Oh! My Sweet Greece

Elafonisi Island off the coast from Niela's village

I am back at home in Denver after two weeks in Greece. I am listening to a CD I purchased on my way out of Athens: Oh! My Sweet Air by Stamatis Spanoudakis. I listened to a cassette recording of these synthesized liturgical instrumental songs every night as I fell to sleep during the two years I lived in Greece from 1982-84. Even though I had not heard this music since my switch to CDs years ago, I recognized the first note when I heard it play at the music store. Oh! My Sweet Air will ease the transition between the two starkly different worlds I inhabit—from the sound of tolling bells and water lapping on a pebble beach to leaf blowers and lawn mowers; from the sight of dark-leafed orange trees dotted with bright rounds of fruit and hillsides bursting with yellow-blooming broom to shouting billboards and dull asphalt; from the lively fragrance of jasmine and wild thyme to exhaust fumes deadening the air; from the measured pace of a seaside walk to a frenzy on the streets.

I traveled to a Greece that has suffered much this past year, a Greece that will suffer even greater assaults before this economic/political storm passes. An occasional scar from the rioting that occurred in Athens when reforms were instituted this past spring can still be seen if one scrutinizes the facades of buildings around Syntagma Square. Numerous storefront vacancies were harder to miss. And the incomparable Benaki Museum is now closed on Mondays as well as Tuesdays.


The tide is far from turning, and yet there are signs of tenacity everywhere: a new vegetarian/vegan café and a kicky new coffee shop around the corner from my Hotel Adonis in Athens, and a new antique shop on the pedestrian mall; upgrades in all the small hotels I stayed in; new small wineries winning gold and silver medallions at international competitions for their velvety smooth wines with complex flavors and long finishes. And a people known and honored since the time of Homer for their warmth and hospitality do not even now lay their burdens on their guests. On the contrary, I and other travelers in Greece were struck by the heightened warm greetings, generosity, and good wishes. And more importantly, I heard repeated assertions from the Greeks themselves that they have survived worse things—that their spirit will never die.

talented and spunky chef Eleni at Avra Hotel, Kiparissi, Lakonia

In spite of all Greece's challenges, local food continues to be fresh and flavorful, the wines are now better than ever, the landscapes and seascapes triumph, the history of course only deepens, and the people teach resilience and hospitality by example. In other words, just as every note of Oh! My Sweet Air is as evocative as it was the first time I heard the album decades ago, the Greece I have just left is fundamentally the Greece I have known since my first trip there 38 years ago—and I love it still.

I simply wanted you to know. And, on behalf of my friends in Greece, I invite you to spread the word.

Resilience. Tenacity. Grace.

Balboa Park, San Diego, February 2012

Possibility

In 1984 when I was 40, I purchased a house in a village in Greece. It was a roofless dwelling used only to stable sheep. I did not ask myself whether I could restore the house; I simply knew I wanted to and would. Repairing the walls stone by stone with my own hands, I plumbed the depths of my ingenuity, I met the limits of my physical strength and endurance, I confronted my loneliness, I paid tribute to my father who brought out the builder in me, and I avoided my mother’s reach long enough to discover who I am.

Years after the roof went on and the door was hung, images of the house appeared in my paintings. But, ironically, I have spent precious little time there since the structure became habitable. What, then, made me undertake the restoration? Possibility, I think. What have I brought away from the experience? An understanding that potential resides within each of us, and—if we are fortunate—we develop it into something wonderful.

photo credits: top, Thordis Simonsen, 1984; bottom, Betty Hurt, 2004

Being There

This is the window I recognized in painting #114 shown in the 4 July 2011 post. It belongs to the "sheep corral" I purchased in the Greek village, Elika, in 1984. The purchase was motivated by an inexplicable urge to have a village home of my own to return to after having rented there for two years. At the time I committed myself to the house, I had no idea what my relationship to the village would look like in the long run. Indeed, since taking occupancy in 1991, I have returned often to Greece as an independent small-group travel guide, but I have spent precious little time under my red clay-tile roof. This year I spent only 10 days in Elika.

When I used to consider my relationship to the house, I thought of it in physical terms—walking the footpath to my door, pruning my two olive trees, mixing mortar and setting stone. Being there, that is to say. But my understanding changed when I began to see evidence of the house in paintings I made while residing in my other home in Colorado. Every image in my oil pastel gallery on my web site, for that matter, represents some aspect of my Greek experience: the house, a chapel built over a spring, a heather-clad hill under a fall sky, an olive tree. True, I immersed myself in day-to-day village life side-by-side with my neighbors and am referred to as an Elikiotissa—a woman of Elika. True the house restoration has been a hands-on project spanning many years. Still, I was surprised to learn through the painting experience that, while the window in the photograph above looks out to sea, the opening depicted in painting #114 is a window into my soul.

Beyond the Stars

For years I had envisioned this oil pastel painting (#114) from 2005 on the front cover of Dances in Two Worlds—the realm on one side of a window expansive and bright, that on the other side implied but not defined. I understood that the image draws one in—perfect for a book cover. It is, I realized after I had completed it, a representation of the window of the house I have been restoring in Greece.

On the back cover, I had pictured a photograph of me replacing the lintels over the door of the house. It captures the intimacy of my relationship with stone that is conveyed by the painting. And it refers to one of the themes—my life in Greece—that I write about in the narratives that accompany the paintings in Dances in Two Worlds.

But my graphic designer, Sammy Lee, was not satisfied with this cover. She wanted to take the design to a “higher level.” “What do you envision?” I kept asking her. Finally she said she liked to watch me apply ink to my monotype plate with my brayer—the sweeping gesture. (Whether by chance or by design, Sammy and I had started printmaking together with Mark Lunning last fall, and I engaged her to design my book straightway.) Suddenly, I got it. Going from the first painting I had ever made (as an adult) reproduced inside the book to the most recent painting, before going to press, on the cover!

Sammy had always wanted a cover image that would “wrap” from front to back. This was my chance to give it to her. I also promised her an image that would wrap the cover flaps as well.

I was excited. I had already been painting what I knew to be the Wyoming sky (see #185 in the book or on my website gallery). The next thing I knew, I had painted the Wyoming night sky I write about in the first essay, “Fireflies.” The tall narrow proportions of these night sky paintings did not fit the book’s page size, however, and Sammy and I were both disappointed not to include them in the final manuscript. But now I had a chance to bring the metaphor of the Wyoming night sky full circle by painting it for the cover.

I was as scared as I was excited because I had never before worked “on demand.” Painting for me had always been about letting go of control, not taking charge of the process by prescribing the outcome. When I went to the studio the next day, I prepared a plate the exact same size as the front and back covers combined. I kept the idea of a Wyoming night sky in mind and visualized white space for the book title. Then I got to work. #197 emerged.

The day after that, I set about, in the same manner, to paint an image that would encompass the flaps as well. The entire time that I worked, I focused on the possibilities, not the outcome. Intuition took me where intellect would never have traveled. On which side of the window does intuition dwell? In the deepest recess of one’s inner landscape? Or somewhere beyond the stars?

The Fundamental Note

W. W. Norton published my first book, You May Plow Here: The Narrative of Sara Brooks. The Fundamental Note published my second book, Dancing Girl: Themes and Improvisations in a Greek Village Setting. I first came across the term “fundamental note” in the late 80s. A book club where I had been guest author with You May Plow Here had invited me to join their group. I don’t remember the title of the book we read or the name of the author or the details of the story—it was about a British woman adventurer who drove her car all the way to the Near East around the time of the First World War. Something like that. I don’t recall the context in which the words were used. I just remember the term: the fundamental note. I liked the sound of it.

And the meaning. In music: the root of a chord, the generator of a series of harmonies. The perfect name for the imprint that would publish stories about the women in the Greek village I had come to call home—and my life with them. Differences notwithstanding, I came to understand that the women of Elika and I have in common feelings that need to be expressed. We have in common a spirit that wants to be set free. We share this yearning: to sing the fundamental note that vibrates within.

Knowing this, it seems appropriate that The Fundamental Note has now published my third book, Dances in Two Worlds: A Writer-Artist’s Backstory. The essays and the paintings I made during the past 20 years document obstacles I have faced, questions I have asked, actions I have taken. The process of writing and painting transformed how I experience my past—what had often felt like a hindrance has become a positive force. The past has become my ally. And the yearning has given way to gratitude. The fundamental note—sung over and over again—in technicolor.

A Sustaining Activity

This is the painting I mentioned in my previous post. Why make them wait to see it, I asked myself. So here it is. To me the piece looks like a finger-painting a kindergartener might have made, but I was 44, and I applied tempera paint with a brush. Naive though it is, the hallmarks of my work to this day are revealed in this scribble: bright colors and bold lines. In Dances in Two Worlds, I describe the circumstances of my upbringing that primed me to paint. And I write about the forces that inhibited me from doing so. Significantly, two generations of women behind me—my mother and my grandmother—had communicated "the validity of creative self-expression as a sideline but never as a sustaining activity." When I finally did give myself permission to paint...those vibrant colors and the dynamic lines! I sometimes think there is only one explanation—three generations of women are making themselves heard with every brushstroke I make.