Strata

            Our goodbye was cold and thin. Looking at him, seeing his lake-eyes frozen over, I glimpsed distant life beneath their ice barrier. The closure of winter had allowed the congealed blue beneath his lids to thaw. The sun warmed my shoulders, beads of sweat, tears, something, dripped from his eyes.  In the awakened water fish swam between moss and sea grass, rocking back and forth with the moving tide. The season changed, and there we stood.

            I wiped the sweat off his brow and looked away, eyes squinting from the intensity of the summer’s sun. The escapade that was once our love and lust had grown old and disillusioned. We stood facing each other, arms dangling like the morning’s catch strung along the lakeshore. Words ran in terror from my panic. Afraid to look again into his eyes, I turned away from him and toward my car. The suitcases were stacked so that I couldn’t see out the passenger windows. I took one last look at him, burning the image in my memory.

            I turned the ignition, and in an instant the roar of the car filled me with excitement. The gravel under my wheels soothed me, calmed me. I tried to see above the suitcases for a final glance, but the baggage was stacked too high. Not even the scolding afternoon sunlight could reach me through that barrier.

            The car drove; I was gone. The plane flew; I had arrived.

            Athens is a city atop a city, each stratum representing an era, pressed into hidden layers. The layers of rock press upon each other, laying to rest centuries of history, some organic, some ethnographic, but all holding lost dwellings and ancient artifacts. Athens is a city folded over on itself generation after generation, and again. Ancient catacombs and underground passages loom beneath the weight and rattle of Metro trains charging down the tracks.

            The Greek language itself—spread out in stratigraphy, replaced by a more modern tongue—is impossible to understand fully without grasping its technical gradation. Understanding the symbols allows one to read the word. Speaking the word allows one to suspect the word’s meaning. Glimpsing the word’s meaning allows one to communicate and acclimate, to feel more comfortable waltzing these streets in a dreamlike state, skimming atop layers of history folded in the fallen cities underfoot.

           

            I had believed that I understood his language, had known his depths. I had traced every groove of his abdomen, the ridge of his brow, the way his eyelash rested upon his cheek while he slept. I knew his face on the cusp of laughter; I knew when he was repressing his words, frustration hardening around his eyes, his mouth.

            These cosmetic dispositions were both our form of communication and of concealment, leaving unexposed what was internal, secret, buried.

             I never really knew him at all.

             I could not see the catacombs of his past alongside a pair of metro tracks. I could not apprehend his language. I could try to read it, I could speak it, but I could not communicate, acclimate. I was a foreigner in a place that—for some time—I had mistaken for home.

            Athens was home to me only briefly, just long enough for a mosquito bite to itch terribly and fade away, long enough for a bruise to throb and dissipate into yellow, then nothing. Peeling back the layers of Athens—beneath the buildings lined with graffiti, the gutters home to unloved cats, abandoned dogs, the tracks of the metro, the ancient ruins of other worlds so far from us now, the layers of sediment and rock—I found the sea. I found the sea and the ferry that shepherded me across its vast expanse of deep blue might.

            As the ferry left the Athens port I felt unburdened. The coast faded and the seawater attainted a darker shade of blue; from the deck I saw Athens behind my wake, apologizing for nothing and wishing me the best of luck. My adventure had resurrected and new life awaited me in Serifos.

            The sea was so open, directionless—the cluster and stress of Athens, and of my relationship, were far behind me now. The ferry rumbled powerfully underfoot. Revitalization was no longer a mere craving but a reality.

            Leaving was easy.

            He would still exist without my being near, waiting for me, thinking of me, but I desired nothing he had to offer. A sea away, a street away, a table away, from across the crowd. He is gone, near or far. I cannot see him now.

            The hole I dug for myself sank deeper and deeper, its slippery mud walls melting under my hands as I clawed and clung. I could see the oval opening high above my head where the sun awaited me and clouds passed—the way out.

            For a while, he and I dug together, slaving and sweating over rusted shovels.  Now my hands blistered under the burden of a chore meant for two.

            The ferry’s strident horn roused me from my ocean deep sleep and drew me to the surface of what I assumed to be a coast. My confusion and panic from that startling transition soon turned to disbelief when I looked to see the port town spinning. Our boat was turning a tight rotation, backing up to the pier.

            I had arrived at Serifos, a place where even the Greek gods and heroes sought refuge and calm.

            I watched the ferry’s massive door slowly open; light flooded in through the expanding gap, vanquishing darkness. The sun, setting over the surrounding mountains, illuminated white homes coating the tiers of the town before me, and the lapping waves at my side.

            Reptilian, I stood in the sun, shedding misconceptions, memories, and persuasions from layer after brittle layer of my obsolete skin. My desire to observe the organs of the island—its functions and expectations, the darkness of the mines—seems pointless and flat. The caves of the Cyclops are empty, holding only echoes, myths, unanswerable questions.

            I felt the urge to rise from the depths and reach the summit of those unwavering mountains, out of my mind and my loneliness, to see the island from a perspective of panorama. From such great heights, perhaps, I would understand the island and the culture that started at the bottom of the sea and slowly grew—over thousands upon thousands of years—to become paradise.       

            For so long, I had wondered how a life of dreams came to be, how illusion could become so believable—living from season to season, job to job, face to face, stacking blocks of adventures, lovers, tales, destinations until they spell “bliss.” Luck? He would say. It is not luck; it is life. You simply have to live it.

            My climb would begin the next evening as the sun began dropping from its highest point in the barren sky. What began as a simple hike became a vision quest.

            The initial physical demands of the hike were more than I had anticipated. My calves ached, and my chest burned. The throbbing in my head synched with the beating of my heart as sweat pumped from my pores. Clustered homes in the town kept any breath of wind from cooling me down. My consciousness grew faint. Already, the water I had chilled for the climb had become too warm to drink, teasing my unquenchable thirst. Catching what was left of my breath for only a moment I ascended with weary determination. Finally, I tapped into the breeze.

            Ahead of me sprawled a narrow dirt road tracing through humble farms between two mountains speckled with black and white goats. The road seemed seldom traveled. I followed.

            As I neared goat pens divided by stone walls that wended up the mountains, the coast that was once invisible turned the distant horizon a profoundly deep blue. Around me, sprawling fields yielded to mountains, the green and deep purple of the sharp brush looking lush and inviting. The stone-walled tributaries trickled from their source at the farms to the mountains’ peaks, sustaining goats big and small, motley and white, each with its legs tethered to prevent escape.

            I stopped to watch the goats and pity their shackled imprisonment. My gaze followed the clumsy footsteps of a bleating kid under the tie’s restraint. The kid struggled, moving awkwardly to catch up with its herd. The kid’s mother turned to it, catching my eye, and I glimpsed a sliver of blue water behind her. Enchanted, I craned my neck for a clearer view. There awaited the cove.

           

            As I ran from one illusion to another, I must have known, must have hoped, this day would find me—the day that control and courage and freedom would be mine to manipulate. I had wanted for so long the end of the endless rehearsals—curtains drawn, take a bow, applause. The years we spent in between bliss and hatred had amounted to a question mark, a furrowed brow, pursed lips. I was the girl who cried wolf, who cried please, don’t go, who cried into a pillow, who cried for help.

            Let go. Don’t look into his lake-blue eyes as they fill with brackish water. Go to it. Don’t listen to his interjections of promise and blame. Descend.

            Nestled between towering walls of prehistoric rock, the inlet seemed small and very far away. I stopped to feel the wind that once carried Paris to Helen and guided Apollo and his steeds across the sky. Now, I felt the desire to abandon my journey and return to the depths. The purpose of my vision quest had appeared below me from the great height I had struggled to climb.

            I began my descent.

            There was no real path to the cove; it had been a figment of my hopeful imagination. I desired a path, something to follow—safety; but my route was a maze among thorny scrub and towers of rock. I scrambled and leapt, trekking over unstable ground.

            Regardless, I kept a fiery determination to reach the cove.

            The challenge was convincing myself to get here, to leave him. That descent, too, had appeared dangerous and risky. I knew I would scrape my knees, pick up the phone, bike past his home. I would wish I hadn’t begun, I would want to go back and lie next to him once again, to watch his chest rise and fall, to wonder what he was dreaming.

            Surrender would be so easy. Baby, I love you. I’m sorry, I was being dramatic. The fault would be mine and he would be mine and I would bow my head in shame, my heart and my pride retreating once again to the unlit depths of my chest.

            As I scrambled, I turned often to admire the distance I had traveled, distracting myself from the hike back up the mountain to the road and my race with the ever-descending sun. It was hot. I was exhausted. At times I wanted to turn back, filling my hazy mind with doubts—the terrain is too rough, I will drown and no one will find me, the cove doesn’t exist.

            But the cove did exist and was my constant motivation, its blue water, arctic and electric, its scale so small in comparison to the surrounding mountains.

            Finally, the land became milder, and the relief of reaching the gentle cove overcame me. The rocks between the bushes became smoother, softer, gradually forming a beach. I arrived.

            The water was energizing and welcoming. I splashed in celebration, feeling the embrace of the sea. Overheated and exhausted, I repeatedly submerged myself in the cove’s water, my entire body tingling, expelling the heat and weariness from each pore, expelling the stresses and worries and burdens from before. Floating on my back I let the Aegean’s sympathetic wake carry me, catching glimpses of the path I chose to climb down, bobbing, water splashing into my eyes and nostrils. The water flooded into my ears and all became quiet. I could hear the steady heaving of my lungs and the throb, throb, throb of my heart.

            Rejuvenation! Celebration! The tether and rusted shovel slowly fell into my hole’s darkness alongside boxes of hatred, memories, and denial, until I could no longer see them, could not even hear them hit the bottom. Behold, life! New life, familiar life, game nights and passing joints and rosy cheeks. The tomatoes tasted like red, the sidewalks didn’t end, and the faces of my friends became familiar. I understood their jokes and their existence. The raft was, again, the shore.

            My knees stung, the pain was wonderful. My eyes dried in the shining sun. From inside me a curious itch bleated through my lips—laughter. At that moment, I couldn’t remember his face at all.