"aha" moment...

Xania June 2004 © Priya Tuli

Timing is everything. I know, I should be telling you something you don't know, but I rediscovered this little axiom tonight, when I was riffling through my vast collection of photographs of... groan... Greek doors!

I have more of the leprouschipped&peeling (deliciously ineluctable!) doors from my first trip in November 2001, and more brightshiny devoidofcharacterbutstillarresting doors from my last trip in June 2004.

How come, right? Timing!!! April/May is around the time things slowly start gearing up for the onslaught of the tourist season. Paint jobs, repairs, all that stuff. So when I got there in June, I found disappointingly faultless new paintwork, all bright and clean, awaiting the tourists. Gah!

By November, however, the meltemi has usually had its way with the paintwork, the sun has burned the high gloss down, the humidity and salt spray has done its magic and bingo! George Meis-type vistas, awaiting conversion to megalostacks of photographs.

Now that I've worked it out, I have a surefire way to avoid taking ANY more door shots. Go in June!













Xania June 2004 © Priya Tuli

Coffeetime!!! Ena kafe metrio, parakalo!

DeepblueGreekceramicKafemugs. Xania, Crete. June 2004 © Priya Tuli

Axx, coffee...but no, no more rhapsodies. Just the facts here today. And not too many, just enough to put a few hairs on a few chests.

I discovered Greek coffee has much in common with Indonesian coffee, or Java as the cognoscenti prefer to call it. (Java is actually just ONE variety...there's Bali, Toraja, Arabica, Robusta, Mandehling...and many more that I can't even remember, much less pronounce.) Mostly because they're both served strong, black and thick with coffee grounds.

In Greece, coffee is prepared the traditional way in a "briki", which is a dinky little copper or brass pot with a long handle. I think it has a neutral coating of tin on the inside, so the coffee doesn't react chemically with the copper/brass.

I'm no cordon bleu, and I could be wrong but I think this is how it happens: you put water in the pot, throw in some fresh ground coffee and some sugar, boil it up and pour it into a cup, mug or even your cupped palms, depending how masochistic you're feeling. Ouch, hotttt! And then you wait for the grounds to settle before drinking it, unless you want to spend all of next week picking them out of your teeth.

So basically, as you may have gathered, it's a thick mess with the grounds still in it. Much like Turkish coffee, but don't tell the Greeks I said that. The grounds were a bit unnerving for a friend I was travelling with, who shall remain anonymous. One sip, and that was the end of the whole affair. She went on a nomorecoffee jag for the rest of the trip, I think. It's fairly strong stuff, and yes you could stand a spoon or three in it, if you were that way inclined.

Indonesian Kopi Tobruk, which is how most Indonesian coffee is prepared, is less complicated because you just toss everything together in a mug: hot water, coffee, sugar if you want it. Now give it a good old stir. Again, you need to wait for the grounds to settle. Now, drink. Also fairly strong stuff, which makes me wonder how my Decaf-loving friend would take to it. Must remember to ask. Lin? Did you drink any in Crete at all? Or did you wimp out?!? Me, I grew much hair on my chest that trip...good strong coffee will do that to you.

An Ineluctable Progression of Doors...

© Priya Tuli

Among the squadrillion other reasons why I will never forget my first trip to Greece, are the 89,000 photos of doors I now have in my possession.

Practically anyone who's ever been to Greece would know exactly what I'm talking about. There is an ineluctable magic in those doors. The paint is often chipped and peeling, the surrounding walls often leprous and damp...and this is exactly why they make the most stupendously graphic visual images. As a matter of fact, the more old and leprous, the better. Ohhh look, there's another one!

You whip out your camera, and uh oh; that's a surefire signal for that multitude of little voices in your head to start on you. They've all become regular drones, nagging you in whiny tones ranging from baritone to soprano, "But do you really need one more photograph of a door?" and "This one looks exactly like about 23,000 others you have, down to the colour and number of panels!" and "What d'you plan to do with them all anyway? It's not as if you're George Meis, with a signature-postcard-and-calendar empire..." Hrmm. Being a reasonable sort, you let them all have their say. You mull over their observations and see the merit in them and you know what? They're right. Enough with the doors.

In fact, everywhere you look, there are photo-ops staring you in the face. There are faces, and fabric, and donkeys, and tavernas, and bouzouki, and cobbled streets, and cats, and beaches, and boats, andandand...butbutbut ohmygod, look at THIS door!!! It's so graphic!!! And there you go again.



© Priya Tuli

Fortunately, my last trip went a little better. The door count is down, the window count is up. I also found some shiny newly-painted doors, all acrylic emulsion or whatever it is they use to paint doors. So this was already a departure from the I-am-going-to-take-a-million-shots-of-these-wonderful-old-doors mode of the first trip.

Unfortunately, the high gloss is a bad idea because it bounces the light and the results are not always pleasing. To my mind, they lack depth and character and yes, most definitely, they entirely lack that deliciously tangible ineluctability (yesss, I love that word!) that the old, leprous ones smite you with. So ahem, yes I did take some more of those, too. But my next trip, for SURE, no more doors. None.
Not. A. Single. One.

© Priya Tuli

Axx Ithaki...

Sunburst over Ithaki...what a glorious welcome to the island at journey's end!

© Priya Tuli

When does an impulse turn into a passion? At what point does the change-over happen? I find the lines are often blurred; there is much in common between the two. Both involve following your heart. Your soul. The voices in your head. Often, the beat of a different drummer. You just HAVE to do it. There are no options, no choices. It's the only thing.

It might start with a thought, a sound, a colour, a smell...the trigger could be anything. Quietly, in the darkest recesses of your mind, it grows to monstrous proportions, unnoticed, over the years. Till one fine day it suddenly leaps up screaming, and engulfs you completely. You thrash around, powerless to resist. It sucks you in, chews you up and spits you out, and you pick yourself up and go after it. There is nothing else you can do. And so, a passion is born.

It was a bit like that with the poem.

Ithaki.
Magical journey of mythic proportions. Of ships and storms and high seas, of Cyclops and Laistrygonians, of challenges and discoveries and victories. And above all, of passion. For the journey of a lifetime...the journey of life.

It first touched me when I was 21, a poem shared by a friend over a revolting cup of coffee at the university cafeteria. I hastily scrawled it on the fly-leaf of a course-book, ripped out the page to keep it safe, and promptly lost sight of it.

Ah, but already it had seeded itself, unbidden and unmarked. When I re-discovered it nearly 15 years later, it seemed like an old friend...the words familiar but still new, as if read for the first time. Still with the power to bring a gleam to my eye, a rush of adrenalin surging through my corpus, and this pure impulse to GO! nownownow!! The meaning remained the same, yet the meaning had changed, with all that had passed in the years between.

I seemed closer now, further along on this journey of life, with 'Ithaki' almost within reach...but it would be another 8 years before I would actually get there. For one, I still didn't know that the island really existed. I truly believed it was just another Greek myth, like the countless others I had devoured during my schooldays, fascinated by all the complex relationships and fantastic tales...(those were the days before Dr Seuss and Harry Potter and Lemony Snicket, remember, all we had was good ol' Jabberwocky!)

Then, almost a quarter century (!) from the time I first discovered the poem, I found out that the island DOES exist, it is NOT just another myth about Odysseus and Penelope...and that's when it grabbed me by the throat. There really IS an Ithaki!! And I simply HAD to go there!!!

The voices in my head shouted out like a Greek chorus gone mad: GO GO GO!!! NOW NOW NOW!!! Butbutbut I was broke, and out of work...how would I do this? The voices just grew louder. (They talk to me all the time, it's when they shout I sit up and take notice!)

So...yes. I finally made it to Ithaki in 2001. And then again, in June 2004. And what was it like, this island home of Ulysses? Did it live up to its promise, was it worthy of the myths? I'd rather let the poem speak to you, as it spoke to me. And so, the journey continues...

Vathy, Ithaki...idyllic mythicalislandhome of Ulysses

© Priya Tuli

ITHAKA
When you set out for Ithaka
Ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops
Angry Posiedon - do not fear them :
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body...
...you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul could raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a summer dawn to enter
- with what gratitude, what joy -
ports seen for the first time
to stop at Phoenician trading centres...
...to visit Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all that you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you the splendid journey
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
So wise have you become, of such experience,
that already you'll have understood
what these Ithakas mean.
-Kavafis

Factoid: In English, it's Ithaka; in Greek, it's Ithaki. In English it's Ahh, in Greek, it's Axx!