visit to the vatican

the humans

the photo taking, like there is no tomorrow

the museum the architecture the art the basilica the proportions!

the sistine is a little bit of a let-down. perhaps because it has been so thoroughly pre-explained that the wonder of a new place is lost. perhaps because it has become a fish-market of sorts, noisy with prohibited chatter. mostly because i don't get why a jew and all his jewish contemporaries are portrayed as anatomically perfect white europeans. great art, yes. but artistic licence stretched to national effrontery, if you ask me. also totally inaccurate.

i feel like i've ticked off one on my bucket list.

greece, in summary

the ruins are magnificent

their religion is ornate and florid

it's a beautiful country

i've had better food

i've had much better food

traveling through greece

the good:

• i get to practice recognizing the greek alphabet
• and realize i have been saying them wrong all this time, the bees and the vees and the dees and the thees
• also i get to marvel at greek words that have wandered in to english, the thesaurus that became our treasury and the metamorphosis that transfigured, and i feel a tiny part of a magnificent edifice that spans thousands of years
• plus a constant supply of greek myths far more elaborate and salacious than today's tv and book offerings
• and an actual physical location to those old names: theseus minos the sphinx and all the inhabitants of tanglewood

the good is that this is the trip to pull my patchy education in the classics training in the sciences dabbles of the socratic method and fancy for juicy stories together

the bad:

• the food sounds better than it tastes, or perhaps that is because we are with a group tour
• and the environs are a tad slummy, or is that the microenvironment we end up in
• also the cognitive dissonance i guess, of Helen the beautiful and the EU member today

thoughts as i visit delfi

it occurs to me

that a ancient devotee

going to the oracle

must be

moving through much

never-ending construction

imagine 

the constant erection

of new statues

the constant setting up

of new offerings

of streams of pilgrims

the temple is only perfect

like a memory

to the pine

straight and tall

against the sky

atten-shun!

greek tragedy

visiting greece. lovely snow-capped mountains rolling fields dipping valleys and breathtaking views. the cradle of civilization, they tell me proudly. the intellectual foundation of western thought philosophy science and literature. the ancient monuments are magnificent. what manner of hand shaped those pillars carved those likenesses? what manner of mind thought of kronos and chairos when i only think of time? or calls a dateline the appointed time, infinitely more elegantly and efficiently? what manner of training gave us Socrates Aristotole Homer Alexander and such? 

what happened? that i should look at thessaloniki today and cannot conceive of it in its heyday. that i should walk the streets of athens and be aware only of an anticlimax. the utilitarian buildings. the graffiti. the unemployed. the strays. the run-down the unwashed the cheap touristy knock-offs and the things that don't work. 

what happened? that i hear of chinese israeli german american japanese korean innovations but not of greek? that one thinks of greece more in terms of the greek life in american colleges than in terms of modern philosophy architecture or scientific discoveries?

when did the sublime become so defiled?

turkish thots

what I learn from a day-layover in Stamboul:

• turks love their smoke, and a particularly potently odoriferous one it is too
• they are marvelously cheery and friendly, even to a jaded tourist like me
• but that makes them cheerfully rubber about their time management, to put it politely
• the arasta bazaar is way more pleasant than the grand one, in terms of crowdedness
• but the grand bazaar is way more fun and stuffed, mainly in a chatuchak way

i buy me a lovely heavy golden embroidered shawl that i must now find excuse to wear frequently. on a related note, HOM and i buy us a senneh kilim, despite and in full recognition of the embargo on new big items in our home. there is something pernicious about shopping on vacation.