Journalist Bill Bryson wants to find the archetype of America– the small town of fantasy, where Jefferson Smith and Atticus Finch are your neighbors and the balcony to the Strand movie theater is still open on Saturday afternoons. He travels the country in an untrustworthy sedan. He begins from the driveway of his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa, travels south along the Mississippi, east to the Atlantic before criss-crossing the continent to the west and back again. In all, he visits thirty-eight states, always looking and never quite finding it all in the same locale. Along the way, Bryson serves up a colorful tale of boredom, kitsch, community and beauty when you least expect it.
What is it that draws me to something for mawkish reasons? Why do I regret actions without rational justification? What is it about something—something simple and concrete—that compels me to attach emotional value to it?
I know I am not alone. I find these experiences permeated throughout almost every aspect of the days between Thanksgiving and New Years Day. By no means are these the only times I come across these sorts of events and feelings. November to December serves as the climactic high point on the calendar. Traditions are born and broken. Or rather—for a pessimist like me, it is the breaking of those familiar traditions that evokes my maudlin, sentimental response.
And yet I wonder if I am a dying breed within my generation. Has Generation X subsumed itself so deeply into the cult of cynicism that we have eliminated any tolerance for sentimentality? We wear a peculiar perfume; the odor pervades us in a cloud of distrust of the integrity and professed motives of others—and even ourselves. We reek. We stink.
Nothing is sacred.
Mel Brooks’ son, Max Brooks, has undertaken the task of chronicling the first-hand accounts of the decade-long zombie war. From isolated attacks to full-scale military combat– the subtle, and not so subtle, jabs at various contemporary politicians, cultural icons and policies add considerably to the beauty of this skilled contribution to the zombie mythos.
Novellas once more– this time, four earlier works written under Stephen King’s pseudonym: Richard Bachman. The collection includes “Rage,” “The Long Walk,” “Roadwork,” and “The Running Man.” Whirl, the consummate Stephen King fan, recommended the collection to me, as I’ve never read any of these “straight” stories.
Rarely do I speak—let alone write—about politics. I admit that without reservation. I understand that politics are complicated. I also understand that powerful and influential forces work to simplify political issues. The skeptic in me harangues to guess at the motivations of such political rhetoricians bent on simplification. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes I argue. I suppose that is the part of the point of politics, to be involved at some level with decision making. Most of the time, I find myself overwhelmed by the socio-political environment facing me. So I am left to wonder. I hypothesize. I also realize that is all I have: hypotheses. Untested, unproven, unreflective thoughts about topics I do not fully understand. I know; I hear you. “Join the fucking club of the most of us.”
Here is a result: I am back on the topic of fear, its insidious pervasiveness in our culture. I present a short list of events this week that spurred me to write on it again.
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President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law, seriously curtailing the right to habeas corpus.
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Officials at an elementary school south of Boston have banned kids from playing tag.
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Residents of Dearborn Park demonstrated their discontent over the lack of a fence around the city park adjacent to an elementary school by building a “human fence” for the nightly news.
Considerable controversy encompasses the Military Commissions Act. As I stated earlier, I understand this, like many political issues, to be a complicated one. And as tempted as I may be to try and simplify it—for myself and for others—I am attempting to stay away from that course of action. I will try and keep my basal exposition to a minimum. Still, I think it is important to at least provide a cursory explanation of what habeas corpus is. If I do this with any skill, I hope it will prove a valuable thread I can pull through the entirety of this bit of writing.
The writ of habeas corpus is a legal instrument employed by prisoners. The writ is a court order addressed to a prison warden. The writ orders that a detainee be brought to court for a simple purpose: to determine whether the prisoner is imprisoned lawfully and whether he should be released from custody based on that judgment. The writ of habeas corpus is one of the oldest defenses against tyranny. Versions of the device date back to the 12th and 13th centuries. The Constitution protects the right with the words, “The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it” (Article 1, Section 9). This right has been the “fundamental instrument for safeguarding individual freedom against arbitrary and lawless state action” (Brown v. Vasquez, 1992).
The Military Commissions Act law does not require that any detainees—defined as terror suspects—be granted legal counsel. More to my issue, the act specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions. The Associated Press quotes President Bush, “The bill I sign today helps secure this country and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair and we will never back down from threats to our freedom.”
A literary murder mystery in mid-nineteenth century Boston. Matthew Pearl introduces a reluctant, elite group of American Dante scholars to catch the serial killer. My initial feelings on the book betray a certain discontent. Despite my interests in both the subject matter and the time period, I am not particularly compelled by Pearl’s execution of the story.
Returning to non-fiction I have picked up Ben Mezrich’s new book. To quote the back cover Busting Vega$ is a true story about a team of geniuses and a barely legal system for beating the blackjack tables: a riveting account of monumental greed, excess, hubris, sex, love, violence, fear, and statistics that is high-stakes entertainment at its best.
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
For Whirl and me it was not the desert across which we fled. We fled across the ocean. For over two weeks we traveled the Cyclades. These strange, magnificent islands have transfixed me. I have wanted to visit them from the time I first learned of them years ago. My first attempt to do so, in the long summer of 1991, aborted in a catastrophe: physically thrown from a train by a conductor, wearing two heavy backpacks, and separated from my girlfriend. She had about thirty drachma to her name—at the time thirty drachma was roughly equivalent to three dollars. I was carrying everything else. All of that is a story for another time. Our triumphant return to Greece includes nothing quite so pernicious.
On this trip we traveled by airplane. We traveled by ferry. We traveled by bus and automobile. One day we did all of these things in the twenty-four hour span of time. Mostly we traveled on foot.
That is a clue.
Whirl has never been off of the North American continent. We have traveled together outside America a couple times. We spent our honeymoon on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. The idea of traveling abroad is one we have entertained for a long time. That fed into the requirements for this trip. We wanted to go someplace foreign. We wanted explore and experience a new and strange place at a visceral level.
I believe there is a distinction to be made between tourism and traveling. I understand the terms tourism and travel are often used interchangeably. I—admittedly unkindly—use the terms tourism and tourist pejoratively. I use them to convey a sense of a superficiality or shallow interest in the visited cultures and locations. A traveler also passes through a place. He does not become part of it or adopt it as his own. That hurdle cannot be surmounted. Nor should it. What a traveler can do—and what I strive to do when traveling—is to experience and enjoy where I am and who I am with for who they are in themselves. I endeavor to avoid comparisons: Oh we do this so much better back home. I adapt to the customs. I try to wrap my tongue around the language—if only to state “I’m so sorry! I made a horrible mistake!” If you learn nothing else in a foreign language, learn how to say “thank you”. It is a little thing on the surface. If I can learn the intricacies of Internet jargon, memorize the best lines from The French Connection, and remember the batting averages for scores of ballplayers, I can afford to spend the time and energy it takes to learn and remember how to express gratitude in the local manner.
Travel is essentially about sharing. “Take nothing but pictures; leave nothing but footprints.” What is left is a shared moment in time, a very literal fork in the road taken with strangers—who if by the simple existence of that fork are no longer strange. They become friends.
I have a theory that every bookstore in the world sells at least one book by Stephen King. On the Greek island of Sifnos, the little bookstore in Kameres sold three in English. I had not read this 900-page collection of novellas— I had read the other two choices. I am very glad I picked this up.
The previous day, while waiting for the bus from Appolonia to Kameres, Sean and I ran into two fellow travelers with whom we had a passing acquaintance. The two ladies, probably in their late 40’s, hailed from Paris. They’d come in on the same ferry as us and were staying in Kameres for a similar duration. As well, the four of us seemed to be on a similar feeding schedule and tended to pick the same restaurants, so we’d seen them every night. Before the bus arrived, we slipped into easy conversation about our day’s adventures. They’d spent the entire day at a beach on the southwestern coast called Vathy and convinced us that we shouldn’t miss it. Done and done!
The bus to Vathy left at noon, which allowed plenty of time for us to eat a leisurely breakfast, chat with Spiros and then roam the quiet paths of Kameres before boarding. Soon, we were on the bus heading towards Appolonia. At the capital city, we turned west and started down the rather breathtakingly steep switchback road to Vathy. It didn’t take long for most of the people on the bus to switch seats, leaving me and Sean alone on the side nearest the rather precipitous drop-off. We had the best view the whole way down. Suckers!
Vathy turned out to be more beach than town, but what a beach it was. The white sands stretched all the way around the bay to the west and drifted right up to the small town’s doorstep to the east. To the north, set back a ways, was a rather ostentatious looking resort – a rarity on Sifnos. Sean and I followed the 20 or so souls down the beach and found a vendor where we procured beach chairs and an umbrella before we stripped and dove into the water. For the next three hours, we swam, chased fish, sunbathed and read.
Sean decided to take a little afternoon nap under the beach umbrella, leaving me on my own to explore. I noticed we were getting low on water, so wandered off to the east for town. Most of the structures in Vathy town turned out to be private residences, but I did find a small general store. Unfortunately, they were fresh out of bottled water, but the woman helpfully pointed me towards the ostentatious resort. Although I looked rather disheveled from hours of swimming, I wandered back down the beach and onto the property. The change in “feel” was instantaneous. The ground went beyond manicured. In defiance of the aridity of Sifnos, the resort maintained acres of lush grass, which, at least to me, looked horridly out of place and unnatural.
About five women lounged around the HUGE pool, all about 7’5” tall – really just impressive sets of legs topped off by prodigious boob jobs and immaculate hair. I didn’t see anyone swimming. A pair of models posed near a giant chessboard painted into a portion of lawn, the man leaning casually against a rook, the woman flirtatiously toeing the bottom of a pawn. I tried not to read too much into that placement.
I felt a touch out of place, but soldiered on, finally reaching the lobby building. I walked in and waved to the desk clerks. They looked up in tandem and identical smiles lit their perfect faces. I looked behind me to see if someone else had come in and by the time I looked back, two of the resort clones were at my side. They both held brochures.
I’m not exactly sure how this happened. I said I needed water. I got a 30 minute sort of high-pressure sales tour of the resort and a bit of an interrogation regarding where we were staying (“Oh, how quaint! But, entirely unsuitable. You don’t HAVE to stay somewhere like that”). Finally, they told me that my husband and I could take a suite at their resort starting now. They would have a driver go to Kameres and retrieve our things. The low, low price? Off-season, so a reasonable 800 euro a night! Wow! Go to hell resort goons! Give me my 10 euro bottle of water and buzz off! If I had that kind of money, I would STILL be staying at the Alkyonis in Kameres.
The goons weren’t particularly reluctant to let me leave. I don’t think I fit their “type” of clientele anyway. I have a feeling they were just practicing on me because they were bored and it was slow – you know, slickifying their slickness. I did get to see the inside of a suite, though. As plush as it was, if I didn’t look out the window, it could have been any luxury suite in the states. It completely lacked any character or local flavor. Just not my type of gig.
So, back I went across the grounds to swim freely in the sea with my husband, who had woken up some time before and was starting to wonder where I’d gone. Interestingly, over the next few hours, we both noticed a number of helicopters would now and again fly in a line across the entrance to the bay. Later, someone in Appolonia told us that there was a helipad for hotel guests. We also found out that the resort was NOT popular with many of the locals. They felt it was built using “black money” (explained later as money from organized crime) and attracted the types of people that might just change the flavor of authentic, non-touristy, wonderful Sifnos if given half the chance. I truly hope that doesn’t happen.
About an hour and a half before the last bus for Kameres was to leave, Sean and I took another Barrett recommendation and sat down at a taverna in town called Manolis. Right smack in the middle of the tavern’s veranda stood a huge clay oven from which the most mouth-watering smells emitted. We simply pointed first at the oven and then to the large house wine keg in back when our young waitress arrived and she laughed and nodded, understanding perfectly. The house red had a very pleasant zing and came to the table ice cold in a rather large pitcher. We shared a plate of fresh roasted rabbit from the clay oven and it virtually fell off the fork. Holy cow, my stomach just growled. Damn, that was good food. We also had a large Greek salad and the cheese tasted completely different from the cheese served in Kameres – both fantastic, but quite distinctive.
Sated and a bit tipsy, we boarded the bus back to Kameres. Our stomachs were too full to eat again that night, so we mostly wandered around town. Every shop was open and brightly lit and there was almost more shopping activity after dark than during the day. It made for a very festive atmostphere. As usual, Spiros waved us over as we passed and we got our ice creams and chatted. I just want to say, Spiros really typified the warmth and genuine nature of the people we met on Sifnos and Milos and I am so very glad we met him. What a neat person.
Beta|Erinyes 