Navigation

Tag Archives | Greece

Sunny days, cooler nights…

By on November 4, 2012 in autumn, beauty, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, silver darkroom, skill and craft

The mid-term break here at the Aegean Center on Paros has drawn to a close.  The first day of the rest of the session begins tomorrow with our Monday morning meeting, and back to work we go.  As usual, most of the students went traveling, as they should, and many came back in time to knuckle down and get back into the swing of things before the final push begins: 31 days until the student exhibit and I, for one, have not done enough.  Granted, I have been shooting a lot of film and developing it, but my digital projects have slowed and I haven’t been printing as much as I should.  I am not worried, however, as I know what and how much I can do and how to accomplish these tasks, but the newer students are just now acclimating to the idea that they are here to work as well as explore.  First the push, then the crunch and before anyone knows it, it is time to say ‘farewell’ to Paros, unless they are lucky enough to return in the spring, a session that breathes at a different rate then the fall.

As I write this dispatch from Pebble’s Jazz Bar, overlooking the quiet bay of Paroikia, in America the election for the President slouches  towards the the doorsteps of millions, like a wary and red-eyed dog begging for greasy scraps. On Tuesday evening the tally will reveal the overall tenor for the next four years of that country’s leadership and how this beast will be fed.  Of course, this election will effect the whole world.  If Obama wins, I hope he will have a chance to do more than just clean up his predecessor’s terrible messes.  If Romney is chosen to succeed, I fear the world will see what kind of mess can be created by a man with a parochial world view, a medieval stance on civil rights, freedom of speech and a religious background that I, for one, must call cultish at best.  I imagine the worst.  For a good idea of what this could mean, please feel free to read ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ by Margaret Atwood.  To think that a military theocracy is impossible for the United States in this age is to bury your head in the sand.

The days have been warm and sunny.  There has been a shift in the breeze, from south to north, resulting in clearer skies and cooler nights.  I am hoping for more rain this week.  As the temperature slowly drops this becomes more likely, but the weather report doesn’t list this as a possibility.  More good news along with the weather is that the water in the darkroom has dropped to a lovely 21C.  This makes my life easier: small mercies for a possible bleak future.  I hope Yeats is wrong but poets seldom are.

JDCM

Quiet Andiparos…

By on October 27, 2012 in autumn, beauty, craft, Cyclades stone walls, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, skill and craft, working

I am visiting Andiparos for part of our fall break from the Aegean Center.  I have been sleeping in and staying up late reading and watching movies.  Today I drove around for a while and photographed some of the stone wall formations that wind their way across the rugged landscape.  I am disheartened by some of the building I see going on–large luxury estates high up on the sides of the mountains, along the steeply sloping terrain, ruining the views of the sea.  Still, with my Mamiya c330 I can extract the beautiful lines of stone from the uglier new constructions, taking them out of context by cropping out the obvious greed and ego of modern man.   Such is my fantasy.

Throughout the day I have had the song “Wichita Lineman”, written by Jimmy Webb and made famous by Glen Campbell, stuck in my head.   I have always loved the melodic loneliness and deep heart of this song.  A friend, mentor and colleague reminded me recently that country music is just as much ‘soul music’ as the famous hits of Aretha Franklin.   This song is a good example for it is in that broad expansive landscape that one hears the lonely soul of America, forever distanced from its European and Asian roots, forever isolated from the rest of the world.  Webb wrote,

I am a lineman for the county

and I drive the main road
Searchin’ in the sun for another overload

I hear you singin’ in the wire,

I can hear you through the whine
And the Wichita Lineman

is still on the line

I know I need a small vacation

but it don’t look like rain
And if it snows that stretch down south

won’t ever stand the strain

And I need you more than want you,

and I want you for all time
And the Wichita Lineman is still on the line

Campbell has many religious and political views that I do not share but one enduring legacy that I admire him for, however, has been his musical work, his labor.  As a member of the “Wrecking Crew” he was one of the most sought out session players from the 50s through the 60s.  He wasn’t a mainstream star until later.  Last year he announced publicly that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.  He is currently on tour with his family, a tour which will be his last.  When I read Webb’s lyrics again, hearing Campbell’s voice, I cannot help but cry.

County Line Road, between Washington and Marshall Counties, Kansas.
Photo courtesy of Robert Crowe, photographer, St. Louis, Missouri.

For more of Robert Crowe’s photography and prose, please go here.

JDCM

 

Seasonal turns in the Cyclades…

By on October 24, 2012 in Cyclades stone walls, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, Uncategorized, working

In his collection “A Year With Emerson” Richard Grossman envisions the poet and essayist discussing the merits of the simplicity of life with his close friend Henry David Thoreau.  Emerson wrote, “To find the unity in diversity is the role of the seeker of laws.  When we find the unity behind the complex array of nature, we find the inherent simplicity of nature and are at home in it.  We can never be at peace while we exist in a myriad of facts.”

I wrote this entry a few days ago and saved it in ‘drafts’.  I am glad I did.  I had little else to say on that day and surprisingly, not much else to say today.  My energy is stable, not over-the-top.  Tomorrow most of the students are heading out to a week off from the Aegean Center.  Exotic locales, travel plans, etc…Turkey, Copenhagen, islands in Greece, islands of thought and distance.   I think we all need a break.  I am off to the quiet island of Andiparos, adjacent to my current locale and only a 10 minute ferry ride from Paros.  I will have 5 or 6 days there.  I hope to do some reading, take some pictures of stone walls, maybe a little swimming (weather permitting) and generally just hang about.  I’ll be back well before the break ends.

It is very quiet here on Paros.  Tourists are few, visitors to the school are fewer and this weekend we set our clocks back for daylight savings time.  We are a week ahead of America, I think.  Clouds have rolled in and the welcoming rains have been washing the streets clean, rinsing dust from the trees and filling the sky with richly contoured thunderheads.  The rains have been mostly at night, with mixed sunshine during the day. The lightning and thunder has been dramatic, waking me at 3AM,  reminding me to check the open windows in my small flat.  So far no floods.  Tonight I will develop some film and be available for the other students should they need any advice.  It seems a simple, quiet life I have stumbled upon, a veneer for a complex interior.  Too complex to actually comment upon.  I wouldn’t know what to say.  I will take David Byrne’s advice, “When I have nothing to say, my lips are sealed.”

JDCM

Some Emerson from an autumnal island…

By on October 10, 2012 in autumn, beauty, darkroom work, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, silver darkroom, skill and craft, Uncategorized, working

The weather here on Paros has been a blessing.  It has felt like summer in early October and although the students at the Aegean Center are working hard and discovering the rhythms of the school, they have also enjoyed the sun, swimming and island life.  The heat, however, has forced those of us in the darkroom to take measures for chilling our chemistry.  This is not a problem, but it does require an extra step or two if one wishes to develop film properly.  We will begin printing next week and by that time the ambient temperature should have cooled and our lives will be less complex.  The breeze moving down the streets and alleys this evening is more crisp and there was a heavy dew this morning.  We are supposed to have some rain next week which will slowly turn the amber and silver-grey hills around the bay light green.  I enjoy the change of seasons and this time of year I am reminded that Paros, and all of Greece, has distinct times of year beyond the sun-drenched blue and white stereotype of tourist advertising.

red tomatoes in a blue bowl

I realized the other day that I left my collected Emerson paperback in Italy, perhaps in some hotel.  I imagine it slipped from my backpack and under the bed, forgotten in my eagerness to return to Greece.  I hope it ends up on some shelf to be read by a passing traveler.  I do have my  ‘A Year with Emerson”, which will quote for today, October 10.  He wrote about his ideal scenario regarding readers and how he would like to be perceived: “I would have my book read as I have read my favorite books, not with explosion & amazement, a marvel and a rocket, but a friendly & agreeable influence stealing like the scent of a flower or the sight of a new landscape on a traveler.  I neither wish to be hated & defied by such as I startled, nor to be kissed and hugged by the young whose thoughts I stimulate.”

He also wrote,

“Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide
upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There
are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are
right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some
of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it
takes brave men and women to win them.”

Both of these concepts–the idea of the more quiet path, modesty being the philosophy and the understanding that one must always be true to oneself and not falter regardless of outside influences–inspire me to be a better person.  The given fact is, of course, that I am human and will sometimes stumble, sometimes reach for glory or even react in a self-deprecating manner.  Imperfection makes the best and most lofty ideals attainable.

(Tomatoes have nothing to do with this post.  I just liked the picture. Think of it as an interlude.  It is also 4 years old and from New York.  Nothing to do with Greece, Emerson or anything at all, really.)

JDCM

Building the foundation…

By on September 30, 2012 in beauty, craft, darkroom work, skill and craft, working

We all begin somewhere.  If one wishes to build fine furniture, knowledge of the tools, types of wood, adhesives, joinery, stains and finishes must be mastered first.  This begins with an apprenticeship, since the novice knows nothing except the novel desire to see a project through.  ‘The right tool for the right job’ is not an idle cliché.   This applies to the studio arts as well.  When I began my painting classes last spring I knew little of this craft and had very limited skills.  All I knew was what I would like to portray, not how to accomplish it.  I had to ask for help.  I asked my teachers, since that is what they were for.  I asked fellow students who were more able than myself, for that is part of their role as well.  The great leap is that I took their advice and my work improved.  I also do this with my photography.  I ask for help and take the advice.  There are many ways to do this.  I go to the Kodak webpage for help with start times and other technical details, for example.  I ask those who have come before “How did you do this…?”

And so my foundation is built of sturdy stuff–strong mortar, supportive materials, able to carry the larger structure that becomes the rooms, halls and stairways of this artistic domicile.  There is more to the photography than that, however.  My skills and craft are broadened by reading Homer, or T.S. Eliot.  I get ideas from looking at the sculpture of Canova and Bernini and the paintings from a diverse world of museums and galleries.  I soak in the experience of waiting at the bus station in Ravenna in the rain.  By writing about these things I synthesize what I know into something else, perhaps not new to the untrained eye, but certainly original, if only in small ways.

The foundation–my foundation–is greater than the sum of its parts, yet contains all that I have seen and heard.  I become my work and in doing so my work defines part of my being, part of my ‘self’ and grants a sense of community.  More about this later…

JDCM

 

Ghosts in the Eternal City…

By on September 24, 2012 in autumn, craft, silver darkroom, skill and craft, working

Rome.  As one friend called it, a palimpsest.  Echoes upon shades of history, currently covered with a veneer, like a carapace, of the modern age.  Here I am and I am not sure what I am doing.  I laid in bed last night, tossing and turning, the rusty wheels in my head grinding their chipped cogs, trying to make sense of it all.  I am surprised no one else heard the clanking din.  I finally slept around 04:30.

I exist in a grey area.  I have been here at the Aegean Center for over two years and this is my fifth session.  I have been designated a ‘working intern’.  I am not sure what this means but I know how it feels.  I fall somewhere in-between the students, who are much younger than I, and the faculty, of which I am not.  I wander this middle path feeling at times like a ghost, a shade in the midst of the group.  A good friend reminded me that perhaps I am inside an egg, dark and muffled.  If so, let’s get this hatching over with, please.

“To thine own self be true”  can be applied to my current state.  I can keep my own counsel, play my cards close to my chest but when push comes to shove I have to be able to find the right people to speak to about my thinking.  This I will do.  Last spring I was honest about my feelings and for that I have lost a dear friend forever.  If I could change the past I would (who wouldn’t, really?) but the fact remains that I opened up my heart and welcomed vulnerability.  I am paying the price for this.  I wish I could just blow it off, be less sensitive, think of these things in a more superficial way.  I guess it is to my credit that I have depth and feelings but I envy those who can just shrug off life’s little tragedies like so many random raindrops.

There are few who I could go to and receive the direction I need.  Thankfully I have some friends here in Rome who can help me out in ways that most people around me will never understand.  I will see them tonight. We will laugh at our pains as we discard our phantasmagoric vestments for a time.  Ghosts no more, our temporal selves will reveal the human frailties and shortcomings normal for our kind.  As we disperse, we will blend back in to the mix, walking the middle grey again, another layer, more echoes, a faint outline resembling…

JDCM

white, middle grey (18%), and black

 

Emerson at the Villa Rospigliosi…

By on September 2, 2012 in autumn, beauty, Greece, Paros, skill and craft

I arrived in Pistoia Friday afternoon after a leisurely train ride through the Apennine Mountains from Faenza.  The day began with pouring rain in Ravenna which slowed and ended as I pulled into the Faenza station.  The remainder of the journey was shot with bright sun arcing through the kind of blue-grey clouds one only sees in high altitude geographies.  As we passed through Ronta, Borgo di San Lorenzo, Vaglia,  La Luna and other small towns I was struck how these mountain communities all have something in common.  Even Leadville, Colorado has a similar feel.  I hypothesize that it is the separateness of these communities from the larger populations.  Like islands, they exist on the trade routes of other city’s fortunes, whistle-stops along the way from one place to another.

As the iron rails wound downhill the landscape smoothed from sharp, stony teeth and spiked conifers to a rolling ruggedness covered with magnolias, plane trees and umbrella pines.  As I arrived in Firenze Santa Maria di Novella Stazione, I was struck by a memory from the early 1990s, the first time I pulled into this place, after an overnight ride from Luxembourg City.  The station hasn’t changed all that much and still ranks as one of my favorite train hubs. I can go anywhere from Florence, anywhere the compass points.

In his essay ‘Fate’, Emerson discusses education, the ability to teach and how at times we seem to be bound in a cycle of superstition.  He affirms his cynicism, with which I identify.  He writes,

“We are incompetent to solve the times.  Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits of the prevailing ideas, behold their return, and    reconcile their opposition.  We can only obey our own polarity. ‘Tis fine for us to speculate and elect our course, if we must accept an irresistible dictation.”

If Emerson sounds cynical, then perhaps he is.  Despite the open-minded nature and the spiritual axioms of the transcendentalists, I have found through my readings that Emerson was a realist and when, let us say, confronted by an unmovable obstacle, he would accept this as fact and walk away.  He talks of this reality in the above-quoted text.  People can learn only when they are willing to learn and only what they want.  If I remain open to all of the sights and sounds around me then I can learn more from the whole of the map than I would if I were to concentrate on one small area.  If, for example, I had disembarked at Borgo di San Lorenzo last Friday instead of taking the whole journey to Firenze, then my Weltanschauung would have consisted of less than what I am currently willing to entertain. As beautiful as the scenery is in that small town, it is not the entire world, nor my entire experience.  I have to be willing to be taught, to stay on the train if need be.  That is not to say that cannot jump off and get on as my heart demands.  I just have to remind myself that there is more to see down the line.

And so Emerson arrives at the Villa Rospigliosi, hands behind his back, ruminating in his clear New England voice.  I imagine he would have liked this place, with its running fountain, olive groves, and roses.  He would have enjoyed meeting the students and faculty of the Aegean Center.  Like him we are here on a small island of thought, day-tripping to other stops along the line.  I must not forget the larger map, the grander cartography, for even if I cannot see it at times it is there, as big as life.

JDCM

The Villa Rospigliosi

The Villa Rospigliosi, September home of the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts

Tickets, a haircut and ‘addio Ravenna…’

By on August 30, 2012 in Paros

I slept later than usual this morning, having not much to do but revisit some basilica, cross a few historic buildings off my list and take care of some logistical matters before I leave Ravenna tomorrow and head to Pistoia where I will meet up with the rest of the Aegean Center.  I had been investigating alternatives to the usual Ravenna/Bologna/Firenze/Pistoia train route and after a couple of friends informed me of a narrow gauge rail that might take me from Point A to B, I asked around.  The information desk at the stazione ferroviaria di Ravenna was somewhat helpful although she had only two routes on her schedule.  The first was the above-mentioned standard line.  The second leaves Ravenna by a bus which takes me to the Faenza station where I board a regional line that winds down to Firenze, where I change trains for Pistoia.  There was no listing for the Porrettano Railway, my narrow gauge adventure.  Further investigation on my own found online references, but nothing that could help.  It seems there is a push to repair and restore this historic line to working order, but for me, tomorrow, the answer was ‘No!’  So I go by way of Faenza.  If all goes well I should be at the Villa Rospigliosi by 1600 hours or something close to that.  The view on the train from Faenza is still supposed to be lovely.

In the past few years my travels have taken me away from my home base for longer and longer periods of time and as a result I have had to look after myself as I would in more familiar surroundings.  One aspect I have been enjoying is getting my hair cut.  There is a masculine aspect to going to a barber unlike the experience of going to a salon, typically the domain of women. This is not a sexist comment, just a realistic one.  In the USA and Europe there are fewer  barbers now and more ‘hair stylists’ or whatever they wish to be called.  There is nothing like a traditional barber.  Four years ago I had my hair cut in Athens by a Bengali immigrant and I swear it was the best haircut I ever had.  While on Paros I go to Niko, the Greek barber on Market Street in Paroikia.  I realized the other day that my hair was looking, and feeling, a bit shaggy so I inquired at the front desk of my hotel.  I was directed down the street towards the train station.  So this morning, after having purchased my tickets for tomorrow’s journey I stopped in to the ‘barbieri’ for a cut.  There was no sign on the door save for ‘Barbieri’ and a telephone number.  I went in, was seated in front of the mirror and the man went to work.  30 minutes later I looked and felt much better and the bill was 12 Euros.  Not bad.  Only 2 Euros more than Niko.  I like getting my hair cut in a strange town.  It makes me feel as if I have engaged with the place on a different level than the rest of the tourists.

Tonight I also ate my last dinner here in Ravenna.  I have had a few dinners and not all were great.  Some were fantastic and overpriced, and some aspired to greatness and fell short.  The best was the first night at ‘Vecchia Ravenna da Mario‘ so I went back for more.  Like my experience on Serifos a few months ago I have come to the conclusion that I should have eaten there all the time and in doing so would have saved money and had a better food experience.  Tonight I had ‘tagliatelle alla ragu’ and ‘pollo alla cacciotore’.  Really great.  As I have already reported, noting like home-cooking.  The pasta was hand rolled and cut just before it was cooked (perfectly al dente) and the chicken was delicious, served with mushrooms, tomatoes and small black olives.  Dee-lish!  I finished up with caramel panna cotta and an espresso.  It was a big meal so the bill as about 30 Euros, but it was worth it.  I had dinner last night at another place and the bill was 37 Euros.  The restaurant, how shall I say it, reached for a brass ring to high to grasp.  Next time I come to Ravenna, I know where to eat.

So that’s it for Ravenna.  I have seen some amazing mosaics, had some OK, good and wonderful food and have had my hair cut as a start to fall semester of the Aegean Center for the Fine Arts, Italian Session 2012.  Next post..Pistoia…Ciao!

JDCM

Emerson on the beach…

By on August 19, 2012 in 4×5 photography, beauty, Greece, Paros, quiet islands, working

I sat on the beach the other day and listened to the waves lapping against the sloping sand.  While the currents slowly rolled the soft-colored stones rounder, my mind drifted from the page I was reading to the motorboat out in the bay and then back to the page only to be distracted again by the clarity of the sky and shadowy islands lying not-so-distant from my colorful towel.  I wonder if Emerson ever thought that one of his essays would become the subject of this writer’s musing or his book find its way to this sandy place?   Probably.  I am sure that his young admirer Walt Whitman would have felt at home here too.  He’ll be next.  “Leaves of Grass” during a wet Aegean February might be a good read for me.  In any case, in his essay ‘Circles’ published in 1841, Ralph demonstrates prescience.  In the modern world the concept of circles and cycles is common.  Society knows the words ‘reincarnation’ and ‘oneness’ as well as other ’round’ concepts.  Buddhism is not the mysterious idea it was so many decades ago and the phrase “what comes around, goes around” has been in the modern lexicon since, I suppose, the early 1960s.  “Ye reap what ye sow” has been around longer and means much the same thing.  What Emerson speaks of, I feel, is something larger than that.  Ideas come and go and  those who live in the past naturally point in fear and condemnation towards any revolution of thought or action that may threaten their temporary power.  That’s a good word too—revolution.  It implies a turning.  Seasons turn, wheels turn and the wheel inside the wheel turns as an analogy of an invisible world we may only glimpse in dreams or moments of sublime inspiration, connections with something larger outside ourselves.   Then again, there I was sitting on a beach in an archipelago called the Cyclades, or “The Circle”.  Hmm…Here is an excerpt from Emerson’s essay titled “Circles”, published in 1841:

“There are no fixtures in nature. The universe is fluid and volatile. Permanence is but a word of degrees. Our globe seen by God is a transparent law, not a mass of facts. The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid. Our culture is the predominance of an idea which draws after it all this train of cities and institutions. Let us rise into another idea; they will disappear. The Greek sculpture is all melted away, as if it had been statues of ice: here and there a solitary figure or fragment remaining, as we see flecks and scraps of snow left in cold dells and mountain clefts in June and July. For the genius that created it creates now somewhat else. The Greek letters last a little longer, but are already passing under the same sentence and tumbling into the inevitable pit which the creation of new thought opens for all that is old. The new continents are built out of the ruins of an old planet; the new races fed out of the decomposition of the foregoing. New arts destroy the old. See the investment of capital in aqueducts, made useless by hydraulics; fortifications, by gunpowder; roads and canals, by railways; sails, by steam; steam, by electricity.”

“There are no fixtures in nature…”  Indeed.  The waves roll and dissolve stones to sand, the wind shifts and islands disappear.  My eye wanders from the page to the sky and back again.  I blame the Meltemi for these ramblings.  The wind rushes, sometimes feeling as if it is blowing through my head.  In one ear and out the other.

JDCM