existence as sheer repetition, and alleviates a growing and gnawing ennui, though only temporarily. Sometimes, and it’s a feeling I can barely describe, sometimes I am at a table and someone begins to speak and I feel, oh no, not this, oh, not this, not again; and inside me, in the pit of my stomach, I sense I am dying, that the words being spoken by the other are in fact drawing my life from me, bleeding me. At other times I feel I cannot breathe, that I am being suffocated, that the breath of life itself is being stolen from me and I am being buried alive.
Normal boredom is not so dramatic, of course. I became bored with life when I was about thirty-five. It was then that I recognized that there wasn’t more to it than there’d already been, and that it would go on and on in a similar manner. I took to my bed for a year and then, years later, moved to Greece. I move slowly along the dusty streets, watching my shadow, which is more nimble than I. The sun still holds itself firmly overhead, glaring at us mortals, at me and my shadow. Me and my shadow…Me and my shadow. Fred Astaire, da-da, and my shadow, strolling down the avenue. In my mind’s eye, I wrest the pearl-handled cane from my arthritic fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wheeler, and stride across the unpaved avenue. No one notices my dashing movements, for this dance is internal, not of this world, and in slow motion. Time moves so slowly here. Time is a tortoise, not a frog. Take my hand, I’m a frog in paradise, just a frog in paradise. Da-da.
The stores close for several hours during the heat of the day. Shopkeepers dawdle as they pull down the shutters. Salespeople dally among themselves, talking in groups. Their bodies are relaxed, planted in the moment; they are not rushing to the next appointment. In cafés the old men—dare I say that, they may be my age—sit at plain wooden card tables, wearing frayed jackets, and play tavoli, their white heads bent in concentration over the board, their fingers jiggling their worry beads. Small glasses of ouzo may be gulped down between moves, yet none of them ever seems to become drunk. It is a marvel to me. Their wives are at home, attending to their small houses or carrying roasts to the baker’s oven. The men have their cafés. The women meet in the tangled alleyways between their houses, and they exchange news. Do they complain about their husbands? Nectaria, who takes care of me and the hotel, Nectaria knows all the town gossip. She is the queen of this part of town as Alicia is the queen of our community.
The covered market is open. It is so grand and plain, so complex and simple, such a home of opposites, of everything and nothing. I could become dizzy merely from the pungent scents and mellifluous rumble of voices. So much life exists here, it bubbles forth from the stalls. Today it excites me, satisfies me, whereas on other days the very same scenes, sounds and smells might bring me to an exhaustion I despair of, to an aggrieved alienation. I love the displays of fruit and vegetables, the range and array of colors any nineteenth-century artist would have envied. Green and purple figs, brown and black olives, ocher nuts, golden raisins, thick white yogurt—some feel it is the best in the world—gray and pink fish. I dislike looking at the various fish, but not as much as looking at octopuses. A cornucopia of delights with none of the razzmatazz of modern life, just a marketplace, just a meeting place, something ordinary to all who live here. Why trade this ordinary beauty, this everyday luxury, for supermarkets. Yet this is how life has gone in the West, and though I am in the West, even in the birthplace of its civilization, as the Greeks love to boast, I am far from its most avid practitioners, far from total modernity, from the city, the sophisticated city I know, love and hare, the city that thrills and repels me. I miss it sometimes but as I grow less agile, I am aware that merely walking down Fifth
Normal boredom is not so dramatic, of course. I became bored with life when I was about thirty-five. It was then that I recognized that there wasn’t more to it than there’d already been, and that it would go on and on in a similar manner. I took to my bed for a year and then, years later, moved to Greece. I move slowly along the dusty streets, watching my shadow, which is more nimble than I. The sun still holds itself firmly overhead, glaring at us mortals, at me and my shadow. Me and my shadow…Me and my shadow. Fred Astaire, da-da, and my shadow, strolling down the avenue. In my mind’s eye, I wrest the pearl-handled cane from my arthritic fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Wheeler, and stride across the unpaved avenue. No one notices my dashing movements, for this dance is internal, not of this world, and in slow motion. Time moves so slowly here. Time is a tortoise, not a frog. Take my hand, I’m a frog in paradise, just a frog in paradise. Da-da.
The stores close for several hours during the heat of the day. Shopkeepers dawdle as they pull down the shutters. Salespeople dally among themselves, talking in groups. Their bodies are relaxed, planted in the moment; they are not rushing to the next appointment. In cafés the old men—dare I say that, they may be my age—sit at plain wooden card tables, wearing frayed jackets, and play tavoli, their white heads bent in concentration over the board, their fingers jiggling their worry beads. Small glasses of ouzo may be gulped down between moves, yet none of them ever seems to become drunk. It is a marvel to me. Their wives are at home, attending to their small houses or carrying roasts to the baker’s oven. The men have their cafés. The women meet in the tangled alleyways between their houses, and they exchange news. Do they complain about their husbands? Nectaria, who takes care of me and the hotel, Nectaria knows all the town gossip. She is the queen of this part of town as Alicia is the queen of our community.
The covered market is open. It is so grand and plain, so complex and simple, such a home of opposites, of everything and nothing. I could become dizzy merely from the pungent scents and mellifluous rumble of voices. So much life exists here, it bubbles forth from the stalls. Today it excites me, satisfies me, whereas on other days the very same scenes, sounds and smells might bring me to an exhaustion I despair of, to an aggrieved alienation. I love the displays of fruit and vegetables, the range and array of colors any nineteenth-century artist would have envied. Green and purple figs, brown and black olives, ocher nuts, golden raisins, thick white yogurt—some feel it is the best in the world—gray and pink fish. I dislike looking at the various fish, but not as much as looking at octopuses. A cornucopia of delights with none of the razzmatazz of modern life, just a marketplace, just a meeting place, something ordinary to all who live here. Why trade this ordinary beauty, this everyday luxury, for supermarkets. Yet this is how life has gone in the West, and though I am in the West, even in the birthplace of its civilization, as the Greeks love to boast, I am far from its most avid practitioners, far from total modernity, from the city, the sophisticated city I know, love and hare, the city that thrills and repels me. I miss it sometimes but as I grow less agile, I am aware that merely walking down Fifth
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