’ paw prints lead – across the road and through the gate, or up the wall, and inside. In the same way that Kythera has provided a haven for Irene, Irene is providing a haven for Kytherian cats. That’s the other thing we talked about in Potamos – the issue of the many stray cats on the island.

In some places, like Foca, a seaside resort town on the Turkish coast, the stray cat is king, because there are always enough tourists around to feed them little tidbits. But the poor old Kytherian strays don’t fare so well.

At night, in the village of Avlemonas, there’s a regular cat’s chorus, as the strays congregate and do what stray cats tend to do – fight and yowl.  You know, according to Google, there are five collective terms for domestic cats: clowder, cluster, clutter, glaring and pounce. I would add a sixth – cacophony. The night noises of those cats is part of the Avlemonas experience – at least where I was staying.

It so happens that I quite like cats, as our own cat Lilly, would attest if she could say more than ‘no’ – which she actually says quite clearly. But she expresses her utter confidence in my devotion by completely disregarding anything I say, secure in the knowledge that she can get away with anything. And she can.

So when Irene mentioned her organization Adopt A Cat, where for 4.60 Euros a month you could fund a cat, including having it neutered, it sounded like a good idea - particularly after a sleepless Avlemonas night.  Her website http://adoptacat.jimdo.com keeps us up to date with her cat-saving activities. And she has recently extended her sanctuary to other forms of wildlife as well, such as a hapless owl who almost came to a sticky end with some flypaper. Flypaper! Who uses that stuff anymore! Remember it , hanging off the ceiling with dead flies stuck to it? Yu-uck!

Anyway the owl’s rehabilitation is being lovingly continued and documented as I write this.

To judge by Irene’s Facebook page, you could be forgiven for thinking that Kythera has way more than its fair share of cats. It doesn’t. Kythera has its full complement of wild creatures, rabbits, hares, hedgehogs, peregrine falcons, voles, snakes (but not venomous), goats, lizards, tortoises, frogs and toads, to name but a few. But thanks to Irene and the people who support her, it has happier cats.

So far she has had the Avlemonas cats – at least twenty, vaccinated and neutered. To do this work she depends on support from the public, four euros sixty a month feeds a cat and seven euros ninety five covers the cost of neutering and vaccination as well.

Oh and the cookbook? I bought it. It’s very good.

Aristotle said....

Aristotle said that educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Mitropanos - Ta Kythera Pote The Tha Ta Vroume - We Will Never Find Kythera.

Pat Kaufman Kythera. Grove Throne. Unpolished limestone in all its bulk and warmth and glory. It makes me think of the total bulk of the stone - its immensity. But it's so soft and warm to sit on too.

Pat Kaufman on Kythera. The Twins at Vlycho Farm - beautiful limestone thrones full of fossils and hidden secrets!

It's Time.

Marble Heroes

Lord Byron

Emanuel Comino

Gough Whitlam

Malcolm Fraser

Geoffrey Robertson

George Clooney

Amal Alamudin

Bill Murray

Right On!!!!!

http://www.elginism.com/new-acropolis-museum/eight-reasons-why-the-elgin-marbles-should-be-returned-to-greece/20090225/1754/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles#Rationale_for_returning_to_Athens

http://www.smh.com.au/national/old-political-foes-call-for-return-of-lost-marbles-20090613-c6pq.html

http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1883142_1883129_1883001,00.html

Oh Really!?!?!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-news/10635703/The-Elgin-Marbles-Why-their-home-is-here.html

Mark Hudson's argument that the Marbles would be returning to a museum and not to their original location on the Parthenon is spurious at best. Far better, the fate Elgin had in mind for them, I suppose, who wanted them for his cold English garden. At least the Acropolis Museum was specifically built to house them.

His argument on aesthetic grounds, that without their 'garish' colours they are far more tasteful now, and in their original context and setting they would look 'hideous to modern eyes'. That the 'tasteful white and grey of unadorned marble - the way the Parthenon Marbles are seen today - is an invention of the Italian Renaissance. It has nothing to do with Greece.' And there's an argument for you - based on a necessary ignorance. Nobody, not even Mark Hudson can say what they looked like in their original context because we'll never see it. So we don't know how those colours looked at dawn, with the early morning breeze and the sound of starlings, or at dusk, or in the evening, or illuminated by firelight. We'll never see it. We'll never smell it. We'll never experience it. We won't feel the excitement of the yearly procession or a sense of awe at the first sight of the statue of Athena, or a frisson at the grim expressions of the Caryatides.

In discounting the colours, he forgets that they served a purpose every bit as formulated at the swelling and tapering of the columns to give the optical illusion that they were straight. Oh, his patronising and fundamentally ignorant, not to say arrogant argument irritates me.  A fine and subtle culture extolled the best ideas of its times, ideas that continue to resonate. 

It's wonderful that he sees a connection between Henry Moore and Phidias, but Moore could have been equally influenced by them had they remained in Greece.

As for our post-modern, post-nationalistic world (say that to UKIP and Britain First),  interaction, hybridisation and diversity - well what difference does it make if the Marbles are in Athens - the same argument surely applies.

But it makes a difference to the Hellenes though. The loss of the Marbles is a reminder of a time when they had to struggle to maintain their cultural - not national - identity. The return of them, would not only help vindicate that struggle - especially now - it would also be honourable.

I recommend Jonathan Jones’ art blog on this issue.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/nov/04/art-worlds-shame-parthenon-elgin-marbles-british-museums

Olive Picking in Kythera from the Xenonas Fos Kai Choros

Just something to think about

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Cat Stevens' Teaser and the Firecat

Some of Kythera is fashioned of rock that began as small creatures - coiling, multi-chambered shells, which descended infinitely - gently - in death to the sea floor. Here water pressure cemented and crystalized them over many millions of years. Movements which occurred in the very crust of the earth, deeper than the ocean itself, conspired to return them to the surface to become the limestone foundations - the bedrock - of continents and islands.

Where Does Love Reside

The two times I have asked the question ‘where does love reside?’ I’ve received the same answer, ‘in the brain’.

Others, more romantic, would probably say in the heart. I would disagree. For me, love resides in the bones, because that’s where you find the evidence.

The fossilised remains of a hominid who lived millions of years ago in Olduvai Gorge, show not only what she died from, but also that she had lived longer than she should have done. For that to happen, someone, or something, must have brought her food; must have patiently given her sips of water to keep her alive; must have wept when she finally succumbed to the ravages of Hypervitaminosis A. Must have grieved for her.

Love is present in the painful accretions of plaque around her joints, which would have, in a very short period of time, killed her. Of her carer there is no evidence, only the proof of his, or her acts of tenderness.

A family of three is crushed to death as they sleep, in an earthquake in Paphos. A newborn child lies cradled in its mother’s arm, and the two of them held in the embrace of the father. They never knew what happened to them. But their skeletons remain in a filigreed tangle of love. The child. The mother curved protectively around it. The father curved protectively around them both. And there, plain to see, is the evidence of love.

But on my trip to Greece this year, I have found another proof of love, one that I can  identify with. It’s the relationship between many Greeks and the pebbles on the beach. In Greek, they’re called ‘votsala’, a word that when I roll it around in my mouth, somehow manages to convey their smooth, water-sculpted shape. They’re cool to the touch. They rest neatly in the palm of my hand and when I pick them up, I examine them closely for the hidden messages they convey. I’ll always find something; an initial perhaps, an image of a dog or bird, or the complex honeycombing of what I (probably mistakenly) think of oxygen escaping in little bubbles as the rock rapidly cooled in the moment of its birth.

I can never leave without taking a handful of pebbles home with me, joking that I carry half of Greece back with me in my luggage.

In Ithaka on a beach that you can only approach by boat, the pebbles are all white and blue, as if they too are conforming to Metaxa’s ruling that all island dwellings should painted for the colours of the Greek flag. But if you look closely at them, you would see little images of people reclining on couches in some kind of symposium – or so it seems to me.

On Paleopolis beach in Kythera, the pebbles are the colour of porphyry – the imperial purple of the murex shell, which had brought the Phoenicians to Kytherian shores all those years ago, and with them the goddess the Greeks call Aphrodite.

My desire to collect these pebbles is probably understandable. I don’t get to Greece as often as I’d like, and this is a response to a deep-seated sense of grief that I had acquired long before I ever set foot here, picking it up from the nostalgia of my parents. However, even in local households, you’ll find at least one rock, one pebble, one stone, that has been picked up and carried home.

So I have to wonder if, for the Greeks, at least as far as their homeland is concerned, does love reside in the stones? In those little bowls of pebbles sitting forgotten next to the television; in the bucket full of black Nissiran sand kept in the courtyard and used as a large candle holder; in the large rock used as a door stop, or the pumice paper weight, is all this the evidence how Greeks love their land?

I Wish I Could Convey To You The Smell of Thyme.

I wish I could convey to you the hot, sweet smell of Thyme. I wish you could read the scent of it and want hold it in your breath.

I can show you the shape of the landscape and its detail and its colours. I can show you its age and how harsh it can look, or how voluptuous, or how delicate. I can put those images in your head. But I can’t give you the smell. And the words I have available to me to describe it, well, they’re not enough.

It’s a smell that swirls around you, scorching your nostrils and setting up currents in the air and in your mind, so that your thoughts pulse to its heat. It burns the oxygen and seeps into your skin. You see things differently too. Reds, yellows, purples, begin to emerge in the grass, on the shape – and in the bulk – of the mountains, or running down into the gorges and the ravines. They stand out more starkly against a fresher green.

It’s a textured smell, pixilated, it attacks the nasal senses in short, percussive bursts. It’s a little bit dusty. A little bit dry. It comes and goes with varying intensity and you find yourself breathing shallowly in order to keep it for as long as you can.

You need to crush the leaves of Thyme in order to release it in its full pungency, like when you notice a feature of the landscape that you want to photograph, so you drive onto the verge of the road, bringing the full weight of the car to bear upon the plant and it in turn fills your car with its fragrant protest. However, you don’t need to damage it to feel its softness in the air. Then, it’s an ambush. First the smell isn’t there, and then you think it is, and then it is. And the more aware of it you become, the stronger it becomes.

Among the many smells of Kythera in the summer, this is the aroma that defines it most. It is the scent of its summer essence.