Poem: Sailing To Naxos, or, The Vortex

By Jack Brummet 

Sailing the poly-blue Aegean
On a hot day in a steamy haze,
Our ship makes a wide looping turn
A few kilometers off
The white house-dappled shore
Of Naxos, parked in the sea
Like a gem in a finding,
The houses and villas
Strung along the shore
And two layers above
Like a three strand pearl necklace
On the stout and broad neck of a Cyclops,
Waiting to leap from the sea,
And use our ship to beat the sea
Into a churning and foaming
Soup of whirlpools and funnels
That suck everything in sight
Into a sapphire blue vortex,
The water cooling each meter,
As it swirls down and cascades
Into Neptune's drain and picks up speed
As it descends into the dark
And lonely bottom of the sea.              ---o0o---

Faces Drawing No. 239 - from Naxos

Drawings by Jack Brummet[drawn in Naxos, Greece, 2008]

Poem: Sailing To Naxos, or, The Vortex

By Jack Brummet

Sailing the poly-blue Aegean
On a hot day in a steamy haze,
Our ship makes a wide looping turn
A few kilometers off
The white house-dappled shore
Of Naxos, parked in the sea
Like a gem in a finding,
The houses and villas
Strung along the shore
And two layers above
Like a three strand pearl necklace
On the stout and broad neck of a Cyclops,
Waiting to leap from the sea,
And use our ship to beat the sea
Into a churning and foaming
Soup of whirlpools and funnels
That suck everything in sight
Into a sapphire blue vortex,
The water cooling each meter,
As it swirls down and cascades
Into Neptune's drain and picks up speed
As it descends into the dark
And lonely bottom of the sea.
---o0o---

Changes I've noticed in Greece, Part 1, or, I miss the old Retsina

St. Francis of Assisi outside his church in Rhodes - click to enlarge


I don't have much time to do this--the Germans are patiently watching me, and of course, they can read this too, since they sit five feet behind me. OK, I am uploading this off the USB stick, and hope I edited it when I wrote it (I don't remember!).

Changes in Europe in general - I won't focus on how very expensive it is here. Unlike our last trip, we've seen very few Americans. It is very pricy in Europe right now, even in lower cost destinations like Turkey and Greece.



Jack outside a console club in Rhodes...the consoles are Game Cube, PS/2, and XBox

The E.U. seems like the biggest change, and it really feels like the destinies of most of the EU countries are now even more strongly interlinked than ever before. The common currency in particular seems both an aspirational thing and a burden. I kind of miss Drachmas.

Retsina - When we were in Greece in 1982, almost al the restsina you drank came from a wooden barrel, often served in a ceramic or copper pitcher. We have had a lot of retsina on this trip, but none so far has come from the barrel (at least directly). It is almost always served in 500 ML bottles (a regular bottle of wine is 750 ML). It is still pretty cheap. Back then it was about $1.00 a bottle. Now, it is more like 2-3 Euros for the 500 ML size ($3 to $4.50 USD). I kind of miss some of that barrel retsina, since once in a while you’d get some heavily resinated wine. Now, it is resinated, but not too much. I miss that more over the top version, unsurprisingly—who wants subtle? Claire seems to like Retsina, but Column does not…in fact he coined the name Wine-Sol for it.

English - Since this was my first trip to Turkey. I don’t know how their English was way back when. But I thought they spoke a surprising amount this time around. Even though we’ve seen very few Americans on this trip, and not all that many Aussies or Brits, English is spoken much more in Greece than before. Not so much as anaccomodation to language-weak Americans, but as the mutual language between Euro-language speakers. It is common to see, say, a German, a Greek, A japanese and a Dutch person speaking English...their one common language.

If signs plaques, or posters are translated, they are almost always in both Greek and English. Museums in particular follow this convention. In Greece, street signs are often now transliterated. When I was here before, you had to at least learn the Greek alphabet to get around.

The American Presidency - Some things never change. When we were here in 1982, the Europeans did not at all like our President, Ronald Reagan. In 2008, they really really do not like our President, George Bush. Our landlord laughingly made the cut his throat sign about Bush when she asked us what we thought about Mr. Bush. He has not made anything easier for anyone here, and most of these countries—part of the “coalition”—lost boys in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Greeks in particular seem fond of “America.” As far as I can tell, mainly because there is a large Greek community in America, and almost all of them have an uncle, cousin, aunt, or brother living in the United States. Or maybe it’s because of Telly Savalas. More on the changes later. Love, Jack
---o0o---

Naxos - 37 hours and our final island hop before Athens

The tiny and no longer used St. Giogrios' in a village on Naxos - click to enlarge.

We arrived on Naxos after a stunnning two-hour sailing across the Aegean, right past the Santorini volcano, covered with dark lava scree. It was a massive cattle call getting on the boat, but I raced ahead of the family, sidestepping all the maddening roller-carts, and snagged a table and chairs on the very top deck, in the open air. It was a great ride past dozens of islands. We arrived on Naxos at about 7:00 pm. Naxos is a gorgeous, less hectic island than Rhodes or Santorini. We mainly just chilled out, wrote, swam a little, and had some drinks.

Keelin and Jack on our one night in Santorini/Thira - click to enlarge

Our landlord, Irena. proprietor of Irena II Pensione was sweet, and greeted us with ice cream bars, compliments on our family, and asking us about our Presidente. Then she laughed and made the throat cumming pantomime as we let her know we were glad he would soon be out of office. Like many Greeks and Turks, she seemed to feel warmly about America(ns).

We rented a car today and drove out to an extremely remote and windy beach and enjoyed our last beach day of the trip. I wrote a poem. We watched dozens of parasailers, kites, etc., in the brisk winds. I collected a few rocks.

Our two little friends who thought we'd come to feed them -click to enlarge

On our way home we stopped by one unmarked ruin, an old monastery, and at an old "plant" that makes Citron liqueur, Raki, Ouzo and some other distilled goodies. Then we walked through some alleys and fields and visited St. Giorgio's, an old Greek Orthodox Church that is extremely intact. I don't know if it's been restored or not. And I am blanking on the name of the village--something that has been happening a lot...we've been so many places in the last four weeks, it's sometimes hard to remember!

We saw two adorable lambs, chickens, and figs, grapes, and artichokes growing in fields and yards. Then we drove back to Naxos Town (Chora).

Tomorrow morning, we sail to Piraeus, the port of Athens, for three days in that polluted, hectic, crazy city, to visit the great archaeological museum there, and of course, the Acropolis and Parthenon...definitely the most inspiring ruins I saw on my last visit to Greece.

As always. when I am on a computer at a hotel, two people are waiting, so I'll post the poem another time, and another article I wrote on changes in Greece.

---o0o---